Likkutei Amarim Chapter 16 · 5781

00:12 Speaker 1 Good evening, Rabbi.

00:13 Speaker 2 Good evening.

00:14 Speaker 1 Good morning. Somehow the atmosphere feels different to me. No corona and no strange atmosphere.

01:12 Speaker 2 Over there, corona is over.

01:20 Speaker 1 That wasn’t the situation before. This was the situation. A new way of learning. Again. So we have another one. Ah, I don’t have a choice either.

02:09 Speaker 2 Good evening. Today we’re going to learn chapter 16. This is... As we’ve said many times already, chapter 16 is where serving Hashem actually begins. So—

02:28 Speaker 1 Now we need to get into the details before, uh...

02:31 Speaker 2 Start the book? Just a little bit. As if it’s the first time that...

02:35 Speaker 1 A class.

02:37 Speaker 2 All right. In general.

02:39 Speaker 1 This is for over there now. I didn’t get it. No, I remember what you have. Or does she remember?

03:02 Speaker 2 Every book has something unique about it. But the Tanya is unique even among unique books. The Tanya is the only book that explains to a person how to serve Hashem from beginning to end. All the other books either explain a particular aspect of serving Hashem, or discuss a particular subject, or don’t discuss serving Hashem at all—they discuss a subject in Torah, in the revealed dimension of Torah or in the inner dimension of Torah. But when an individual wants to observe what the Torah says, he encounters a difficulty. If he wants to observe what the Torah says, he faces 613 mitzvos, including 248 positive mitzvos and 365 prohibitions, and he gets a little overwhelmed. And even when he starts observing them, starts trying and making an effort, he runs into enormous difficulties. Why? Well, this bothers him, and that’s hard for him. Sometimes he’s not in the mood, sometimes it doesn’t work out, and sometimes he even commits a transgression. That can happen too. Sometimes he has thoughts that aren’t good. And when he gets stuck and comes to the verse in the Torah, “For the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it,” a Jew stands there astonished. What does it mean that the Torah is very close to me? That it’s very easy to observe all the mitzvos without ever committing a transgression or ever neglecting a mitzvah? How is that very close? It seems like something that... it doesn’t seem humanly possible. The Tanya comes and explains, gradually, by a long and short path, how every Jew—from the greatest of the great to the least of the least, even the simplest of the simple, or in the Tanya’s words, the most frivolous of the frivolous—not only can observe all the mitzvos, Torah and mitzvos in their entirety, without ever committing any transgression or neglecting any mitzvah, but it is even very close, exactly as the Torah declares. So the entire Tanya is founded, based on the verse, “For

05:41 Speaker 2 the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” It explains thoroughly how it is very close. That is the whole Tanya. And... to make this not just something we understand intellectually, but also something practical that I can do—there are many things we understand we ought to do, but although I understand that I ought to do them, I can’t, or I don’t feel that I can. To bring these ideas down to a practical level, the Alter Rebbe, before he began explaining how to serve Hashem, first gave us fifteen chapters of introduction. He explained what the faculties of the soul are and how they relate to one another. He explained that every Jew has two souls, a G-dly soul and an animal soul. Thank you very much. He explained where the two souls are located: the G-dly soul resides in the brain, and the animal soul resides in the heart. He explained what each of the two souls wants. He explained the battle between them. He explained what happens when one wins and what happens when the other wins. Then he went on to explain that, in order to serve Hashem, a Jew needs to engrave three things in his soul. First, he needs to know that if Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks something of him, he can do it. He needs to have hope, faith and trust. If Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks, he can do it. And the second—the first practical principle he gives is, “Do not consider yourself a rasha.” If a person considers himself wicked, he’ll give up; he won’t be able to serve Hashem. On the other hand, even someone who reaches the peak, the very height of perfection, must not rest on his laurels. The moment he rests on his laurels, the moment he feels that he himself... the yetzer hara will immediately attack him. He explained this at great length in chapter 13. After all the introductions and all

07:48 Speaker 2 the preparations, we come to chapter 16. In chapter 16, he finally begins to explain serving Hashem itself. What should I do? How should I go about it? What should I think about? What should I contemplate? What do I need to do to reach a point where I’ll never commit a transgression and, on the other hand, won’t neglect any mitzvah? Let’s look inside, chapter 16. “This is a great principle in the service of Hashem for beinonim.” There are Jews who are tzaddikim, or who are not beinonim, and different principles of serving Hashem apply to them. But we’re talking about an ordinary Jew—a person who isn’t exceptional, who doesn’t have special abilities or a special upbringing, just an ordinary, average person. So the first great principle is this: “The main thing is to govern and control the nature of the left cavity of the heart by means of the light of Hashem that illuminates the G-dly soul in his brain.” As we’ve noted many times, the G-dly soul resides in the brain, and from there it tries to govern the whole body. The animal soul resides in the left cavity of the heart, and from there it exerts its strength. Now, when a Jew contemplates with his mind—in line four—“when a Jew contemplates with his mind the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof, so that his understanding gives rise to a spirit of knowledge and fear of Hashem in his mind, leading him to turn away from evil prohibited by the Torah and by the Sages, even a minor prohibition of theirs, G-d forbid; and to love Hashem in his heart, in its right cavity, with a longing and desire to cleave to Him through observing the mitzvos of the Torah and of the Sages, and through Torah study, which is equal to them all.” That is the first principle. What is it? To contemplate the greatness of Hashem. In this chapter, the Alter Rebbe establishes and shows that there are two principles in serving Hashem. Two very, very simple principles, and that’s why it’s called “very close.” Everyone has an intellect. The yetzer hara can control a person’s desires. It can draw a person toward worldly matters, toward worldly pleasures. The yetzer hara has no access

10:17 Speaker 2 to the intellect. The yetzer hara will never come and try to persuade a person intellectually. What would it tell him—that committing a transgression is good? That it’s... what could it tell him? The soul—the yetzer hara—is emotional by its very nature. It’s in the heart. So if a Jew contemplates the greatness of Hashem with his intellect, in his mind, as the Alter Rebbe has explained and will explain further in detail, then through contemplating the greatness of Hashem he won’t merely understand how great Hakadosh Boruch Hu is and how far He transcends the world, how good Hakadosh Boruch Hu is, and how good and pleasant it is to draw close to Him. He won’t merely understand it; he’ll contemplate it so deeply that the understanding will penetrate his heart. We see this in ourselves; everyone feels it for themselves. When does a feeling about something begin to awaken in me? When I think about it. The more I think about a particular thing, the more my feelings toward it awaken. If there’s something I’ve only learned about, I just know it exists. I understand it; I grasp the idea. Fine, I’ve understood it. It hasn’t done anything to me; it hasn’t affected my heart. But when a person thinks deeply about something—not just thinking about it or understanding it for the sake of understanding, but thinking about its meaning, its details, what it means to me and what I mean in relation to it—until it penetrates his heart. We’ve spoken about this a few times already, and perhaps this is the place to emphasize it again. Perhaps this is even the place to... At first glance, how can the mind, the intellect, influence emotion? We’ve discussed this a few times, haven’t we? Or have we not gotten to it yet? I don’t remember. The nature of the intellect is that it wants to understand what is above it. The intellect reaches upward. By nature, the intellect is cool.

