Tanya Likkutei Amarim - Introduction A

00:01 Speaker 1 A long way. We said that a person who cannot accomplish this by the long way—because his intellectual capacity is more limited, or because he is afraid, or because he has not studied enough—needs to look for a short way. But if there is a short way, why look for anything else? Why look for problems? Why specifically seek out long ways when there is a short way? The truth is, as explained in Tanya and at length later in the Siddur, that the long way has a particular advantage. There is an advantage that comes specifically through binah, through study, understanding, and comprehension, beyond what is accomplished by the short way, through the revelation of the yechidah. What is that advantage? Simply this: when it comes from the revelation of the soul, a Jew has a soul that is literally a part of G-d above. So he inherently loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu; he is only revealing that love. What is missing is that the person has not connected to G-dliness on his own part. In other words, G-dliness has not permeated his entire being. A person’s own faculties are intellect and emotions; they are not G-dliness. The soul is a part of G-d above, but a person’s own faculties are intellect and emotions. They are not G-dliness. So his intellect and emotions remain unconnected to G-dliness. The soul is connected to G-dliness, from above downward; he reveals the soul, and that already has an effect on everything. But the aim is for the person’s intellect and emotions themselves to connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Otherwise, they remain, as it were, at least in some sense, outside G-dliness. By contrast, on the long way, he studies and contemplates, and through his intellect he understands and comprehends G-dliness. His connection to G-dliness then comes from his own being. That is why the long way has a particular advantage. On the contrary, it is the truer way in terms of the purpose of making a dwelling for G-d in the lower realms, in terms of the inner purpose of

02:07 Speaker 1 bringing about a connection to G-dliness on the Jew’s own part. So the long way is better: it comes through comprehension, study, and understanding. His entire being is then connected to G-dliness. G-dliness permeates every part of the person. But not everyone can reach that point. Sometimes a person’s intellectual faculties are not developed enough to accomplish it this way. So he is told that there is also a short way. The Rebbe says there is a short way; he does not understand. There are all kinds of difficulties that sometimes prevent him from following the long path of avodah, so there is another path, the short way, which works from above downward: the soul is revealed. But certainly, if one can choose, the long way is the truer way, because it permeates the person’s own being. His inner self, including his intellect and emotions, becomes united with G-dliness. This relates to the whole revelation of the oneness of Hashem, which, with Hashem’s help, we will see again and again as we continue through Tanya. Tanya keeps returning to it, because at the root of everything, it is really Tanya’s central point. The idea of “There is nothing else besides Him” is a central point of Chassidus: G-dliness must permeate a person’s entire being, so that not a single part remains unconnected to G-dliness. That is the advantage. If it comes from the soul, the connection to G-dliness does not come from the person’s own being. His body and his own faculties—his intellect and emotions—remain, as it were, outside G-dliness. But when it comes through understanding and comprehension, his entire being is connected to G-dliness. That is the complete realization of “There is nothing else besides Him,” of the oneness of Hashem, and so on. As we go on, we will explain this in greater detail, but that is

03:36 Speaker 1 the point: why we should first seek the long way. All of that was according to the first interpretation. But according to the second interpretation, the Rebbe explains that the long way and the short way are not two paths; they are one path. This also connects with everything we have just discussed. The path of Chassidus is a long way because it proceeds through understanding, comprehension, and study. It takes effort; it requires a long way. Chassidus specifically calls for study, understanding, and comprehension, and that is a long way. It is not merely a revelation of emunah arising from emunah itself, which is a shorter way. I mean the revelation of emunah in a way that is inward, as we explained: the emunah is revealed, but it remains only emunah. The emunah permeates his entire being. Is he not a believer? No, he certainly is. It is not merely like the Gemara’s example, “The thief at the mouth of the tunnel calls upon the Merciful One”—he believes in G-d, and so on. That is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about someone who believes in Hashem, and whose emunah permeates his entire being. But why does it permeate his being? Because of his soul, not because he has comprehended and understood it. So his own being, his comprehension, and his intellect remain outside—outside the city, outside G-dliness. That is the meaning of the short way that is long: it leaves him outside the city. He does not enter, because his own being has not connected to G-dliness. By contrast, the path of Chassidus is the long way that is short: his entire being enters. His intellect and emotions, too. The whole person enters the city, enters G-dliness, to be connected with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Rebbe concludes this passage by saying, “With the help of Hashem, may He be blessed.” “With the help of Hashem, may He be blessed.” The Rebbe explains that this addition does not mean only that, with Hashem’s help, he will explain it to us. Rather, “with the help of Hashem, may He be blessed” refers to

