Likkutei Amarim Chapter 44 (Part 1) · 5781

00:01 Speaker 1 Good evening. We’re up to chapter 44. Today, really, we’re beginning the main part of the Tanya that deals with serving Hashem through love: how every Jew needs to serve Hashem, every chossid, every Jew. The main avodah is the avodah of love. As the Zohar says, “There is no service like the service of love.” And today he begins to explain this. Actually, the previous chapter, chapter 43—thank you very much—already introduced the subject in general terms, but without much detail. Without any detail, really. It only said that, broadly speaking, there are two levels of love and two levels of awe. We’ll hardly discuss awe at all from here on, because serving Hashem is really the avodah of love. As for the two levels of love he mentioned there, Ahavas Olam and Ahavah Rabbah, he gave a few more details. One of the main distinctions was that these aren’t just two levels of love; they’re two kinds of love. A person might love something a little, or love it a great deal; want it a little, or want it very intensely. That’s a difference in degree. But when we talk about human emotions, love varies not only in degree or strength, but in kind. One love has a different character and a different source from another. There’s love that comes from the intellect, love that comes from feeling, love that is like a gentle, soft attraction—like water, as it’s called. And there’s love expressed in a person’s desire to leave his own existence behind, like flames of fire. So, broadly speaking, the two general levels of love are also two general kinds of love. What did he explain there? There’s a love born in a person’s heart

02:40 Speaker 1 when he contemplates Hashem’s greatness. This is called intellectual love, love born through contemplation. And there’s a love that belongs to the soul itself. We’ve spoken about this several times: the essence of a Jew’s soul is love of Hashem. As we’ve said a number of times, if our eyes could see spiritual things and we looked at a soul, what would we see? We would see a flame rising on its own, wanting to cleave to its source and root. That’s its nature; that’s what a Jew’s soul looks like—something that wants to cleave to its source and root. That is its reality; love is its very essence. Now, when a Jew contemplates Hashem’s greatness—I’m going back to Ahavas Olam—and love is born within him, we don’t say that this preexisting love has now been revealed, that the soul’s love was hidden and has now come to light. No. We don’t say the love was revealed or awakened. We say the love was born. Before, he didn’t love; now he does. Intellectual love is not the natural love of our soul. It’s something entirely different, born as a result of contemplation. The soul’s natural love doesn’t need the intellect in order to exist. A Jew has a soul, and that soul loves. So one is called intellectual love, born through contemplation, and the other is called Ahavah Rabbah, or natural love—the nature of the G-dly soul. Those are the two kinds of love he discussed in the previous chapter. And he explained that the difference between them isn’t merely that one is a lesser love and the other a greater love, or that one comes from the intellect and the other from feeling. They also differ in character, in what they look like. Why? Because when a person contemplates Hashem’s greatness,

05:18 Speaker 1 he is contemplating something outside himself, something above him, something ideal, exalted and wondrous—something distant from him. He senses that there’s something wonderful there, and he wants to reach it. So an attraction like that, a love like that, is called “flames of fire.” Try to fasten a flame to a match: you see that it burns the match, consuming it, and it doesn’t settle down until the wood—or whatever is holding it down—has been used up. It won’t rest until it burns it away. It cannot make peace with the material that holds it down. It wants to break free of the material and cleave to its source beneath the sphere of the moon. That’s called love like flames of fire. When is this kind of love born, in which a person wants to leave his own existence behind? When he contemplates something beyond his own existence. So, in general, Ahavas Olam is love like flames of fire. By contrast, the love of the soul itself, our G-dly soul, doesn’t yearn for G-dliness because G-dliness is something above it. The soul itself is G-dly. It is drawn to G-dliness because it feels good to it, because it feels natural. The G-dly soul longs to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu because it feels that He is its source and root. And since the soul wants Hakadosh Boruch Hu, wants G-dliness, because it is close to Him, because the soul itself is G-dly, it doesn’t yearn to leave its own existence behind. There’s no fire there. It’s a calm kind of love, called love like water. That, in general, is what we discussed in the previous chapter. Two kinds of love: Ahavas Olam and Ahavah Rabbah. One comes from the intellect, and the other from feeling—or from the nature of the soul—and one has the character of flames of fire, while the other has the character of water. Perhaps we should add one more point: at first glance,

07:51 Speaker 1 love like flames of fire sounds much more powerful than love like water, right? It burns like fire. But that isn’t so. Love like fire can be less powerful than love like water, or love like water can be less powerful than love like fire. And as we’ll see later in our chapter, intellectual love can have the character of water rather than fire, while the natural love of the soul itself can have the character of fire rather than water, and so on. Every possible combination, and much more besides. The previous chapter spoke only in general terms: in general, intellectual love is like fire, and the other love is like water. But that says nothing about its intensity, its level, its strength or its source—only about its character. So let’s begin chapter 44 inside the text. Chapter 44: “Now, each level of love among these two levels”—Ahavah Rabbah and Ahavas Olam, mentioned in the previous chapter—“is divided into many aspects and levels.” How many? Endlessly. “Each person according to his measure.” Each according to his own capacity, his own size. Someone with a big heart or a small heart will love accordingly. As we learned, love depends on daas. The more deeply a person fixes his mind on something, the broader his daas, the more the character, force and kind of his love will differ. And, specifically, every single Jew has a different love. No two Jews have the very same love of Hashem. There’s no such thing. Each person has his own character, his own feelings and intellect, and his soul yearns for G-dliness in its own way, in its own form and style. It’s like that in physical life too. You can see it in physical life with anyone you might place