12:47 Speaker 2 Emotion is entirely warm, stirred up, enthusiastic. Emotion is the exact opposite. All emotion wants is: What’s good for me? What isn’t good for me? What feels pleasant to me? And emotion is warm. Intellect, by its very nature, is directed upward, outside the person, seeking to connect with what is above him, and its nature is cold. Emotion is all warmth and excitement, and it turns inward, into the person. Where do they meet? How can intellect influence emotion? They’re two different worlds. They have nothing to do with each other. So what does it mean when the Torah states—and it’s mentioned several times—that the mind rules over the heart? How can the mind rule over the heart? True, they’re both in the same body, but what connects them? Chassidus explains at length that for intellect, for thought, to influence emotion, the heart, there has to be some kind of intermediary, some kind of interface. There have to be several intermediate stages. There are many details and many levels to this, explained at length, but generally speaking, there is... The first stage is intellect as it is. A person has to understand the subject. When he contemplates, when he wants to think—when a person wants contemplation of Hashem’s greatness to affect his heart, he first has to understand what Hashem’s greatness means. He has to understand, ah, that this world is, after all, material. And to contemplate at length all the places that explain that the life-force of this world comes from spiritual realms, and consequently, the spiritual realms that give life to the world are incomparably loftier than this world. After he reaches that conclusion and understands it in all its details, he is taught that the spiritual realm that gives life to this world and stands above it has four levels: Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. And within each of these four worlds, these four general levels, there are ten general levels, and within each of those there is an immense, infinite multitude

15:19 Speaker 2 of levels. Every world is incomparably loftier than the world beneath it, and every level is incomparably loftier than the level beneath it. After he understands and contemplates at length how wondrously lofty the spiritual, G-dly forces are, he has to contemplate that, in fact, all the worlds, including the very, very highest world, are still only worlds. The word olam, “world,” is related to he’elem, concealment. It isn’t Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. It’s only something very limited. And there is the essence of G-dliness, which is above the worlds, and there, too, are levels above levels above levels. And then what’s higher? Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—we won’t burden you now with the entire order of hishtalshelus. And Atik, Arich and Atik, and Akudim, Nekudim and... what is it, there’s... and the first tzimtzum, and before the first tzimtzum, and the light, and the light as it is utterly one with His essence. Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and higher—

16:31 Speaker 7 Until where?

16:33 Speaker 2 Until infinity. So when a person contemplates how wondrously great G-dliness is, until it... until he understands—not merely understands the subject. First, of course, he has to understand it. He has to learn in order to know. Once he knows, he contemplates how wondrous it is, and then he reaches a certain conclusion. The conclusion is that G-dliness is good. As long as he hasn’t thought about Hashem’s greatness, it’s: Hakadosh Boruch Hu created me. Thank you very much, much appreciated. I have my needs, and He wants me to do things. What? What do You want from me? That I should do this and I should do... You’re getting in the way of my life. So I understand that, after all, I’m a Jew and I have to live accordingly. So I have... I have kabbolas ol, but I won’t fulfill the mitzvos out of love for Hashem. I... I don’t feel it; I don’t know who Hashem is. I know in a general way that He exists and that He created me, and for one reason or another, whether I understand it or not, I’m obligated—obligated to Him. But I do these things because I have to, not out of love, not out of desire, not because I feel like it. Why? Because, because I have no idea why I’m doing them. But after a person contemplates Hashem’s greatness at length, he comes to the conclusion that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is good. And if He is good, then it’s also good for me to draw close to Him. And if the way to draw close to Him is by keeping Torah and mitzvos, then I want to keep Torah and mitzvos because I want to draw close to Him. But all of that is still an intellectual conclusion. It isn’t emotion yet. On the one hand, this intellectual conclusion is a conclusion in the mind. I understand that it’s good. On the

18:38 Speaker 2 other hand, it isn’t intellect. I’m not—this isn’t an understanding of the subject itself. It’s already a step out of the subject toward something beyond it, a kind of conclusion. It’s a descent of the intellect from understanding the subject in itself to an intellectual conclusion. This intellectual conclusion also has a number of levels, but generally speaking, it’s called the middos within the intellect. It’s no longer pure intellect, no longer pure understanding. It’s the beginning of something emotional. It isn’t emotion; it’s intellect. But it’s intellect with a direction: intellect that says, “This is good and this isn’t good.” It’s no longer about whether something is correct or incorrect. Now we’re dealing with good and bad, or even what’s good for me and bad for me. That’s called the middos within the intellect. Since the middos within the intellect already have a direction, already reach somewhat toward emotion, they can connect with the intellect within the middos. Just as intellect has intellect itself and the middos within the intellect, so too emotion has emotion itself. A person feels love, feels fear, uh, feels attraction, feels joy—an emotion in the heart that doesn’t require intellect. He feels it. And there is an emotion that stems from a kind of agreement with what the heart feels, because he understands that it’s good. That is already called the mochin within the middos. So, just as the mind has intellect itself and the middos within the intellect, the heart, emotion, has emotion itself and the intellect within emotion—the mochin within emotion, the mochin within the middos. And these two can connect. The middos within the intellect can connect with the...

20:45 Speaker 8 intellect

20:45 Speaker 2 with the intellect within the middos. So each of these has many more levels as well; perhaps we’ll see a little of that later. But generally speaking, that’s the structure we’re talking about. Therefore, when a person wants his fulfillment of the mitzvos—sorry, let’s move one step ahead, and then we’ll go back. If I contemplate Hashem’s greatness—not just understand it, but contemplate it deeply until it sinks into my mind in such a way that I reach a clear conclusion that this is what I should do—and continue until it descends into the middos within... into the intellect within emotion, eventually emotion will be awakened too. So how do I awaken love for Hashem within myself? How can I love Hashem? By contemplating Hashem’s greatness. That’s the simple way, the usual way. That’s called the complete avodah of a beinoni, the beinoni’s full avodah. Anyone can do it. No one can stop a person from thinking. You can imprison his body, you can do—there are all kinds of things you can do. You can’t stop him from thinking. He can think whatever he wants at every moment. His mind is under his control. He can contemplate with it whatever he wishes, and if he chooses to contemplate Hashem’s greatness, love for Hashem will arise in him as a matter of course. And if a Jew is in a state where love for Hashem is now burning in his heart—why? Because he contemplates Hashem’s greatness—he loves Hashem, and he knows: How can I draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? There’s only one way: the way He gave us. Since Hakadosh Boruch Hu is incomparably beyond me, the only way I can draw close to Him is along the path He gave me. What path did He give me for drawing close to Him? Torah and mitzvos. And I love Him and want to draw close to Him. Well, when a person constantly lives in that state, in that feeling, in that kind of bubble of love for Hashem, this world won’t interest

22:57 Speaker 2 him. He’ll always be looking for ways to keep mitzvos. And since he knows that committing a transgression will distance him from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he won’t commit transgressions. So his entire observance of Torah and mitzvos no longer comes from compulsion, but from an inner feeling, an inner understanding and feeling that drive him to keep mitzvos. That’s what—how could he miss the mark? How could he stumble into a transgression? It’s out of the question. A beinoni is a person who contemplates Hashem’s greatness, and because he contemplates Hashem’s greatness, love and awe of Hashem are awakened within him. That’s why it’s out of the question for him to commit a transgression. And this is possible for every one of us. What does it depend on? On being a beinoni. What does it mean to be a beinoni? We said that the difference between a beinoni and someone who isn’t a beinoni is how he davens in the morning. Remember we talked about that?