05:21 Speaker 1 the whole matter of how a person is to accomplish this. Chassidus calls for a long way. It comes and demands that a person study and understand G-dliness, and connect to G-dliness through avodah and working through the subject, through effort and work. So how can he do it? Does it happen automatically? No, no, it does not happen automatically. That is why it says, “With the help of Hashem, may He be blessed.” We need to know that we have help from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And the Alter Rebbe explains further, in chapter 13, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu helps a person. We need to know that although he has a yetzer tov and a yetzer hara—we are speaking here about the beinoni—he has a yetzer hara, and the yetzer hara constantly brings him challenges and things that interfere with his avodah. He must know that, with the help of Hashem, may He be blessed, Hakadosh Boruch Hu helps him carry out his avodah as it should be, as the Alter Rebbe wants us to be. So that is the passage the Alter Rebbe wrote. Everything that follows is an addition made later by the printers. Next come the approbations. We will not study the approbations inside, because there will not be time; we will only speak about them briefly. We see three approbations here, three approbations. There is an approbation from Reb Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli, and there is the approbation from Reb Yehudah Leib HaKohen. There is also the approbation from the rabbis, the sons of the illustrious author. The first two approbations are for Likkutei Amarim, for the Tanya as it appeared in its first printing. The third approbation was not printed in the first edition. The third approbation is for Igeres Hakodesh, which they printed after the Alter Rebbe’s passing. That is why the Rebbe even writes here in the list of corrections that a note is missing at this point. It should have said here that this approbation is

07:02 Speaker 1 That has nothing to do with the Tanya; it is an approbation only for Igeres Hakodesh. Igeres Hakodesh was printed after the Alter Rebbe’s passing. They gathered various letters, and these became the fourth and fifth parts of Tanya, Igeres Hakodesh and Kuntres Acharon. Those are what the Alter Rebbe’s sons gave their approbation to. So if you look below at the signatures, you’ll see that the Alter Rebbe is referred to with the words “of blessed memory.” That means it was already after his passing. So first, let’s talk about the two earlier approbations. Who gave them? Rabbi Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen. Who were they? They were two students of the Maggid of Mezritch. It is told, even in the early accounts, that on 26 Elul the Alter Rebbe sent two shluchim to Slavuta to print the Tanya. The Tanya was printed in Slavuta by the well-known Shapiro brothers, descendants of Rabbi Pinchas of Koritz. They printed the Tanya at a very holy press, and so on. As is known, the Alter Rebbe told the shluchim that first they had to go to Anipoli and obtain an approbation there. Anipoli wasn’t on the way at all. It wasn’t that they would pass through it: Slavuta was in one direction, and Anipoli in another. Yet the Alter Rebbe specifically wanted them to go to Anipoli and request an approbation from the two rabbis. Both lived in Anipoli—Rabbi Meshulam Zusha, Reb Zusha of Anipoli, and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen. The Alter Rebbe sent them to give their approbation. After all, the Alter Rebbe had many colleagues. He wanted an approbation from students of the Maggid, fine—but why these two in particular? It is written that the Maggid had 120 students, twice the number. The Baal Shem Tov, it is written, had sixty students, righteous students who became well known. And the Maggid had

09:00 Speaker 1 120 students. So why did he choose these two out of the 120? This is explained, and chassidim explain the reason for it. These two lived in Anipoli. Anipoli was the city where the tziyun—the resting place—of the Maggid of Mezritch is located. The Maggid of Mezritch is buried in Anipoli. Before the Maggid passed away, he called these two students, Reb Zusha and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen, and asked them to remain there. The other students went to all sorts of places. Later, each became a rabbi in various regions and other places. But these two—the Alter Rebbe asked, I mean, the Maggid asked them to remain there, and told them, “You will be in my company in this world and the next.” I think that was the wording. In other words, if you stay with me here, you will be with me physically and spiritually; even in the World to Come, you will remain with me. So they were the ones who stayed in the Maggid’s place, in that same location. Later, they too were buried there. To this day, Anipoli has the Maggid’s grave, his tziyun, and nearby are the resting places of these two tzaddikim, because they remained, as it were, in the Maggid’s place. So chassidim say that since the Alter Rebbe was seeking an approbation, he wanted one from those closest to the Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid had already passed away, and the Maggid’s son had also passed away. Rabbi Avraham the Malach passed away in 5537, while the Tanya was printed in 5557. So the Alter Rebbe looked for the students who were closest to him in spirit, at least. I don’t know exactly what happened, but he wanted it to be as close to the Maggid as possible. That is why he went to the place where