10:05 Speaker 1 Two people can be standing side by side, and they may even want the very same thing, but for each one it looks different. As the holy Zohar says about the verse, “Her husband is known in the gates.” Who is her husband? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the husband of the Jewish people. So, “Her husband is known in the gates”—the Zohar says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu becomes known to and connects with each person, each Jew, according to what he measures in his heart, and so on. Each person, according to the capacity of his heart and how much effort he puts into working with his heart, experiences a different love awakening within it. That is why fear and love are called “the hidden things belong to Hashem our G-d”: for each person it is different, and no one can gauge exactly what it is like for someone else. Even we find it hard to gauge what... But Torah and mitzvos are “revealed to us and our children, to do,” and so on. When a Jew performs a mitzvah—whether Moshe Rabbeinu performs it or I perform it—it is exactly the same thing. There is no difference. Today someone came in to buy mezuzos and asked me: How much does this one cost? And this one? And this one? This one is 160, this one costs 320, this one already costs 400; it’s more expensive. So he says to me, “What’s the difference?” In terms of the mitzvah, this one is just as kosher as—there is no difference. Once it’s kosher, it’s kosher; if it’s invalid, it’s invalid. You put up a kosher mezuzah, you fulfilled the mitzvah. So what’s the difference? The difference lies in “the hidden things belong to Hashem our G-d”: how much effort the sofer put in, how hard he worked, how much he invested, how beautiful it looks. Beauty isn’t something you can measure with a ruler and say... And the more spiritual something is,

12:14 Speaker 1 the less measurable it is. For “one Torah and one law” apply to all of us: when it comes to performing all the Torah and mitzvos in actual deed, there is no difference between one person and another. But with fear and love, which depend on one’s knowledge of Hashem in the mind and heart, as we said, it is different for each person. So the Alter Rebbe does not go into detail here about the different kinds of love. In general, in Tanya he does not go into much detail about the levels and kinds of love. He speaks in very general terms. He has only said: Know that there are countless kinds of love of Hashem, without end. In Chassidus, it is indeed explained what love arising from the level of nefesh looks like, what arises from the level of ruach or the level of neshamah; love awakened by one kind of contemplation or another; love arising from the essence of the soul; the many, many levels of ahavah rabbah, of the sefiros, of love of delights, and so on. Here, though, there is intellectual love and love of the soul, and that is it. And you should know that there are many levels within each. “But one love, encompassing all the aspects and levels of ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam, is relevant to us after all these introductions.” There is one kind of love, the Alter Rebbe says, that I have come to discuss with you: a love of Hashem that is both intellectual love and love from the essence of the soul. How can that be? That is what I have come to discuss with you. It is something relevant to everyone. As we will see in a moment, this kind of love includes both of the general kinds of love—and, more than that, every level within them—and is relevant to everyone. “One love encompasses all the aspects and levels of ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam, and that love is equally present in every Jewish soul.” If you remember, when we spoke in the last class

14:50 Speaker 1 about ahavah rabbah, the Alter Rebbe wrote there that you cannot attain it; you receive it as a gift. When someone is complete in fear, ahavah rabbah is revealed to him, because “it is the way of a man to pursue a woman.” The “man” is love, as in the verse “He remembered His kindness,” while fear—fear of Hashem at the lower level—is called the “woman.”

15:15 Speaker 2 What is teshuvah motivated by ahavah rabbah?

15:17 Speaker 1 What?

15:17 Speaker 2 Teshuvah motivated by ahavah rabbah.

15:18 Speaker 1 That’s teshuvah.

15:20 Speaker 2 No, I’m saying: the Alter Rebbe speaks about someone who does teshuvah out of ahavah rabbah, and only then does he contemplate returning fully.

15:27 Speaker 1 Right. That’s in Igeres Hateshuvah. With Hashem’s help, we’ll get there.

15:30 Speaker 2 So, okay.

15:33 Speaker 1 Chapter 8 of Igeres Hateshuvah.

15:35 Speaker 2 Oh, like chapter 8.

15:38 Speaker 1 We’ll get there yet, with Hashem’s help.

15:40 Speaker 2 It’s just that we had a whole day of Tanya.

15:44 Speaker 1 Huh?

15:45 Speaker 2 We were in Tanya all day.

15:47 Speaker 4 All of Tanya.

15:49 Speaker 2 Yes, really.

15:51 Speaker 1 [unclear]. He already mentioned that level in another context, but here we are not talking about teshuvah.

15:58 Speaker 2 Why is it different?

16:03 Speaker 1 The first part of Tanya is called Likkutei Amarim. The second part is called Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. The last part is called Igeres Hakodesh. And there is a section in the middle called Igeres Hateshuvah. None of the four parts... In general, have you ever seen a Chassidus book called an “igeres,” a letter? We spoke about this once before. We mentioned long ago the Rebbe’s explanation of this: To whom do you send a letter? You don’t send a letter to someone you can speak to; you speak to him. You send a letter to someone who has gone far away. When a Jew has stumbled and committed sins, the Alter Rebbe sends him a letter. So, generally speaking, the whole of Igeres Hateshuvah—all the levels and all the subjects discussed there, even the most exalted matters explained there—is intended for a Jew who has committed a sin, a Jew who has stumbled in observing mitzvos. The first and second parts of Tanya are not addressed to a Jew who has committed—who has sins. It is called the “Book of the Beinonim.” A beinoni is a person who has no sins. Tanya, chapter 1, begins when there are no sins. As for someone who has sins, he writes right at the beginning of Tanya, before we begin discussing the service of Hashem—chapter 17—before we begin Tanya at all, we say: Listen, if you have sins, don’t go on. Turn to Igeres Hateshuvah, study what it says there, and then come back here. Tanya begins with the basics: if you have sins, then “your sins separate” you, and however much you contemplate the greatness of Hashem, nothing will be awakened in you, because something is getting in the way. So the Alter Rebbe sends him a letter to help him—an igeres. The matters in Igeres Hateshuvah are not relevant... Well, all this is an aside, of course. It isn’t relevant