23:59 Speaker 8 What?

23:59 Speaker 2 How he davens Shacharis. When a person prepares for davening and davens properly, that is the time to awaken contemplation of Hashem’s greatness and, as a result, love of Hashem. So that is the first principle. The first principle for beinonim is to contemplate Hashem’s greatness, and to contemplate it deeply enough that it takes hold of them. As it says at the end of Tanya—ah, in chapter 53, right at the end, where he gives an analogy that he brings from the Zohar. No, no, not the author of Tanya. He brings from the Zohar that the G-dly soul is called a lamp. When we say “lamp,” we immediately picture some little rectangular thing made of paraffin that you light with a match. That is not what it means.

24:52 Speaker 9 Then what is it?

24:53 Speaker 2 A lamp is an earthenware vessel with oil and a wick inside it, which you then light.

25:01 Speaker 9 The earthenware vessel is the lamp?

25:02 Speaker 2 The earthenware vessel is the lamp.

25:04 Speaker 9 Why?

25:04 Speaker 2 The whole thing is a lamp. Yes, but in the plain sense, the lamp is the vessel. You put oil and a wick in the lamp. How does the Mishnah put it? You put oil and a wick in the lamp. So the holy Zohar says... Have I told you about the Yenuka before? I don’t remember.

25:23 Speaker 9 We can hear it again. Also—

25:26 Speaker 2 There is a passage in chapter 35 of Tanya where the holy Zohar tells of a child who, as soon as he was born, could see what sins and mitzvos each person had done. He could also speak like an adult. From the moment he came out of his mother’s womb, he held nothing back: whenever anyone came in, he would tell him exactly, exactly what he had done. He was a little child and didn’t understand much, but he saw and he spoke, and people found it very frightening. At some point they took him to Rabbi Abba, I think one of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s students, and he went, “Shhh...” And that was it. Huh? What are you saying? So that child is called the Yenuka in the Zohar. There is a passage in the Zohar called “Yenuka.” And that Yenuka, that infant, has quite a few sayings and teachings quoted in the Zohar.

26:33 Speaker 9 Yenuka.

26:36 Speaker 2 Yes. In one of them, he gives a very beautiful analogy. He says that a person’s G-dly soul is the lamp, while the body and animal soul are the wick. And the mitzvos—Torah and mitzvos—are the oil. Now listen to what a strange analogy this is. What do we usually say? Oil represents Torah, light, wisdom. Right? He says the oil is the mitzvos. The wick is not the G-dly soul, and it is not the light. The wick is the body and the animal soul. And what is the G-dly soul? It is the vessel, the earthenware that holds everything. That is what the Yenuka says. The Alter Rebbe explains this analogy at length over three chapters at the end of Tanya.

27:34 Speaker 9 It parallels the spice; it’s related. But this is really—

27:43 Speaker 2 Here the spice is the yetzer hara.

27:45 Speaker 9 It’s related.

27:46 Speaker 2 Yes. No, there the Torah is the spice; here, in this saying, the yetzer hara is the spice. If you take a wick, just an ordinary cotton wick, and light it, it burns up in a second. It gives light, like a piece of cardboard, but it catches fire and whoosh—it’s gone. Oil on its own, if you try to light it, will put out the match. That doesn’t work. The earthenware doesn’t burn either. If you want light, you have to take an earthenware vessel, put a wick in it, dip the wick in oil, and then light it. What burns? The wick doesn’t burn; the wick only draws the oil up. If you keep adding oil, it will keep burning. The wick only draws up the oil so that it burns and gives light. That is the analogy. Right? What does it mean in the case it represents? The body and animal soul are the wick. Why are they the wick? When a person wants to do mitzvos, how does he do them? All mitzvos involve action with the body. You cannot do mitzvos in a purely spiritual way. You have to eat matzah; you have to hold a lulav in your hand. To light Shabbos candles, you have to take a match and light them. Every mitzvah without exception—even mitzvos that are spiritual, like love and awe. Every mitzvah has a required measure. When have I fulfilled it? Take building a sukkah: if I make it less than seven tefachim high, it is invalid. Every mitzvah has a quantity, a size, a time—some measure. So what is the required measure for the mitzvos of loving and fearing Hashem?

29:45 Speaker 10 A measure, again?

29:46 Speaker 2 No.

29:48 Speaker 10 What?

29:48 Speaker 2 Until his heart... until he feels it in his heart. When a person becomes emotionally stirred, he feels his heart. He feels something in his heart begin to beat harder, faster. The measure of loving Hashem is for the heart to begin to stir with love—the physical heart. That is the measure of loving Hashem. The same applies to fear, to awe of Hashem: until he feels a tightening in his heart. If he doesn’t feel fear, a tightening in his heart, he has not yet fulfilled the mitzvah completely. All mitzvos have a physical measure. Why? Because the mitzvos were given in the physical world. That is the whole point of Matan Torah. When Moshe Rabbeinu went up Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, the angels asked Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “What is one born of woman doing among us?” Hakadosh Boruch Hu told him, “Answer them.” So Moshe Rabbeinu answered the angels: “What about you? You have no body.” Didn’t the angels know they had no bodies? Didn’t they know they had no father and mother? Didn’t they know they had no yetzer hara? What kind of answer was Moshe Rabbeinu giving them? The answer is simple. It’s not that the angels didn’t know they had no bodies. The angels were saying, “The Torah is holy; it belongs in heaven. We are holy and in heaven. You human beings are made of physical matter. You are flesh and blood. You are...” How did one of the chassidim put it? Ah, I can’t remember now. All right, I can’t recall the exact wording. So what was Moshe Rabbeinu telling them? On the contrary: if Hakadosh Boruch Hu had wanted the Torah in heaven, why did He give it down below? Because He wanted to make the world holy. He wanted to make the physical substance of the world holy, and that is why all of Torah and mitzvos have to be fulfilled physically. So how do we do a mitzvah with the body? Who operates the body? The G-dly soul has no connection to the body. We spoke about—