10:43 Speaker 1 these two students had remained, in the Maggid’s place. He asked them for an approbation—these two tzaddikim, Rabbi Zusha and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen. And here is how the story goes. Chassidim tell the well-known story that the shluchim arrived at night with two copies of the Tanya—that is, manuscripts, before it was printed. They brought one copy to Reb Zusha and one to Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen, and asked them to keep them overnight so they could look through them and give an approbation. The well-known story is that in the middle of the night, Reb Zusha of Anipoli was beside himself. He saw the brilliance of the Tanya, its depth of thought, how the Alter Rebbe had managed to explain the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings so clearly. He was beside himself and wanted to tell his friend; he didn’t know that Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen also had a copy. So he went out into the street to look for Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen. The same thing happened to Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen. He too was sitting with the Tanya and was deeply impressed, and in the middle of the night he wanted to run to Reb Zusha of Anipoli’s house. Each set out for the other’s house, and they met in the middle of the street. Then they realized that each of them had a copy of the Tanya, and they began to dance. By then it was almost dawn. People were starting to go to shul and saw the two tzaddikim standing and dancing in the streets of Anipoli. That was their reaction to the Tanya that was about to be published. There is another story told about Reb Zusha: when he came to write his approbation, he asked for a sheet of paper. He sat down and began writing praises of the author of the Tanya, the Alter Rebbe. He began writing the Alter Rebbe’s praises, and only

12:27 Speaker 1 after that did he turn to praising the Tanya. He filled the page, so he asked for another sheet and filled that one too. Then he asked for a third sheet, and so he filled page after page with praise and words about the Tanya. Afterward, he saw how long it had become and said, “This is too long.” He read it all and said there was no need for any of it. Instead, he wrote what we have here, the short approbation found here. What he meant was that no matter how much one wrote, it would not be enough to express the matter, so there was no point in writing at length. He wrote it briefly, and that is the approbation we have from Reb Zusha of Anipoli. Now we see something interesting here. Neither of the two approbations gives the author’s name. Neither says who wrote the book; they just refer to him without naming him. The story is that the Alter Rebbe asked them not to name the author. In the first edition of the Tanya, the author’s name appeared nowhere—not on the title page, not in the approbations, not in the introduction. Nowhere does it say that the Alter Rebbe was the author. This was simply an expression of his humility, or, more deeply, the Alter Rebbe felt that none of it was his own; it belonged to the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings. So he did not want to put his name on the book, and it appeared nowhere. In later editions they did print it, but the first edition did not give the Alter Rebbe’s name. Yet there is a hint in Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen’s approbation. We see something interesting here. Do you see Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen’s approbation? Take a look.

14:04 Speaker 1 There are grand phrases in several places. Yes, “the author, the great gaon”—that refers to the Alter Rebbe. Then it says, “our father, our teacher and our Rebbe, a gaon of the world.” That refers to the Maggid. After that, “from a well of living waters”—that refers to Rabbi Avraham the Malach. The letters of “mebe’er,” “from a well,” are the same letters as Avraham, except that Avraham has a hei. Of course, “living waters” alludes to the secret of living waters. It refers to a garden, which alludes to that hei. So suddenly we have the names Avraham and Yisroel here. Yisroel is the name of the Baal Shem Tov. In other words, he hinted here that this book is founded on the teachings of these three people: Rabbi Avraham the Malach, the Maggid, and the Baal Shem Tov. After that comes the date. It is well known, as the Rebbe says, that when they wrote the date at the end, Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli wrote below, “Parshas Ki Savo, the year of our redemption.” Yes, a small detail: the numerical value of “our redemption” is 556, and Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen wrote 5556. The Rebbe relates in the Reshimos that Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli then said something about the Tanya orally, and hinted at it here within the wording. Rabbi Zusha said that with the Tanya we will go to greet Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Through studying Tanya, this is what Moshiach promised the Baal Shem Tov: that through the study of Chassidus, “your wellsprings will spread outward,” and the Geulah will come. So the Tanya is the book with which we will go to greet Moshiach Tzidkeinu, and he hinted at that with “the year of our redemption,” which refers to the Geulah. And Rabbi Avraham the Malach—Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen, sorry—said that the Tanya is the book that will save the world from all the spiritual plagues that will come in the last generations, in the final period before the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Because before the coming of Moshiach there will be