18:02 Speaker 1 here in the middle. Simply put. “Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, through Whose word everything came to be.” So it is precisely this all-encompassing love that includes all the levels of love, from the loftiest level, ahavah rabbah—which we said just in the previous chapter cannot be attained—down to intellectual love, ahavas olam, which he said in chapter 17 is for someone whose mind is capable of it. My mind isn’t capable of it. I contemplate, and the love does not awaken. So what am I to do? The Alter Rebbe says: The love we are about to discuss is relevant to every single person. Everyone can awaken it in their heart. It includes intellectual love, which would seemingly be suited only to someone whose mind is capable of it. The Alter Rebbe says: You can, too. It even includes ahavah rabbah, which comes only to someone complete in fear—but, as we emphasized last week, what kind of fear? We are talking about a higher fear, a fear bound up with cleaving to Hashem, and so on, and ahavah rabbah that is received as a gift from Above. The love we are about to discuss includes that, too, and it is relevant to everyone. That is—how? “For it is an inheritance to us from our forefathers.” If we were talking about a love I had to awaken through my own efforts, well, obviously I could not awaken a love like that, one that includes all the levels. Right? That’s fairly clear. If we were talking about love of Hashem that I had to awaken through my own contemplation, well, what is my intellect worth? How much can I really think? How deeply can I contemplate? What kind of heart do I have? Not very much, really. Certainly not enough for something so great. But today we are talking about a love that is an inheritance to us from our forefathers. Every Jew has inherited the capacity for this kind of love. He receives it as an inheritance, as a gift; somehow, he is born with it. That is, as it says

20:28 Speaker 1 The Zohar, on the verse “My soul desires You at night,” and so on, explains—before we get to the explanation, let’s see what the Zohar says, because first we need to explain the question. “My soul desires You”... It begins with the two words “nafshi ivisicha.” “Nafshi,” “my soul,” is third person. Sorry, I mean the soul is third person: it, my soul. Right? “Ivisicha” means “I desire You.” Right? So “my soul” is third person, and “I desire You” is first person. Usually, when someone says two words one after the other in a single sentence, he doesn’t start in the third person and continue in the first. He should have said either “My soul desires You” or “I desire You.” But “My soul—I desire You”? What is the verse saying? What does it mean? That is the Zohar’s question. On the plain level, it isn’t a question. “My soul desires You” is a manner of speaking. But the Zohar is precise about the words. It explains: “That a person should love Hakadosh Boruch Hu”—love Him “with the love of his soul and spirit, just as these are attached to the body and the body loves them.” A Jew should love Hakadosh Boruch Hu with the love of his soul and spirit, just as the soul and spirit are attached to the body and the body loves them. Those words are a little complicated. Never mind; it’s simple. The soul and spirit give life to the body, right? The body likes that. The body loves being alive; it feels comfortable and good. If it’s a little sick or in a little pain, it doesn’t feel good. The body loves having a soul and spirit that give it life. The Zohar says that a Jew should love Hakadosh Boruch Hu as the body loves its soul and spirit.

23:07 Speaker 1 What the Zohar is saying is clear, yes? But how does it answer the question? The Zohar interprets “my soul” as Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When a Jew says, “My soul—I desire You,” by “my soul” he means Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “You are my soul; I desire You.” Right? That is how the Zohar explains it. And the Rebbe explains: This is the meaning of “My soul desires You”: Because You, Hashem, are my soul and my true life, I desire You. That is, I long and yearn for You as a person longs for the life of his soul. When he is weak and afflicted, he longs and yearns for his soul to return to him. So what is this love of “My soul desires You”? According to the Zohar, as the Tanya explains, a Jew should love Hakadosh Boruch Hu as he loves the life of his body. In other words, a Jew should think about it this way. This is the love we’re talking about: I love being alive. People talk a lot nowadays about looking for energy, right? All kinds of tricks to have more of it—coaching and various remedies, I don’t know. Sometimes people exercise because they want to feel alive, to feel vitality. And if someone is a little tired, in a little pain, feeling a little heavy or uncomfortable, he feels something is missing. He longs for life. What a person longs for most is life. The holy Zohar says: True life is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He is the One Who gives life to every living thing. If I stop for a moment and understand that all the life, all the energy I long for and pursue so eagerly and want to have all the time, is nothing—it is physical life. True life is the Life of life: “My soul desires You.” It is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. If I internalize

25:53 Speaker 1 the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is true life—love of Hashem, closeness to Hashem, joy in Hashem, delight in Hashem—I won’t want this world at all. My whole aim, all my wishes, desires and longings—I don’t know what words to use—I will want only Hakadosh Boruch Hu, because I will understand that all the physical life I have is nothing. It is utterly insignificant. “My soul desires You”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu, it is You I long for. And likewise, when a person goes to sleep, he longs and wishes for his soul to return to him when he wakes. So, too, I long and yearn to draw the light of the blessed Ein Sof, the true Life of life, into myself through Torah study. So when I understand this, contemplate it and think about the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is true life, and that a Jew’s true delight lies only in closeness to Hashem, I will want to feel Hakadosh Boruch Hu, my G-d, within me. And how can I feel Hakadosh Boruch Hu? By learning Torah. The Torah is the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So I’ll realize that if I learn Torah, I’ll simply feel delight. If I bring myself to understand that the Torah is Hakadosh Boruch Hu—it is His wisdom—it’s like a person: my wisdom is my wisdom. I think, I understand; that wisdom is me, right? So if I understand, think about and contemplate the fact that the Torah, the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is Him, then when I learn Torah I unite with Him, cleave to Him, and feel it too. Then I won’t be able to sleep at night. As the Tanya puts it, “when I awaken from my sleep at night”—a person simply wakes up in the middle of the night and