31:42 Speaker 2 that more in chapter 3. The G-dly soul understands Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Show it matters of flesh and blood, of the body, of food, and it doesn’t understand what you want from it. That’s not its thing. It isn’t there. It was forced into a body. It is in the body, but it does not operate it. The one that operates the body—moves it, its limbs, its breathing, its blood, its brain, everything connected with the body—is the animal soul. That is what it takes pleasure in. It enjoys living through the body; that is its whole concern. So when the animal soul and the body do mitzvos—and mitzvos are Hashem’s will—what are mitzvos? Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted this. He wanted this, and He wanted that. All the mitzvos, positive and negative, are what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted. They are Hashem’s will. And Hashem’s will is higher than... Hashem’s attributes; it is higher than Hashem’s wisdom. It is... His will is He Himself. Similarly, a person has inner faculties: what I feel and what I understand, heart and mind. But I also have faculties that come from the essence of the soul. A person’s will comes from the essence of his soul. It is what he wants. It is he himself. In the same way, the mitzvos are Hashem’s will. The mitzvos are... they are He Himself. So when a Jew uses his animal soul and his physical body to fulfill Hashem’s mitzvos, those mitzvos, which until now were just pieces of physical matter, are absorbed into the wick, into the body and animal soul. Then a great light comes to rest and shines above the lamp, above the G-dly soul. In other words, for there to be—

33:40 Speaker 2 a revelation of G-dliness in the G-dly soul, how does that happen? Through the animal soul’s fulfillment of mitzvos. All right, we’ve really gone off course—wandered far, much too far. All right, so let’s...

34:01 Speaker 11 Get back on track.

34:01 Speaker 2 Get back on track. We are now discussing the two great principles of serving Hashem for a beinoni. The first principle is to contemplate Hashem’s greatness. When a person contemplates Hashem’s greatness, if he does so properly, love and awe are naturally awakened in him, and then all the mitzvos become very close to him. Let’s continue to the... That was the introduction. Let’s continue to the main part of the chapter. Excuse me. Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word all things came to be. You asked earlier what it was like when I was with the Rebbe. I can tell you something now. I’m thinking about it: imagine going ten days without drinking coffee and not even noticing.

34:49 Speaker 11 Wow. Right, really. You don’t feel hungry. I’ve also been there over many years...

34:54 Speaker 2 I’m thinking about it now. It’s unbelievable.

34:56 Speaker 11 You didn’t feel hungry?

34:58 Speaker 2 No, I don’t mean hunger. I drink five, six, seven, eight cups of espresso a day. It’s...

35:04 Speaker 11 Me too. When I was with the Rebbe a few years ago, I never felt hungry. Somehow... I didn’t feel exhausted, even though I barely...

35:11 Speaker 2 That’s exactly how it is.

35:12 Speaker 11 One meal was enough for me for the whole day.

35:14 Speaker 2 That’s really how it was.

35:24 Speaker 11 A line a little farther down.

35:26 Speaker 12 We asked: How do you wake up the person who’s in 770? You wake him up with the song.

35:33 Speaker 2 Really, I didn’t get this carried away even in the previous classes.

35:38 Speaker 11 Wow.

35:43 Speaker 2 All right, where’s the second principle? We’re on line nine. Everything up to now was the first principle. “Furthermore, one must know a great principle in the service of a beinoni.” What does “furthermore” mean? Even more than that. The first principle is the important one, the general one, the main one, the basi—furthermore! More important than that is the second principle: “One must know a great principle in the service of a beinoni: even if his intellect and the spirit of his understanding cannot give birth to love of Hashem openly in his heart.” He’ll contemplate. He won’t be upset. The truth is, contemplation is hard work. Even studying is hard work, and then contemplating is harder still.

36:30 Speaker 13 Everything’s hard.

36:32 Speaker 2 Hmm?

36:32 Speaker 13 Everything’s hard.

36:33 Speaker 2 The farther I get in my studies, the more I find that, in the end, everything is. Studying is the easy part. Understanding... I put in effort, I worked hard, I asked questions, people explained it to me, I opened a book, I was careful, and I understood it. I understood it. But to take an idea I’ve understood—and after I’ve understood it well, sat with it, studied it, understood it properly—to close my eyes and contemplate it, picture it, let it sink in and penetrate me: that’s much, much harder than understanding. But a person’s mind is under his control. If he decides he wants to, he can do it. No one is stopping him. It’s hard work. No one said it wasn’t hard. On the contrary, we said before: you should know this is hard work. But hard is hard. I know it’s good, I know it’s what I need to do. I’ll do it—but I did do it.

37:39 Speaker 13 I know what I should do, but I don’t do it.

37:41 Speaker 2 But I did do it. A person says to himself—that’s the principle, the second principle—I did do it. I studied, I worked hard, I understood. I put my tallis over my eyes and contemplated for three hours, and I promise you, my mind didn’t wander. Nothing happened. I don’t feel love or anything else. I don’t feel it. I’m telling you the truth. What’s going on here? We said that the mind naturally rules over the heart, by the nature of its creation, and that’s how it is physically too. A human being is the only creature among all living things whose head is above the body. There’s no other creature like that. With animals, the head is to the side, not above the body.

38:34 Speaker 13 Birds. A giraffe. An ostrich.

38:37 Speaker 2 A giraffe’s head is always far away.

38:42 Speaker 13 What about birds?

38:43 Speaker 2 Birds are a good question. I’ve never thought about that. I can’t tell you about birds right now. A giraffe’s head is certainly all the way to the side, and usually below, too. Only when there’s a tree does it remember that, for the sake of its desires, it’s willing even to raise its head. Why is it that way physically? Because that’s how it is spiritually. The mind rules over—when a person is born, Hakadosh Boruch Hu instills this in us from birth: a person can say, “I want to,” and can stop himself: “I want to, but I won’t do it.” There’s no such thing among animals as “I want to, but my mind will stop me from doing it.” If an animal wants to, it does it. With all animals, the mind serves the heart. But the only living creature whose mind, whose intellect, can control an emotion and stop it is a human being. There’s nothing else like it. No other such thing exists in the world. So what’s happening here? I used this nature I was born with, a basic nature found even in a non-Jew, and contemplated the greatness of Hashem. I truly contemplated, I understood and contemplated, and still no feeling was awakened. What’s happening here? Why wasn’t the emotion awakened? But this is what it says: “Even if his intellect and the spirit of his understanding cannot give birth to love of Hashem openly in his heart, so that his heart burns like flames of fire, desiring with a longing and yearning felt in the heart to cleave to Him”—it doesn’t awaken. What does he have instead? “Only a hidden love in his mind and the recesses of his heart.” In other words, after I contemplated as I should, the heart understands, through the wisdom and understanding in his mind, the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof. After the introduction we gave earlier, these words are easier to understand, right? He contemplated in his mind, but it didn’t descend all the way to—it didn’t actually penetrate his heart. Rather, it remained in the recesses of his mind. He understands that this is how it should be in the recesses of his heart. His heart—

41:02 Speaker 2 He wants to want it. He very much wants to have love of Hashem during davening. He wants it; he genuinely wants to have it, but in practice he doesn’t. Where did this desire to want come from? He contemplated. So if I contemplated and it did affect my heart, stirring something that makes me want to have love of Hashem, then I do want it. Something has happened here. So why wasn’t love of Hashem awakened? He says it’s because “his intellect and the spirit of his understanding cannot reach it.” It doesn’t depend on him. We said in chapter 2—you remember when we studied chapter 2? That was a long time ago—that among other things, we discussed how there are many levels among souls, infinitely many different levels. It’s discussed there at length. And he comes back to it here: there are souls whose spiritual source allows them to awaken love of Hashem in their hearts, and there are souls that are a little lower, whose source above doesn’t allow them to. His intellect cannot reach it. He was created in such a way that he can contemplate with his mind as much as he wishes. It will bring him to an intellectual conclusion. More than that, it will even make him want to love Hashem; his heart will agree in its hidden recesses. That much, yes. But to have love that he actually feels in his heart—that’s impossible. Why? That’s what this note is here for. Do you see the note on the side? Let’s take a quick look at it. “The reason for this is that his intellectual faculties and his Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah”—what is that?