16:29 Speaker 1 a more severe exile, with many concealments and many challenges, darkness in the world. Everyone sees this tangibly in all kinds of ways. So Rabbi Avraham—Yehuda Leib HaKohen said that the Tanya is the book that will save the Jewish people from all these things. Just as the Torah says that the ketores saves from plagues, so too the Tanya is like ketores, saving us from spiritual plagues, from all kinds of spiritual difficulties, concealments, and challenges that will arise in the world. The Tanya strengthens us against them. We have seen this tangibly throughout the generations. We saw it in Russia, at a time of great challenges: it was precisely the chassidim who studied Tanya whose souls the Tanya revealed, and it strengthened them to withstand all the challenges. Today, too, it is the same with the challenges in the world in all kinds of areas. It is precisely through studying Chassidus and Tanya that we are strengthened through every kind of concealment. So he said that the letters of the year, 5556, hint at the initials of “Tanya, ketores, nefesh and ruach”—or “neshamah and ruach.” Good. The Tanya is like ketores for the neshamah and ruach, for the nefesh and ruach—good—where a spiritual plague could take hold. And the Tanya is like ketores, saving us from those plagues. According to this, it connects with the two reasons for the revelation of Chassidus. As is known, the Rebbe brings in his sichos two reasons why Chassidus was revealed specifically at this time, in the later generations. One reason is that the exile has grown darker, with darkness doubled and redoubled, so we need more to save us, give us faith, and strengthen us to withstand all the challenges. The second reason is as preparation for the Geulah. Since the Geulah will bring the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah, we need to prepare. The Rebbe explains these two reasons for the revelation of Chassidus specifically in the later generations in many sichos. Those are the two

18:13 Speaker 1 reasons. Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen emphasized the role of Chassidus in saving us from the darkness of exile. And Rabbi Meshulam Zusha of Anipoli emphasized the second point: Chassidus as preparation for the complete Geulah. Now we come to the third approbation, the approbation of the author’s sons. This brings us to [unclear]. There is a wonderful sicha of the Rebbe about it, a wonderful observation. Ah, it seems like just a turn of phrase, but you see how every detail is precise. If you look at the approbation—I see that many of the boys here don’t have a Tanya. Maybe someone needs to donate a set of Tanyas for the group. It’s a shame you can’t look inside. We’re talking about Tanya, a book you keep in your pocket; you need to look at the text. In any case, in the approbation of the rabbinic sons, we have the three sons of the Maggid—of the—sorry, what am I saying? The three sons of the Alter Rebbe. It says as follows.

19:12 Speaker 2 Dovber, son of our master, teacher and Rebbe, the gaon, the chossid, the holy one of Israel, our teacher and Rebbe Schneur Zalman.

19:18 Speaker 1 After that comes Chaim Avraham,

19:20 Speaker 2 “our teacher and Rebbe, the gaon, the chossid, our teacher and Rebbe,”

19:22 Speaker 1 and Moshe. Moshe. In short, when they write the titles, the praises of their father, the Mitteler Rebbe writes of the Alter Rebbe, “the gaon, the chossid, the holy one of Israel, our teacher and Rebbe.” Reb Chaim Avraham writes of the Alter Rebbe, “the gaon, the chossid, our teacher and Rebbe.” He does not write “the holy one of Israel.” And Reb Moshe writes, “the gaon, the chossid.” He does not write—not “the gaon,” no, no, sorry. He does not write “our teacher and Rebbe” or “the holy one of Israel.” Why is that? Why did each one leave out a title? The Rebbe writes about this in his notes on Tanya. He writes something very interesting: it relates to each son’s own spiritual level. Each one saw in the Alter Rebbe what corresponded to his own level. Reb Moshe—let’s start from the bottom and go up. Reb Moshe was the Alter Rebbe’s third son. He was a chossid. What does it mean that he was a chossid? His way of life was one of Chassidus expressed through abstinence. The Reshimos relate that Reb Moshe, in his personal conduct, followed a very strict path of abstinence and humility, and so on. There is the story of Reb Moshe: for many years of his life he did not sleep in a bed. By the reckoning, it comes to about thirty years of his life. He would sleep on a board, on wood, on all kinds of things. Then there is the well-known story, the well-known saying attributed to Reb Moshe. Once, when he was in Hungary and Romania, places where the Jews felt that Yiddishkeit had a great deal to do with physical things too—like the mitzvah of eating cholent on Shabbos, and so on—Reb Moshe did not eat cholent on Shabbos. A Jew came up to him and said,