27:56 Speaker 1 can’t sleep. He wakes up and looks for the Tanya on the shelf so he can start learning. He can’t... The Alter Rebbe says this is relevant to everyone, because it’s a simple idea. Because the truth is that this is the truth: the life of every Jew, and indeed of every living thing, comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But a Jew can feel it. And when a Jew learns Torah and thinks about it, contemplating how the Torah is our true life, he will begin to love the Torah so much that he won’t be able to fall asleep. Or he’ll wake up early, or the moment he wakes up, all he’ll think is, “When will I have the opportunity to do it?” This is a kind of love that leads a person directly to Torah study. “My soul desires You.” Yes, he’ll understand that [unclear], and then he just won’t be able to help himself. He’ll wake up in the middle of the night and run to learn. As the Zohar writes there: “Out of love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a person should want to rise every night and engage in His service until morning.” He loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu so much that by the middle of the night he can no longer sleep. So he gets up for Tikkun Chatzos; he gets up and says Tikkun Chatzos. Then he sits and learns until morning comes. Oh, now he can daven. Now there’s all the... He simply can’t sleep, can’t fall asleep. He loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu so much that he can’t rest.

29:40 Speaker 5 [unclear]

29:48 Speaker 1 So that’s the explanation. He’ll continue and explain this further. Why does it seem, you might say, so far-fetched to us? Because we... I once heard a story told in the name of Reb Reuven Dunin—many of you here probably know it. He told at a farbrengen about an animal that spends its entire life in the mud, with only its nose sticking out. It’s completely content, and only one thing in the world bothers it. What is it? That it can’t get its nose into the mud too. We are so immersed in the mud of this world that we enjoy it and don’t feel that it’s mud. If a Jew, the Rebbe says, opens his eyes, he’ll understand. You can also look at it in chapters 29 and 30, which we learned, where it speaks about the emptiness of worldly pursuits and the physicality of this world. A Jew understands that life is G-dliness, that true good is found only in Torah and mitzvos. When he observes mitzvos—it’s harder to feel G-dliness in mitzvos. But when he learns Torah, Torah is something internal. He understands, enjoys it, delights in it; he feels G-dliness. Especially when he learns Chassidus. Then that’s where he’ll want to be. When he contemplates and thinks about how all the things I’m always striving for are really temporary, things that decay—everything wears away, everything turns to dust—while Torah truly is eternal. And it really is a delight when a Jew learns Chassidus, learns Torah. I remember the first time I walked into the zal of the yeshiva in Migdal HaEmek, I don’t remember how many years ago. No, I never studied there. I went into the zal once when I was still a bochur. I opened the door and walked in. To this day, by the way, it’s the same: a deafening noise, absolutely deafening. Bochurim sitting across from one another at little tables,

32:22 Speaker 1 The yeshiva students sit table facing table, with barely enough room to put their Gemaras in the middle. I’m not talking about Chassidus. Gemaras. I don’t know how many students there are there today. Three hundred, I don’t know, two hundred—I don’t know how many. It’s a large hall, but they all sit together. There’s a table here, and a meter away—maybe a meter—another one. The tables are right next to each other. These students are shouting, those students are shouting, there’s noise, and they can’t hear one another. The enthusiasm for learning is that tremendous. These aren’t stories; this is an everyday thing, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes many times. Yeshiva students aren’t necessarily great tzaddikim or anything like that. They’re simply... Of course, there are also some who fool around there all day. No, they’re not all tzaddikim. But you walk into the zal of a yeshiva—and not only a Chabad yeshiva. This week I happened to be in a kollel. These weren’t energetic young students; it was a kollel of Litvish married men. And there weren’t three hundred students there; there were, I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty. You can see the enthusiasm, vitality, and pleasure with your own eyes. Nobody needs to tell you they’re enjoying it. You can see that they’re alive. And in the most straightforward sense, this applies to every single Jew. Because I’m a Jew, and when I learn, my soul feels that this is its life. So even if he’s a misnaged and doesn’t know what Hakadosh Boruch Hu is, when he learns Torah, he feels G-dliness. Our soul feels it. “My soul longs for You in the night.” The Zohar reveals this, and the Tanya explains it. But every Jew who learns Torah with enthusiasm experiences a wonderful pleasure. That’s the reality. “My soul longs for You in the night.” Every Jew has a burning love of Hashem within him. Every single one. That is the love of Hashem found in Torah study. To the point

34:43 Speaker 1 that he learns something and it bothers him: he hasn’t finished studying it, he hasn’t fully understood it, and he feels something is missing. He wants to learn something new. He wakes up in the middle of the night. I personally know quite a few Jews who wake up at night. Yes, yes, this isn’t something reserved for tzaddikim. In our generation, it applies to people like us, ordinary people. That’s one kind of love. The Alter Rebbe hasn’t yet explained why it encompasses all the levels of love. There is a love that includes ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam, and all the different kinds. This is that love. He hasn’t yet explained why. We’ll see that later. Before we get to the explanation, the Alter Rebbe says in the next passage that there is an even greater love, another kind of love, greater still than the love of Hashem we’ve just discussed. It, too, is hidden within every Jewish soul, and each of us inherits it from our forefathers. And it’s a different love. What are we talking about now? It is what’s written in Raya Mehemna. We spoke about this once. Let’s mention it again; surely not everyone was here, or not everyone remembers. The Zohar contains sections, each with its own name. Sometimes a section begins in one place and continues dozens of pages later, or things of that sort. It’s that kind of book, a collection, and one of its sections is called Raya Mehemna. Raya Mehemna is where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai quotes what Moshe Rabbeinu said. There’s also a section called Sifra Detzniusa. Sifra Detzniusa is three or four pages within the Zohar. That is what Yaakov Avinu said. The Zohar has various sections like these. So Raya Mehemna refers to the sections of the Zohar spoken by Moshe Rabbeinu. What does it say in Raya Mehemna? In other words, what