43:04 Speaker 14 Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah.

43:05 Speaker 2 Very good. “And his Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah are in a state of gestation and concealment within understanding, not in a state of birth and revelation, as is known to those versed in Chein”—the wisdom of Kabbalah. Incidentally, this is one of those places—just an aside, a little digression—where you have an abbreviation of an abbreviation. Have you ever noticed? “Yod’ei Chein” is abbreviated, and what is “Chein”? Chochmah Nisteres, hidden wisdom. It’s an abbreviation within an abbreviation. Very common. So what is he actually saying here—

43:42 Speaker 14 The thing itself is complicated.

43:45 Speaker 2 No, no, G-d forbid.

43:47 Speaker 14 But why am I asking—

43:48 Speaker 2 G-d forbid. So this is the second principle. We’ll get to it in a moment. Quite the opposite. I’ll explain this note briefly, without using Kabbalistic terms. We can see this in a person, in every one of us. I’m not talking now about G-dliness, where it really is harder and more contemplation is needed to awaken the heart. Just an ordinary case: someone thinks about how another person upset him, and as he thinks about it, his feelings are aroused. That’s very easy. Because we’re beinonim, that comes more easily to us. It works the same way on the side of holiness, too, but for a beinoni, the one primarily at work there is the animal soul, so he feels it more readily. So, simply put, this is how it works.

44:44 Speaker 3 The G-dly—

44:45 Speaker 2 What?

44:46 Speaker 3 That’s the beinoni; that wasn’t the question.

44:48 Speaker 2 No, we said in chapter 12 that it’s through iskafya. It’s only, only—

44:53 Speaker 3 A person—

44:54 Speaker 2 For an ordinary beinoni, the G-dly soul rules only during davening, and even then only if he contemplates. The rest of the time it’s iskafya: he compels himself. And we also saw that there are several levels and several kinds, and different degrees to which it shines or doesn’t shine. We’ll deal with that at length later, but for our purposes that’s enough. So we see that there are things we think about that awaken an emotion. There are other things—and this can happen too—where I think about something and feel no emotion, but it directly activates my speech. I don’t always speak about what I feel. Often I speak about what I think. A person’s speech has two sources. When a person speaks because he feels something—he’s stirred, he’s happy, he loves, he hates, he’s angry—he speaks from what he feels. Sometimes a person speaks about what he thinks, not what he feels. When someone speaks from what he feels, all right: speech comes from the breath of the heart. That makes sense. But when someone speaks about what he thinks, that’s a little harder to understand. What connection is there between the intellect, which is above emotion, and speech, which is below emotion?

46:33 Speaker 3 Can you give examples?

46:34 Speaker 2 What?

46:35 Speaker 3 Examples.

46:36 Speaker 2 A person who thought—

46:38 Speaker 3 Unless someone forces a person to speak about what—

46:39 Speaker 2 No.

46:40 Speaker 3 Emotion to speech.

46:43 Speaker 2 Yes, certainly. When a person speaks—say he’s teaching a class, I don’t know, a math lesson, and now he needs to explain it to his friend—or... so he explains the subject to him.

46:53 Speaker 3 He’s explaining his thought?

46:54 Speaker 2 Yes, he explains what he understands. There’s no emotion in it. But sometimes something very clear happens, and we see this too: a person speaks about intellectual ideas, not emotional ones, yet he speaks with energy and enthusiasm. Excuse me, where did that come from? If we’re talking about emotion, emotional words have energy and enthusiasm. But here I’m speaking enthusiastically about intellectual ideas. What? What are you so enthusiastic about?

47:27 Speaker 3 I don’t know.

47:27 Speaker 2 There’s no emotion here, after all. Where does that energy come from?

47:31 Speaker 3 He puts himself into it so that it matters to him.

47:32 Speaker 2 Huh?

47:33 Speaker 3 He puts himself into it so that it matters to him.

47:35 Speaker 2 We’re talking about someone who, in practice, doesn’t feel love, doesn’t feel—there’s no emotion here right now. There’s energy, drive, enthusiasm, but no love, no fear, no awe, no joy. There’s no emotion, but there is energy and enthusiasm.

47:52 Speaker 3 It doesn’t necessarily mean that it touches him, that he has some emotion.

47:55 Speaker 2 But that’s what he says here in this note: that this is how it is Above. Sometimes there are... Oh, sorry, that note is... Here, I see it. It’s two pages further on. Two more pages. No, but it’s related; it’s the same idea. There are souls whose source is in the higher intellectual faculties while they are still in a state of gestation, up above within the intellectual faculties. And there are souls whose source is at a lower level, within the Divine emotions. The soul comes from G-dliness. Where in G-dliness? Does his soul come from the emotional attributes or from the intellectual faculties? If his soul comes from the emotional attributes, then when he contemplates those attributes, something will be awakened. If his soul comes from the intellectual faculties, there’s nothing there to be awakened in his soul.

48:55 Speaker 4 Which is higher. So wait—a person whose source is in the intellectual faculties speaks in order to connect?

49:01 Speaker 2 What? What?

49:02 Speaker 4 A person whose source, apparently, is in the emotion within the intellectual faculties.

49:04 Speaker 2 Yes.

49:05 Speaker 4 So he didn’t receive emotion.

49:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

49:07 Speaker 4 So even if he speaks about emotion, it won’t [unclear].

49:10 Speaker 2 So it would seem that this is how it should be. But in practice, we sometimes see a person learning Torah, and—yes, he’s alive. You can see that he’s a living person. You can see that it matters to him, that it’s important to him, that he’s enthusiastic. How can that be? It means that sometimes Divine wisdom descends directly into Malchus, without emotion in between. Such a thing exists. It exists Above, and it exists down here too. But for someone whose soul has its source there, even when he contemplates G-dliness, and even when his speech and his observance of the mitzvos have energy and enthusiasm, no emotion will be awakened. Why not? It isn’t there at the source of his soul. It doesn’t exist there. And as for the person who asked whether that source is higher or lower, the—

50:12 Speaker 4 In life, we’ll do nicer things.

50:13 Speaker 2 Right.

50:14 Speaker 4 That applies to a great tzaddik.

50:16 Speaker 2 We’re talking about a beinoni.

50:19 Speaker 4 The soul. It has more emotion.

50:23 Speaker 2 When you become a tzaddik, a higher soul will enter you. We’ve already seen that written too. As for your question, it’s a good question: How can we say that a person whose soul has its source in the emotional attributes is higher than someone whose soul has its source in the higher intellectual faculties?