21:17 Speaker 1 “You have to eat cholent.” So he told him what he had been taught. They did not know who he was; he was living in concealment, so they did not know he was Reb Moshe. Sorry—the Jew asked Reb Moshe, the Alter Rebbe’s son, “Why don’t you eat cholent?” And he answered, “My Rebbe taught me that when the body enjoys a mitzvah, there is no need to be especially scrupulous about it.” That is the saying. The story goes that they thought he was a heretic. They drove him out of the shul and wanted to punish him in various ways, because they thought he was simply showing contempt. They were not chassidim and did not understand the depth of what he had said. They took it as though he were belittling the mitzvah of eating cholent. It has a basis in Torah as a practice against the Sadducees. Why do we eat cholent on Shabbos? Because the Sadducees said that one may not eat hot food on Shabbos, that one must eat cold food, because one may not kindle a fire on Shabbos. The Karaites followed the path of the Sadducees. So the practice of eating cholent was instituted, and they thought his not eating cholent on Shabbos had to do with the Sadducees. He had to flee the town. In any case, he was a chossid, and that is also what he saw in the Alter Rebbe, because that was what he himself was. By contrast, Reb Chaim Avraham, in addition to his Chassidus, was also a rav. The Reshimos relate that Reb Chaim Avraham answered questions of halachah and was appointed as a halachic authority in the Rebbe’s household. That is why he wrote “our teacher and Rebbe.” And the Mitteler Rebbe had both of these qualities. Beyond that, he also took over from his father as Rebbe; he was his successor. That is why he writes “the holy one of Israel,” referring to the Rebbe as the holy one of Israel. In any case, these are the three

22:49 Speaker 1 The sons who wrote the approbation to Igeres Hakodesh, which was printed afterward—and we’ll get to the approbations. After that comes the introduction, the Compiler’s Introduction. So here is an introduction the Alter Rebbe wrote. He wanted an introduction: “The Compiler’s Introduction, which is a letter sent to all our fellow chassidim; may our Rock bless them and protect them.” Look, the Alter Rebbe writes this. There are several abbreviations here. What are they? One of the abbreviations refers to the Alter Rebbe. In the introduction here, he explains what the Tanya is and what led him to write it. This is understandable based on what we discussed last time: with the Baal Shem Tov, there was actually a concern about writing a book of Chassidus, and that was also the case with the Maggid. So when the Alter Rebbe came to write the Tanya, he had to give himself an answer. Why do such a thing? He changed the approach. Why did he write it if the Baal Shem Tov said not to write and the Maggid did not write? Why did he write it? So you see that he is, as it were, explaining himself: why he wrote the Tanya and what its purpose is. It’s a very interesting introduction, and a very fundamental one. So much so that the Frierdiker Rebbe says there are fifty-four parshiyos in the Torah, and the Tanya also has fifty-four chapters. The Tanya has fifty-three chapters. So the Frierdiker Rebbe says that the first parsha, Bereishis, is an introduction, and the introduction to the Tanya corresponds to the Book of Bereishis. Just as Bereishis in the Torah is an introduction to everything that follows—Parshas Bereishis is a general introduction, an introduction to all the subjects of the Torah that begin afterward—so too, the introduction to the Tanya is like Parshas Bereishis. It is part of the Tanya as well. That is why, when people learn it by heart, they are careful to learn the introduction to

24:38 Speaker 1 the Tanya by heart as well. And they say about the Rogatchover—they relate that the Rogatchover said that his entire method of learning... This is a very deep matter, but the Rogatchover was a Chabad chossid. His father was a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek, and he himself was a Chabad chossid. So they relate that the Rogatchover said he got his method of learning—the Rogatchover’s method, which was to find the common thread, the shared point, among different approaches in the Talmud—from the introduction to the Tanya. In the introduction to the Tanya, the Alter Rebbe taught him this point: there is a soul’s root, and every tzaddik has a soul-root from which all his approaches come—from which he rules leniently because of chessed, and from which he rules strictly because of gevurah. Sorry, and he adds: ruling leniently because of chessed. This is what the Rebbe also explains in the introduction to the Tanya itself. So from there he took his way of learning: to find a common point in all the disputes in the Talmud. You can see this in the Rebbe’s sichos as well, in this approach to learning that finds a common point among different ways of learning.