37:03 Speaker 1 does Moshe Rabbeinu say in the Zohar? What love are we talking about, one that includes every level—both ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam—that we inherit from our forefathers, and that belongs to each and every Jew? “Like a son who strives for his father and mother.” Like a son who loves his father and mother and strives on their behalf. “Who loves them more than himself, his life and his spirit, and so on.” Now, it’s true that with some children this isn’t so apparent. With others it is apparent, but that’s due to a separate reason. Sorry. When a child is born to his parents, though he comes from them, once he’s born he is completely separate from them. He is entirely independent. He knows where he came from, that he was born to a father and mother, but he doesn’t feel that connection. He’s clothed in a physical body. He has his own life, his wife, his children, his salary, his personality. He’s separate. He honors his father because he understands. He knows that his father is his father and his mother is his mother, but he doesn’t feel that connection to them, right? He really works on it, and so on. That’s the connection between a son and a father. But the G-dly soul, even when it is placed into the body, even when it becomes a created being, feels its source and root very clearly. It feels that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father. So the analogy isn’t about every son being ready to give his life for his father and mother, but about a son who actually does so. “Who loves them more than himself, his life and his spirit.” The son is prepared to give his life for his father and mother, more than for himself. Garm means “self.” Yes, more than himself, his life and his spirit, and so on. “For we all have one Father.” The Alter Rebbe immediately asks: Well, who is saying this? It’s Moshe Rabbeinu, Raya Mehemna. Raya Mehemna, Moshe Rabbeinu, he

39:33 Speaker 1 can love Hakadosh Boruch Hu to the point of self-sacrifice.

39:38 Speaker 6 For his father.

39:39 Speaker 1 What?

39:40 Speaker 6 Self-sacrifice. And why the love of a son for his father?

39:43 Speaker 1 A son for his father—true love. And what does it mean, a son’s true love for his father to the point of self-sacrifice? That he loves his father more than he loves himself. That’s what it says, right? “Who loves them”—he loves his father and mother—“more than himself,” more than he loves himself. So imagine a son like that, who doesn’t think about himself at all. He doesn’t need a livelihood, doesn’t need to live, doesn’t need medical care, none of that. The only thing that interests him in life is what his father wants. That’s it. How did Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai put it? “I am merely a sign.” I’m here only as a sign for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, like some kind of marker, a sign planted in the ground: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here. He has no existence of his own at all. That is the love of Raya Mehemna. In his love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he isn’t seeking anything for himself. He himself isn’t here. The Father is here: what does Father need? He devotes himself completely to his Father in Heaven. Not only is he uninterested in anything physical; he’s uninterested in anything spiritual, too. He isn’t looking for spiritual reward, or for the pleasure of G-dliness. He isn’t looking for Gan Eden or the World to Come, for the days of Moshiach or the Beis Hamikdash, for Geulah or for anything. What does Father want? That’s it. That’s Moshe Rabbeinu’s love. How can the Alter Rebbe say that this belongs to each of us? It’s something extraordinarily lofty and wondrous. So he immediately asks: “And yet, who is the person whose heart would dare approach even one part in a thousand of the level of love of Raya Mehemna?” So why bring it up? Why mention it to me in the Tanya, which says that

41:51 Speaker 1 “the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it”? How does this relate to us? So Moshe Rabbeinu says in the Zohar that he has such love. Fine, but what does that have to do with me? “Nevertheless, a tiny edge and trace of it shines upon all of Israel in every generation from the abundance of his goodness and light.” From the abundance of whose goodness and light?

42:25 Speaker 7 Of...

42:25 Speaker 1 Of whom?

42:26 Speaker 7 Moshe Rabbeinu.

42:26 Speaker 1 Of Moshe Rabbeinu. But at the beginning, he said that this love is an inheritance from our forefathers. Moshe Rabbeinu isn’t called “our forefathers.” That’s two lines earlier, right? It begins: “It is accessible to every Jewish soul and is an inheritance from our forefathers.” And then, three or four lines later: “A trace of the abundant goodness and light of Moshe Rabbeinu shines upon the Jewish people as a whole in every generation,” as it says in Tikkunei Zohar. How do those fit together? The explanation is simple. The fact that every Jew has love for Hashem comes from our forefathers. It’s an inheritance; you inherit from your fathers. But the character of that love—what it looks like—for that, there is the Ra’aya Mehemna, the “faithful shepherd,” through the faculty of daas within each person, as we learned in the previous class. So there’s the love itself, and there’s the way it manifests. Love for Hashem in which a person is prepared to give up his sense of self, his own desires, his own... prepared to give up his own existence for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That kind of love, that character of love, comes from the aspect of Moshe Rabbeinu within each of us. True, it can’t be present in us completely, because we aren’t Moshe Rabbeinu. Our soul is clothed in a body. We have our own... Yes, all right, I know, I know you; you’re not... That’s fine. But you do have a tiny trace of it. From time to time, not completely, and in certain matters. If a person looks at himself, he’ll see that here and there he isn’t always acting out of self-interest. Sometimes I’m prepared to do things for Hakadosh Boruch Hu even though nobody will thank me—nobody will thank me afterward. Everyone has such things, such moments. And that point at which a Jew, in a particular place, at a particular time, in a particular matter, can give himself over to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—that exists in every Jew. As