50:41 Speaker 4 But in your question, you referred to the answer to the previous question, and now it’s different.

50:46 Speaker 2 So the answer is simple. In...

50:51 Speaker 4 The lower down something is, the more [unclear].

50:53 Speaker 2 No, it’s more... Yes, it’s definitely related. Right. We often see this, and everyone sees it in themselves. Let’s take the example of getting angry with a friend again. Someone did something to me. I don’t know—he looked at me. What do children say in kindergarten? “He looked at me. He’s looking at me.” If I don’t think about it, then fine, he’ll look at me, and I’ll look back at him, or turn my back on him, or just ignore him. But if I think about it—“How could he...?”—the more I think about it, the more the emotion is aroused. At some point I’ve already forgotten why. I’ve forgotten the reason I’m angry with him at all. Now the emotion is operating on its own. And when it operates on its own, we often see that the emotion aroused by the thought is much stronger than the thought that aroused it. Why is that? It really is as you say: the source of the emotional attributes, the source of emotion, is higher than the source of thought. So therefore—

52:01 Speaker 4 How can there be a Creator?

52:03 Speaker 2 Ah, there’s something to that. So, therefore, when... All right, let’s move on to our subject. We’ve spent too long on the introductions. Yes. How can—how can there be what? I can’t hear you. Yes. So we said that, in general, the source of all—this is in chapter 2 there. The source of all—and we’ll discuss this further on in chapter 18—the source of all souls is in Chochmah of Atzilus. But souls as we know them, or as we see a soul here, did not come directly from Chochmah of Atzilus. They were born from Malchus, the lowest level of Atzilus. And within that, there are different ways it happens. There are souls in which one attribute or another shines more strongly, and there is an enormous, infinite variety of levels among them. So much so that just as people’s faces are not alike, their minds are not alike. Every Jew has a unique soul that has never existed and will never exist again. Every soul is born once. Souls, as in our world, have many, infinitely many levels. The source of all souls is one. Their original source is one. As they descend through the attributes until they reach Malchus, they take on different colors and shades; when they emerge from Malchus, they are already at different levels. It depends how much is revealed. How much is revealed. At their source they are one, but... A tree has just one root, yet there’s an apple here and an apple there. One is big, one is small, one is cute, and one doesn’t ripen properly. Each looks different. They all come from the same root, yet there’s no comparison, no resemblance at all, between an apple and the root. The root is just a piece of wood you can’t eat. It’s not an apple at all, and it looks nothing like one. A root is only a root. They’re not necessarily the same thing. Right. Good, so we’re going back

54:45 Speaker 2 to line fourteen. We’re talking about a Jew who contemplates the greatness of Hashem, but because of the source of his soul, no revealed love or awe is awakened in him. What is there instead? Only a hidden love in his mind and the recesses of his heart. And his heart understands, through the spirit of Chochmah and Binah in his mind, the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof: that “everything before Him is considered as nothing.” We won’t go into that at length now. Truly—and this is chapter 21 of Tanya—“Therefore it is fitting that the soul of every living being should yearn for Him, to cleave to Him and be absorbed into His light,” since everything before Him is considered as nothing. So every soul, every creature, ought to want to cleave to Him and be absorbed into His light. And not just every creature in general, but my own soul and spirit too: “his soul and spirit within him.” It is fitting for them to yearn for Him with longing and desire, to leave their bodily sheath and cleave to Him. But against their will they live within the body, bound up in it like “living widows.” And their thought—the thought of the soul within the body—cannot grasp Him at all, except when it grasps and clothes itself in the Torah and its mitzvos, as in the analogy mentioned earlier of someone embracing the king. So a person contemplates that this is how it ought to be. I contemplate and understand that I should have love and awe, but in practice I don’t. Still, I’ve reached the conclusion that I should. “And therefore”—I’m deliberately skipping everything in between because we’re short on time—since I’ve reached that conclusion, “therefore it is fitting for them,” for my soul and my spirit, to embrace Him “with all one’s heart, soul, and might.” How do I embrace Hakadosh Boruch Hu? By observing the 613 mitzvos in deed, speech, and thought—the thought being the comprehension and knowledge of Torah, as explained above. Where did we say that Torah and mitzvos are the garments of Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Chapter

57:03 Speaker 5 Ah, chapter

57:07 Speaker 2 Four, five. Chapter 4: the garments of the soul. Chapter 5: the garment of thought, with an additional point about that garment. There it explains at length why Torah and mitzvos are called garments: when a Jew observes Torah and mitzvos, he clothes himself in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The mitzvos are His will, so the person wraps himself in His will. And it works the other way around too: the King, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, has clothed Himself in the garments of Torah and mitzvos. So when I observe Torah and mitzvos, I embrace the King, because He is clothed in those garments. What difference does it make whether I can see the King or not? Once I embrace Him, I embrace Him. I am united with Him. Then there is something more. That is chapter 4. In chapter 5 he says something more: when a Jew studies Torah and understands it, he not only embraces the King but also becomes one with the King. Why? Because all the other mitzvos are performed with the body, whereas Torah is studied. When a person understands something, when he has learned something well and now understands it, he and what he understands become one thing. They are not two separate things. I understand it; it becomes part of me. So through studying—and what is this Torah that I understand?

58:39 Speaker 5 That’s one. A person has three different things.

58:41 Speaker 2 What?

58:42 Speaker 5 A person has three different things, so that’s one. For us, there’s the thing itself, and there’s what I understand of it myself.

58:47 Speaker 2 Right.

58:48 Speaker 5 And now it’s one thing.

58:52 Speaker 2 That’s another, subtler distinction, but it isn’t relevant here. When a person thinks—I... what is the verse? “Remember the Torah of Moshe My servant.” What does “the Torah of Moshe” mean? The Torah—“Remember”—is Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s Torah. It isn’t Moshe’s Torah. Moshe gave the Torah. He was a channel; he was a vessel; he transmitted it. So why call it Moshe’s Torah? What made it Moshe’s Torah? He studied it until it became one with him, and then he and the Torah were one. When a person learns something, there’s a point at which he understands it, though afterward he might also forget it. But when a person truly understands, it becomes part of him. He doesn’t—

59:25 Speaker 5 He doesn’t have that.

