Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 3 - Part 3

00:00 Page fourteen, page one, 7b. The fifth line, beginning “which give birth.” Before we continue, there is one additional point, connected to what we discussed in the previous class about Chochmah and Binah. For example, when the Alter Rebbe says, “The intellect of the intellectual soul, which conceives every idea,” he is not speaking about Chochmah as an idea that has already taken shape. He is speaking about the faculty of Chochmah as it exists within the mind’s essential capacity to conceive ideas. He then speaks about Binah, but there is a continuation here. After the Alter Rebbe describes Binah as contemplating an idea in order to understand it thoroughly and in depth, he again says, “from some concept of Chochmah conceived in his mind.” That phrase does refer to revealed Chochmah. In other words, first the Alter Rebbe says that “the intellect of the intellectual soul, which conceives every idea,” “is called Chochmah.” There he is speaking about the faculty of Chochmah: it has not yet become an actual idea, but is the capacity to conceive one, as we discussed. Then he says that when one brings this capacity into action, contemplating an idea in order to understand it thoroughly—that is Binah—he does so “from some concept of Chochmah conceived in his mind.” This does refer to revealed Chochmah, to the initial point of an idea. Binah comes to explain and clarify that point of Chochmah. So the Alter Rebbe also mentions revealed Chochmah here, the initial point of the idea, when he says “from some concept of Chochmah.” Then the Alter Rebbe says, “And they are the father and mother that give birth to love of Hashem, awe of Him, and fear of Him.” This concerns love of Hashem, awe of Him, and fear of Him. There is a difference in wording from earlier. At the beginning of chapter 3, the Alter Rebbe says that the emotional attributes are love, fear, and awe. He puts fear before awe. But here, when explaining the intellect, he says love of

02:25 Hashem… the emotional attributes of love of Hashem, awe of Him, and fear of Him. First awe, then fear. Why the difference? The reason is—I think one of the rabbis explains this—that earlier he is speaking about the emotional attributes as they are in themselves. In describing them as they are, he mentions fear first and then awe, because fear is in the heart, while awe has not yet reached the heart. Fear is a feeling of the heart. Awe is still in the mind; it is more intellectual, more subtle, more focused. So earlier, when the Alter Rebbe speaks about the emotional attributes as they are, he first mentions the primary aspect of fear, which is felt in the heart, and then awe. Here, by contrast, the Alter Rebbe is speaking about the order in which they are born from the mind: “And they are the father and mother that give birth.” When the intellect gives rise to them, awe comes first and fear afterward. As the intellectual understanding takes effect, awe comes first, because it is closer to the intellect; fear is born afterward. That is why the Alter Rebbe changes the order. The Alter Rebbe continues and says that the intellect… The Alter Rebbe continues, on the fifth line, yes: “For the intellect of the intellectual soul…” He doesn’t bring up the exercises. All the exercises they prepared—I didn’t do them. I’ll put up another exercise. If I’m just going to speak for the tape, I can take a tape recorder at home and speak into it. I don’t need to stand here and exert myself. “For when the intellect of the intellectual soul contemplates and delves very deeply into the greatness of Hashem…” Now the Alter Rebbe begins to explain. Until now, he has explained what Chochmah and Binah are in the soul. Chochmah is the capacity to conceive an idea; it is the initial point of an idea. Binah is its expansion and comprehension. What does that mean? Now the Alter Rebbe begins to explain how this works in a person’s avodah. What is the process by which the emotions are born from the intellect?

04:55 So the Alter Rebbe says: “For when the intellect of the intellectual soul contemplates and delves…” Why do we call the intellectual faculties “father and mother”? Because a person contemplates: “when he contemplates and delves very deeply into the greatness of Hashem.” A person takes a subject in G-dliness and contemplates it. He gains a deep understanding of how Hashem fills all worlds. The Alter Rebbe gives subjects for contemplation. A person sits down and begins contemplating the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu: how He fills all worlds. That is one aspect of Hashem’s greatness. “He encompasses all worlds, and everything before Him is considered as nothing”—these are three forms of contemplation, three levels. First, one contemplates from below upward. A person begins with a ladder standing on the earth and reaching heavenward. All right, that is how a person must begin: from below upward. First he begins with “fills all worlds,” with something closer to his understanding. He looks at the world and sees that it is like a great body. Just as the soul fills the body and gives it life—the body needs a soul to fill and enliven it, and so on—so Hakadosh Boruch Hu fills all worlds. With “fills all worlds,” he is looking at the world itself. As it says in Torah teachings, one does not need faith to recognize that Hashem fills all worlds; it is something one can see openly. He looks at the world and sees how it all functions in an orderly way, how everything has its place, and all the creatures, the heavenly spheres, and the great wisdom present in the world. It is a living world, and so on and so forth. He therefore concludes that Divine vitality is invested in the world and gives it life: Hashem fills all worlds. Then he goes further and delves more deeply. He says: Surely this cannot be all the G-dliness that brings the world into being and gives it life. Surely the entire reality of Hakadosh Boruch Hu cannot be limited to what is invested in the world.