44:38 Speaker 1 it says in Tikkunei Zohar, “The extension—the extension of Moshe exists in every generation, to illuminate everyone.” It shines in the soul of every Jew, but this light is deeply concealed and hidden in the souls of all the Jewish people. So yes, it’s an inheritance from our forefathers, and through Moshe Rabbeinu everyone has it, but it’s there in a hidden, concealed way. So generally, when you tell a Jew for the first time, “You have a love like Moshe Rabbeinu’s,” he’s startled and says, “What, me?” Yes. That’s everyone’s natural reaction on first hearing it, because it really is so deeply hidden and concealed. I didn’t know I had such a thing. “And to bring this hidden love out of concealment into revelation.” Now there’s something new here. Regarding the love of “My soul desires You,” he only said that such a love exists; he didn’t discuss how to bring it from potential into practice. Right? It exists, it’s within reach, it’s an inheritance, it’s there. Then he moved to the second love. He explained the nature of that second love, and now he comes to how to bring both kinds of love from potential into practice. So he says: “And to bring this hidden love out of concealment into revelation, so that it is revealed in one’s heart and mind.” Until now it was hidden. “It is not beyond you, nor is it far away; rather, the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart.” What does “in your mouth and in your heart” mean? “That is, to accustom one’s tongue and voice to arouse the intent of one’s heart and mind.” We’re already in Tanya, chapter 44. We’ve been hearing about love and fear of Hashem since chapter 1, chapter 2, right? All along. Do you remember a single time when it said that you need to speak about love out loud? There wasn’t one, right? There wasn’t.

47:05 Speaker 8 That was the last direction.

47:06 Speaker 1 Contemplate, think, think about it, think about it. There wasn’t a single place where it said you need to speak about love out loud. There wasn’t. What’s suddenly new here? The explanation is very simple, and it also gives us a broader understanding of these words. “To accustom one’s tongue and voice” gives us a broader perspective on the whole Tanya. How should we approach the entire subject? Like this: we’re talking about awakening a love that already exists. How do you wake someone up? “Moishele, get up,” right? You call to him, speak to him, wake him. If the bed is empty, if nobody’s in it, “Moishele, get up”—what do you mean, get up? The bed is empty. Who am I waking? An intellectually generated love is a love that has to be born. There’s nobody to call, nobody to wake. You have to bring it into being, create it. As long as we were discussing intellectually generated love, throughout the first seventeen chapters of Tanya, of course we weren’t talking about awakening it. What would you awaken? We were talking about bringing it into being, not awakening it. Later, when we began discussing hidden love from chapter 18 onward, there was already someone in the bed who needed waking, who needed to be roused from his sleep. Yes, but what were we discussing there? We weren’t discussing awakening love so that it would be felt in the heart. We were discussing remembering that I have a soul. I would remind myself again and again: You have a soul, you have love, you have mesirus nefesh. Just remembering that I have mesirus nefesh is enough to keep me from committing aveiros. I’ll remember that Jews gave their lives to sanctify Hashem’s name. So now what, am I going to slip up over a bracha and eat without one? Yes. To refrain from aveiros

49:21 Speaker 1 and fulfill mitzvos, a person doesn’t need to feel love in his heart. He needs to remember that he has love for Hashem. He needs to remember that he has mesirus nefesh. That’s all. That’s what the discussion was about: how to remind ourselves of this over the course of eight chapters. And for someone who finds it hard to remember it and keep it in mind all day, there are all sorts of other suggestions concerning joy, sadness, self-humbling, and dullness of the heart. What was it all about? How do I remind myself that it exists? But starting with our chapter, we begin discussing not just knowing that I have such a thing, but how I can feel it in my heart. How can I wake it up? How do you awaken love for Hashem so that it’s in your heart, so that when I fulfill a mitzvah, I feel that Hakadosh Boruch Hu truly matters to me? I’m not doing it because I was forced to. I’m not fulfilling the mitzvah because I was taught to, because I was told to, because I’m used to it. I’m fulfilling the mitzvah because I know that when I put on tefillin now, this is how I connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, because I love Him. To feel that in the heart, you have to awaken the love. And as is well known, Chazal already said that the voice arouses intention. Intention means love and fear of Hashem, and the voice arouses that intention. So it’s not enough—until now, thinking and contemplating were enough. Now you need to speak, to express it aloud, in words. And how am I supposed to say that I love Hakadosh Boruch Hu like my father? Well, would anyone like to demonstrate? How do you do that? Chassidim explained something very interesting about this. You’ve surely all heard that in Chabad Chassidus in particular, a niggun is part of serving Hashem. The Alter Rebbe placed very strong emphasis on niggunim, and in Chabad there are many songs, many niggunim, that have

51:32 Speaker 1 words. But when a Jew reaches davening, reaches Shema, and he knows that he has already contemplated the greatness of Hashem and all the details we discussed in the workshop in the previous class, but it isn’t stirring within him—he isn’t feeling it. Here it is, Shema. We need to leave Egypt. We need to be ready to give our lives to sanctify Hashem’s name. And... there’s a passage right there, just before saying Shema, so he begins to sing to himself: “Our Father, merciful Father, Who has compassion, have mercy on us and place understanding in our hearts.” Among chassidim, the practice was to sing in davening—that’s the point. A person doesn’t just say the words during davening; he sings them to a melody. It doesn’t have to be loud enough for everyone to hear. It doesn’t have to be every day, or throughout the whole davening, and it doesn’t have to be only during davening. A person is by himself and wants to remind himself that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father. He can pause quietly for a moment and, without anyone hearing, hum to himself: “Our Father, our King, be gracious to us and answer us.” When a person says the words with his voice and a melody, the intention is awakened. Everyone knows that; everyone feels it when they sing. They feel it inside. Could it be any simpler? It’s within reach, says the Alter Rebbe. What are the words? “It is not beyond you, nor is it far away.” It is accessible to each and every person in the simplest way. “Rather, the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, “to accustom one’s tongue and voice to arouse the intent of one’s heart and mind.” There are also maamarim of Chassidus—not many, but there are a few that—

53:53 Speaker 9 Did the Breslovers learn this?