59:27 Speaker 2 It’s more than that. The example people always give is riding a bicycle. Once a person has ridden a bicycle without falling, he can get on one fifty years later and he won’t fall. He knows how to ride. He won’t lose his balance. It comes naturally; it has become part of him. When a person learns something, and that thing he has learned is His wisdom and His will, and is bound up with Him Himself, then the person and Hakadosh Boruch Hu become one. So he says there that Torah is not only a garment; Torah is also food for the soul. Food becomes one with a person: once he eats it, the food changes. It doesn’t remain a carrot here and a tomato there. It all changes, is digested, and becomes part of the body. In the same way, when a person studies Torah, he, so to speak, becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as food becomes one with a person. That is what is explained there. So, since I know and understand that it is fitting for me to love Him—even though I don’t feel love in my heart—I understand that I ought to love Him, and I understand that the only way to connect with Him is through Torah and mitzvos. So that is what I do. Yes? Line ten—sorry, nine: “Now, when he delves deeply into this matter in the hidden understanding of his heart, and his heart, mind, and mouth are in accord.” He has thought deeply about it. Love is not openly present in him, but it is there in the hidden depths of his heart and mind. He understands and senses that this is how things ought to be, and he acts on it as well. In other words, his mind, mouth, and heart are in accord. What does that mean? “He carries it out with his mouth as resolved in the understanding of his heart and mind: that his desire should be for the Torah of Hashem, and he should meditate on it day and night with his mouth; and likewise, his hands and other limbs perform mitzvos as resolved in the understanding of his heart and mind.” He simply acts

1:01:31 Speaker 2 in practice as he understands he should, even though he has no feeling. Love has not awakened, but he has contemplated the matter and reached the conclusion that this is how things ought to be, and he acts on that conclusion. “This understanding is then clothed in the action, speech, and thought of Torah and its mitzvos, serving as their intellectual faculties, vitality, and wings with which to soar upward, as though he had engaged in them with actual fear and love, openly revealed in his heart as desire and longing, etc.” It is explained further on—here a little too, but more later—that after a person’s hundred and twenty years, he arrives in Gan Eden. There, the righteous sit and enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah. Where did the radiance of the Shechinah in Gan Eden come from? What is it doing there? We said that Gan Eden is the reward for observing mitzvos and studying Torah. What is the connection between the reward and those deeds? How does it work? The explanation is that Torah and mitzvos are Hashem’s will. When a person performs a mitzvah, that mitzvah ascends to Gan Eden and shines there. Here in this world, the mitzvah is in darkness. We don’t sense that it is Hashem’s will. A Jew puts on tefillin or performs some other mitzvah; he doesn’t feel a revelation of G-dliness. He doesn’t feel anything. But when he performs the mitzvah, that mitzvah ascends to Gan Eden and waits for him there. When he arrives in Gan Eden, that same mitzvah shines openly. There, its G-dliness can be felt. The mitzvos he performed in this world are what shine for him; they are the radiance he enjoys in Gan Eden, in the World to Come. But how can a physical mitzvah ascend to Gan Eden? Mitzvos are performed with plants, with things from the earth, with all kinds of physical materials. How can something physical ascend to Gan Eden? They seem unrelated: Gan Eden is spiritual, while the mitzvos are physical. The explanation is that when a person performs

1:04:08 Speaker 2 a mitzvah out of love and fear, his love and fear, his feelings, are spiritual. Those spiritual feelings enter the mitzvah, enter its physical aspect, and become wings—gedafin, in the language of the Zohar and Kabbalah—wings that raise the mitzvah to Gan Eden. Then, when he arrives in Gan Eden, the mitzvah is waiting for him and shines for him there. Now, what happens if a person performs a mitzvah without love and fear? It has no wings; it doesn’t reach Gan Eden and cannot shine for him up there. That is chapter 39. But... what?

1:04:57 Speaker 6 No, no.

1:04:58 Speaker 2 It’s very fair. He receives what he has done. That is what our Sages said: “The reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah.” What he does is what he receives. Yes. There is the well-known story about the holy Baal Shem Tov. Right, that very story.

1:05:20 Speaker 6 Which story?

1:05:29 Speaker 2 Not exactly.

1:05:30 Speaker 6 Where?

1:05:31 Speaker 2 Kfar Sadora[?]. The Baal Shem Tov once arrived at a shul, went inside, and said that this shul was full of mitzvos and good deeds. The people were very pleased: the Baal Shem Tov was praising them. Later, he explained to his students that he had not meant it as praise—quite the opposite. Because they had performed mitzvos and studied Torah without love and fear, all their mitzvos and Torah remained there inside the shul; they had not ascended above.

1:06:00 Speaker 6 That’s not—

1:06:00 Speaker 2 Hmm?

1:06:01 Speaker 6 It helps you with those mitzvos even if you don’t...

1:06:05 Speaker 2 Wait, we’ll deal with that later in several ways. We’ll come back to this subject. But right now, the point he wants to make here is different: when a mitzvah is performed with love and fear, the physical ascends to the spiritual, connects with it, and shines there. All right, that is still understandable. But if a person performs mitzvos only with the understanding hidden in his mind and heart, without feeling, how will the mitzvah get there? What will raise it? So he says that even though the person performs the mitzvah without feeling, he wants to feel it. He acts out of contemplation and desire, even though he has not managed to reach that feeling. Why hasn’t he managed it? Because the root of his soul does not enable him to. Since he made the effort, “Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to the deed.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu raises his mitzvos to a place they truly could not reach on their own. And they shine for him in exactly the same way as they shine for the righteous. But that is on condition that he really makes the effort and contemplates. We’re after the parentheses, on line nineteen: “Since this understanding in his mind and the hidden depths of his heart is what brings him to engage in them, and were it not for his contemplation of this understanding, he would not engage in them at all, but only in the needs of his body.” Since the understanding is what caused him to act, he merits having his good thought joined to the deed. Even those who are naturally diligent, and so on. “And our Sages alluded to this when they said, ‘Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to the deed.’ They should have said...” Do you want to stop here? Is this too long? What time is it now?

1:08:02 Speaker 6 Quarter past six.

1:08:04 Speaker 2 All right, then.

1:08:07 Speaker 6 No, no.

1:08:08 Speaker 2 No, no, let’s finish. I already want to wrap up. Try to get ready. So what does it mean that “a good thought, Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins it to the deed”? It should have said, “Scripture regards a good thought as though he had done it.” After all, he didn’t do it. He had a good thought: he wanted to do it, but in practice he didn’t. He wanted to have love for Hashem. What does “wanted” mean? You wanted to, fine, but you don’t have love for Hashem. What does that mean? So I’ll count it as though you did it, as though you loved Him, because you wanted to. I’ll count it as though you did. But that isn’t what it says. Our Sages said that Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to the deed. He doesn’t regard it “as though”; He joins it, joins it to the deed. Here we have the deed of the mitzvah, which on its own isn’t connected to spirituality. And here we have a thought that is too lofty to descend into the deed. They have no connection; they can’t come together. Hakadosh Boruch Hu performs a miracle and joins the good thought to the deed, so that it can shine for him above. Rather, the point is that the fear and love revealed in one’s heart are enclothed in the deeds of the mitzvos, giving them life so they can soar upward. For the heart, too, is physical, like the other limbs that serve as instruments of action, except that it is inward and gives them life. The heart is physical and is the life of all the limbs, so it can be enclothed in the limbs and become wings for them, raising them up. But the fear and love in the understanding of one’s mind and the hidden recesses of one’s heart—and that is what we’re discussing in our chapter—are far, far above the level of action. They cannot be enclothed in the deeds of the mitzvos to become their intellectual faculties and life-force, raising them so they can soar upward, unless Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins and connects them to the level of action. And that contemplation in the hidden recesses of one’s heart and understanding, that decision and conclusion, that resolve in the heart to want to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—they

1:10:25 Speaker 2 are called a “good thought,” because they are not actual fear and love. This isn’t truly love and fear revealed in the heart, but only in the understanding of the mind and the hidden recesses of the heart, as explained above. There’s a note here—I already told you both of the notes together earlier—but the point of this note is to explain how what we explained earlier can be: that tevunah contains the words “son” and “daughter.” Let me go into it a little more here. Tevunah contains the words “son” and “daughter.” A son is male, the one who gives; a daughter is female, the one who receives. In the language of Kabbalah, wherever there is a flow of influence, the giver is called a son and the receiver is called a daughter. Usually, when we speak—no, not usually, always—when we speak about the faculties of the soul, who are the son and daughter? Emotion and speech. Emotion is the giver, and speech receives from emotion. What does a person talk about? A person speaks only of the thoughts of his heart. What he feels is what he says. So emotion is called the giver, the son, and speech is called the daughter, the receiver. We said that tevunah is in the intellect. Intellect has no good or bad; it has right and wrong. What is the intellect concerned with? Tell me: is it so, or is it not so? Intellect doesn’t deal with good and bad. Good and bad are the realm of emotion: this is good for me, this is bad for me, this feels pleasant, I want this, I don’t want this. Good and bad aren’t the intellect’s concern. So what does tevunah, an intellectual faculty, have to do with son and daughter? Here we’re talking about the emotions as they exist within the intellect. It is intellect, but it is already intellect with a conclusion: this is good, this is how things should be. It isn’t yet good and bad in the emotional sense, but it is “this is how things should be” or “this is not how things should be.” It is intellect with a conclusion.

1:12:49 Speaker 2 Since that intellectual conclusion is the source of emotion—as we said, the more a person contemplates, the more it will ultimately arouse emotion—the emotions as they are contained in the intellect, before there are actual emotions, when only their source exists above in the intellect, are called tevunah. In other words, the source of the emotions as it exists in the intellect is called tevunah. So regarding this, he says that sometimes tevunah descends to become the intellectual faculties within nukva, directly in speech. Nukva is the receiver, the female, speech. Sometimes, above in G-dliness and in the World of Atzilus, tevunah skips the entire stage of the emotions and is revealed directly in nukva, in speech. And it’s the same with us: sometimes a person may have contemplated and still have no emotion—he has no emotion—but his Torah study and observance of mitzvos can have tremendous vitality and enthusiasm, even without a feeling of love and fear. We see this in practice with many people who go out on mivtzoim. He is completely on fire. Does he feel some particular love for Hashem? Not necessarily. It isn’t necessarily love for Hashem that drives him to go out on mivtzoim. Why does he go? Because he contemplated Hashem’s greatness? Because he has love for Hashem, and that’s why he goes out on mivtzoim? That’s not it. He understands that it needs to be done. He knows the Rebbe wants it, so that’s what he does. And he does it with vitality and enthusiasm. How do you explain where that vitality and enthusiasm come from if there’s no emotion here? Sometimes tevunah descends directly into nukva. That’s what this note is about. Now, this is essentially the end of the chapter. He adds one more brief point at the end; we’ll learn that too. “But Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes this joining in order to raise the deeds of the mitzvos and the study of Torah performed through the above-mentioned good thought to the World of Beriah, the place

1:14:44 Speaker 2 to which Torah and mitzvos performed with intellectual fear and love actually revealed in the heart ascend. But even without this, they ascend to the World of Yetzirah through the natural fear and love hidden in the heart of every Jew from birth, as will be explained at length later.” Let’s explain that simply. When a father asks a child to do something, why does the child do it? Because he respects his father, and he understands that—he does it because he uses his mind and understands that this is what he should do. So he does it because his father told him to. But there’s something else here. Besides the fact that the son does it because he understands, every child naturally loves his father and wants to do what is good for his father, what his father wants, to give him pleasure. He loves his father and wants to do it. It feels good to him; he feels good about himself when he knows he’s doing what his father wants. So yes, at this moment, why is he actually doing it? Because his father asked him. But within this act that comes from his understanding, somewhere inside, in the background, there is also his natural feeling as his father’s son. It’s the same with every Jew. Every Jew is a child of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He has a G-dly soul. Of the G-dly soul it is said, “You are children of Hashem your G-d.” It is a child; it was born. Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought it into being. It resembles Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is like Him in various ways and respects, and its source is in Him Himself. So every Jew has a natural love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a love he was born with. He generally doesn’t feel it, but it is there inside. And so, when a Jew contemplates in the hidden recesses of his heart and mind, he has no revealed emotion. He acts

1:16:51 Speaker 2 Because he observes the Torah and mitzvos. Because he understands that this is how you draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and he wants to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But along with doing them out of understanding, something else is at work inside: the natural love every Jew has for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So the Alter Rebbe says here: even if Hakadosh Boruch Hu did not join a good thought to the deed, when a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, his natural love is there. So it would rise to the world of Yetzirah in any case. The mitzvah would reach the lower Gan Eden in any case, because he has natural love. And the world of Yetzirah is the world of middos, the world of spiritual emotion. So he fulfills the mitzvah with feeling. True, it isn’t an openly felt emotion; it’s hidden, concealed, natural—an emotion he doesn’t even consciously feel. It’s somewhere deep in his heart. But it’s there, in the background. That’s enough to give the mitzvah wings to rise to the world of Yetzirah. What were we discussing here? That Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to the deed so that his mitzvah reaches not only the world of Yetzirah, but also the world of Beriah, the upper Gan Eden, just as with the tzaddikim. So, let’s sum up chapter 16 and see what’s still missing to complete the picture. Chapter 16, after all the introductions, gives us two great principles in the beinoni’s service of Hashem. A Jew wants to serve Hashem perfectly. He doesn’t need to do much: he contemplates the greatness of Hashem, and because the mind rules over the heart, he will naturally have love and awe. He will naturally fulfill all the mitzvos and avoid transgressions. He won’t

1:18:54 Speaker 2 have to struggle. It will be his pleasure, what comes naturally to him, what he wants, what he does. He’ll flee from every transgression. There will be no reason in the world for him to stumble in any way. But what’s the catch? Most Jews, at least in our generation, are people whose love and awe don’t become revealed in their hearts even when they contemplate. And the Alter Rebbe says: Don’t worry, that’s not unusual. These are souls of that kind. This is a generation of such souls. Nothing’s wrong. You should know that it’s enough for you to want to, and to make the effort, for your mitzvos to rise to G-dliness and connect with G-dliness. That, too, is enough; that, too, is a complete and perfect service for a beinoni. And such contemplation is enough to ensure that a Jew will never transgress the Torah and mitzvos. On the basis of this chapter, he’ll say in the next chapter that now we understand why it is very close to every Jew to observe the Torah and mitzvos. But wait a moment—what will we do after that? If the entire Tanya is based on the verse, “For the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it,” then with chapter 17, chapter 4, we’ve basically finished the Tanya. So really—what will we do after that? No need to study anymore, right? Well, we’ll talk about that when we get to chapter 18.