53:54 Speaker 1 Huh?

53:54 Speaker 9 Did the Breslovers learn this?

53:56 Speaker 1 Uh, I don’t know if it appears in their teachings. I haven’t studied Likkutei Moharan thoroughly, but clearly that’s the idea.

54:04 Speaker 9 Good.

54:06 Speaker 10 But you can also sing without intending anything. It’s not something you sing with particular intentions. You can sing without even thinking about the melody.

54:13 Speaker 1 Right, right, right, right.

54:16 Speaker 10 So why, then, do you sing with it?

54:18 Speaker 1 You need to sing with intention.

54:20 Speaker 10 Oh, after that I sang songs, that’s already—

54:22 Speaker 1 No, there’s no automatic process. In Chabad, nothing happens on its own. That’s in Polish Chassidus; in Chabad, nothing happens on its own. You have to do everything, make an effort and toil, and the yetzer hara gets in the way. Nothing happens on its own, but that’s the path.

54:33 Speaker 10 Oh, okay.

54:36 Speaker 1 If a person wants to feel who he is—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father—sing. No, it’s not the other way around: if he sings, then he’ll start thinking. No, if he thinks and sings, then... There’s a story about Reb Hillel of Paritch. Actually, it appears in two versions. No one knows which version is correct. Reb Hillel of Paritch used to say that someone with a talent for music can be a chossid. And according to the other version, what he used to say was that someone without a talent for music cannot be a chossid. In other words, to get used to saying it aloud and singing it, to awaken the intention of his heart and mind—to get used to it, to practice, simply to practice. To think deeply about the Life of all life, the Infinite One, blessed be He, for He is truly our Father and the source of our life. To get used to thinking, “I am a child of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” Simply think about it, say it in words, and sing it. That is, to awaken love for Him like a son’s love for his father. And when he accustoms himself to doing so constantly, habit becomes second nature. Today a Jew named Baruch—Zalman Shimon Springer—told me that he had the privilege of hearing from one of the elder chassidim of the previous generation, who has since passed away. That chossid remembered that when he was in Lubavitch, it was a common expression among people on the streets of Lubavitch, in Lubavitch itself: “Oy, Tate!” For the chassidim in Lubavitch, it was so natural to feel that Hakadosh Boruch Hu was their true Father. “Oy, Tate!” It became a habit. It came naturally. “And even if it seems to him, at first glance, that it is imaginary”—all right, so I’ve awakened my love of Hashem, and I’m ready to give my life to sanctify Hashem’s name, just like Moshe Rabbeinu. Come on, who are you telling

57:16 Speaker 1 stories to? Who are you trying to fool? It’s imagination, isn’t it? Am I Moshe Rabbeinu? I try to behave like Moshe Rabbeinu, but to feel like Moshe Rabbeinu? None of us... We might cut corners, but even a white lie isn’t something we’d tell ourselves. So the Alter Rebbe says, “And even if it seems to him, at first glance, that it is imaginary”—you think the love of Hashem you awakened, your willingness for self-sacrifice, your thought that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is your Father—“My Father, my Father, my Father, my Father”—you think, “I know it isn’t real.” If it seems imaginary to you, don’t believe yourself. It is real. Again, the words: “And even if it seems to him, at first glance, that it is imaginary, he should pay it no heed.” Don’t pay attention to those thoughts from your yetzer hara. If you think that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father and you think you feel it, then you really do feel it—even if it seems to you that you don’t. Why? “Because it is absolutely true in itself,” it is the truth. Who is the father of our soul? Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So it may seem to you that you’re only thinking it and feeling it, but it’s the truth. “He should pay it no heed, because it is absolutely true in itself, in the form of hidden love.” Wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, one second. At first you told me this was Raaya Mehemna, not something for everyone. Okay, I accepted that. Then you explained why it does apply to me. Okay, I understood. Then you say, “Fine, but it’s actually just imagination.” All right, I understood. “No, it isn’t imagination; it’s true in itself.” Well? Yes, fine, I’ve digested that too. Right? He’s playing ping-pong with us. The Alter Rebbe says: If it is true in itself, if I really have a soul, and my soul really does have the capacity for self-sacrifice, and it really loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu really is its Father, and it really feels that—then what difference does it make whether you feel it or not? That is the truth. So we said: What difference does it make whether you

59:34 Speaker 1 feel it or not? Why toil to bring it from potential into actuality? “Only that the benefit of bringing it into the open is to bring it to action.” If I have this hidden love in my heart but it doesn’t bring me to actual action—to Torah study and the observance of mitzvos—then what do I need it for? So I need to contemplate, sing, and speak in order to bring it from potential into actuality, so it will lead me to perform the mitzvos: “His engagement in Torah and mitzvos, which he studies and observes thereby in order to give Him nachas ruach, like a son serving his father.” About this they said... Sorry. In the end, after everything, I’ve understood the whole concept; I contemplated, sang, played a melody, felt inspired, imagined, didn’t imagine. This love exists, and in practice I’m ready to give my life for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But the truth is that I know that—even after it has awakened in my mind and I understand it and actually behave accordingly—I don’t really feel it in my heart, with all my heart. It’s there, but I don’t really feel it. And we spoke in earlier chapters—I don’t expect anyone here to remember chapter 27—we spoke in earlier chapters about... Maybe we’ll return to the subject of the maamar—just a brief aside on the point at hand. When a Jew observes Torah and mitzvos with love and awe, his Torah and mitzvos ascend and unite with the higher worlds. When he observes the mitzvos merely out of habit, they remain down here. You surely remember that point,

1:01:53 Speaker 1 right?

1:01:53 Speaker 11 Yes.

1:01:54 Speaker 1 When do his Torah and mitzvos ascend? When they’re done with intention. If a person performs a mitzvah with feeling, the feeling enters the intention, and the intention enters the action. Then the feeling—the intention—takes the action and raises it to the place where the feeling is. That makes sense, right? But if, in the end, the feeling isn’t real, if I don’t truly have a feeling in my heart—I have it in my thoughts; I want to feel it; I understand that I ought to feel it, but I don’t really feel in my heart that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my Father. Right? I understand it, I feel something, but it isn’t really in my heart. So when I perform the mitzvah with that intention, since the intention isn’t fully real, since it hasn’t permeated my heart, it doesn’t fully enter the action. Right? There’s a sort of gap, a disconnect between thought and action, and then my Torah and mitzvos will remain below. About this, the Tanya says: “And concerning this they said that Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to the deed.” True, a thought in the mind is higher than the deed, but it cannot raise the deed to the higher worlds. Hakadosh Boruch Hu, however, does us a favor and joins our good thought—our intention—to the deed, even if it isn’t entirely real. All right? “So that they become wings for it to fly,” as explained above. And the nachas ruach this gives Hakadosh Boruch Hu when a Jew performs mitzvos with an intention of love and awe—the Rebbe gives two analogies here: “Like the king’s joy at his son coming to him upon leaving prison,” as explained above. Or the second analogy: “To make Him a dwelling place in the lower realms,” as explained above. That concludes the point. The Rebbe said two things here. We spoke about two kinds of love. The love of “My soul desires You,” right? A Jew loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is his life. I love Hakadosh Boruch

1:04:06 Speaker 1 Hu because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my life. Or the love of “like a son who strives”: I love Hakadosh Boruch Hu because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my Father. Two kinds of love. I love Hakadosh Boruch Hu because He is my life or because He is my Father, right? When I awaken the love that He is my life, it gives Hakadosh Boruch Hu pleasure, gives Him nachas ruach like a son who has left prison. Until now I didn’t feel Him... I wasn’t looking for Him; now I’m looking for Him. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu enjoys that too, like a father whose son has left prison. If I awaken the love that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my Father, then all my Torah and mitzvos aren’t for me; they’re for Him, for my Father. What does my Father want? To have a dwelling place in the lower realms. So making Him a dwelling place in the lower realms gives Hakadosh Boruch Hu nachas ruach. Those are the two kinds. Well, how are we doing for time? Have we gone way over today?

1:05:08 Speaker 3 Five to ten.

1:05:10 Speaker 1 Huh? Wow, wow, wow, wow. What have we done?

1:05:15 Speaker 3 Oh.

1:05:15 Speaker 1 Huh? All right, let’s—

1:05:19 Speaker 3 But they’re missing out.

1:05:19 Speaker 1 What?

1:05:20 Speaker 3 But they’re missing out, and it’s a shame.

1:05:22 Speaker 1 So let’s finish this section and... okay? We’ll go to the end of this section. Up to this point, he’s been talking about how to bring the love of “My soul yearns for You” and the love of “like a son who strives” from potential into actuality. Right? The first love, “My soul yearns for You”—he only said that such a love exists. We haven’t yet explained how to awaken it. That’s what he discusses now. “And behold, even with regard to the aforementioned level of ‘My soul yearns for You’”—the first one we discussed—

1:05:59 Speaker 3 But the second one is higher, isn’t it?

1:06:00 Speaker 1 Right, that’s in the next section.

1:06:02 Speaker 3 But he said it here, didn’t he?

1:06:03 Speaker 1 Huh? No, no, I said that in passing.

1:06:09 Speaker 3 Okay.

1:06:09 Speaker 1 “Even with regard to the aforementioned level of ‘My soul yearns for You,’ it is very easy to bring it from concealment into revelation through constant practice, with his mouth and heart in accord... But if he cannot bring it into revelation in his heart, he can nevertheless engage in Torah and mitzvos for their own sake by picturing this love in his mind. And Hakadosh Boruch Hu joins a good thought to action, etc.” So the Alter Rebbe’s precise wording is “even with regard to ‘My soul yearns for You.’” In other words, it’s obvious to the Alter Rebbe that anyone can readily awaken the love of a son for his father. He’ll talk about it, think about it, sing about it, and the love will awaken. The love of “My soul yearns for You”—that Hashem is my life—it’s less clear, less obvious to the Alter Rebbe that this love can also be awakened. Why? What’s the difference? Well, I don’t want to just say something. I still haven’t settled it in my mind. Leave that aside. The Rebbe points out that the wording here is “even.” In other words, both kinds of love can be awakened. In actual practice, both are awakened in the same way: through voice, speech, and melody. But the love of “like a son who strives,” although it is a higher love, as we’ll see later in the chapter, is actually easier for anyone to awaken. Well, a short answer. Why did we take so long?

1:08:10 Speaker 3 What’s happening?

1:08:11 Speaker 1 All good.

1:08:13 Speaker 3 Is she ready yet? She’s at a quarter...