06:47 From this he concludes that there is something beyond it, beyond the finite. From “fills all worlds,” he concludes that there must be something higher than the world: an infinite power that brings all of it into being. There are also further proofs and explanations concerning creation from nothing. Surely an infinite power is needed to create something from nothing. So he concludes that there is a level of “encompasses all worlds.” Then he reaches an even higher level: even “encompasses all worlds” is not enough. That, too, is only a revelation, only the light. There is the Essence itself, the Essence of Ein Sof. About this we say, “Everything before Him is considered as nothing.” In relation to Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, the world has no standing, no significance. So there are three levels: “fills all worlds,” “encompasses all worlds,” and the Essence—“everything before Him is considered as nothing.” I contemplate these three matters. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, the Rebbe’s father, says that the Alter Rebbe’s wording, “when he contemplates and delves very deeply,” has three expressions corresponding to these three explanations. “When he contemplates” refers to “fills all worlds.” For that, it is enough to look, contemplate, and think about it. “And delves” refers to “encompasses all worlds.” That requires deeper thought, moving from the finite to the infinite. “Very deeply” is deeper still. That is the “very deeply.” “Everything before Him is considered as nothing” relates to the Essence of Ein Sof. That is why there are three expressions, corresponding to the three subjects a person contemplates. And through this he comes to have the emotional attributes of awe, fear, and love. So the first thing that happens is that the person contemplates. When do the feelings come? After a person contemplates the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, this gives rise within him to intellectual fear and love, as we said earlier about giving birth—when they are born within the person

08:42 The first thing a person experiences is a sense of yiras haromemus, awe of the exaltedness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is in his mind, in his thoughts: “to stand in awe and feel ashamed before His blessed greatness, which has no end or limit.” First, a feeling of awe and self-nullification arises in a person—not yet in the heart, but in the mind. Yes, this feeling of awe takes shape in the mind: to stand in awe and feel ashamed before His blessed greatness, which has no end or limit. He begins to feel awe and shame. This is not fear of punishment. We are talking about contemplating His greatness, not fear of punishment. It is awe born of self-nullification, awe accompanied by shame, before something so exalted. He realizes that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is so great and exalted, and that he himself is so insignificant in relation to Him. That gives rise to a feeling of shame before the exaltedness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, before His blessed greatness, which has no end or limit. That is the first response. After that comes “fear and trembling in his heart.” The second response is fear. This is awe. Awe is an inner response of greater self-nullification—self-nullification felt within him. Then fear reaches the heart, fear also born of the exaltedness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And again, after this deepening of self-nullification, “his heart will then blaze with a fierce love, like flames of fire.” Once a person has gone through the first stage, awe and fear, he turns to an entirely different response: the fervor of love. It is “like flames of fire, with longing, desire, yearning, and a soul that thirsts for the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof.” He comes to a love like flames of fire, wanting Hakadosh Boruch Hu in all these different ways of loving. He uses five expressions: longing, desire, yearning—ah, then a soul that thirsts for the greatness of the blessed Ein Sof. And it

10:41 is enough. So what is happening here? After a person contemplates the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and comes to [unclear], what happens to him? First, he experiences yiras haromemus, awe of Hashem’s greatness: “to stand in awe and feel ashamed before His blessed greatness.” Then comes a feeling of fear, and afterward love like flames of fire. We need to understand: Why does it happen in this order? Why is the first response awe, rather than love? All right, the Alter Rebbe comes to the part about love, doesn’t he? Chochmah, binah, daas; chessed, gevurah. Chessed is love, and gevurah is awe. Fine. But the Alter Rebbe places chessed before gevurah. Why, when contemplating His exaltedness, does awe come first here? Even if we explain that this is simply how things happen in practice—that when a person contemplates, awe comes first and only afterward love—we still need to understand more deeply why that is so. What is the root of it? Why must there first be awe and only then love? Why not the reverse? After all, the Alter Rebbe’s order is chessed first and then gevurah, love first and then awe. How do we explain it? From above downward there is chochmah and then judgment; so it proceeds from above downward, and accordingly from below upward. Why is that? The Rebbe explains this elsewhere. Others have said that the meaning of [unclear] is that the awe he speaks of here is not yet... It is a different kind of

12:53 awe. It is not the awe that comes in the usual order of levels, where there is love and then awe. This is something else. We can see it in practice. A person contemplates—or let’s take a simpler example. When someone stands before a great person, a holy tzaddik whom he has heard about, studied about, and read about, his first response on standing before him is awe. Self-nullification. That is the first response. For example, someone stands before the Rebbe. The first thing that happens is that he feels utterly nullified. He cannot speak, cannot do anything, cannot open his mouth. People have described preparing what they were going to say, with very important things to ask the Rebbe—problems, questions of what was permissible, very serious matters. They stood in line to see the Rebbe and prepared themselves to ask and to speak. But when they reached the Rebbe and stood before him, they felt utterly nullified. They could not open their mouths; they said nothing, and then they were ushered out. They had not managed to ask. This did not happen to just one or two people. It happened to thousands upon thousands. They prepared what to say and the very words they would use, but when they came before his holy presence, they were overcome. Their first response was self-nullification. Afterward, they gathered strength and got past that first stage. Little by little, a person comes back to himself and regains a sense of himself. Then he can also be stirred to love. But when someone first stands before an exalted and lofty teacher he has come to see, love cannot be his immediate response. It cannot, because at that first moment he feels as though he does not exist. The first response is bittul, self-nullification. Now, that is the first response. That is

15:13 what happens in reality. That is how it is described. He sees a person; he is speaking with a person he cannot quite take in. His first response is complete self-nullification. Afterward he gathers strength, regains a sense of himself, and can even speak and open his mouth. This is why we say before Shemoneh Esrei: “Hashem, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.” A person reaches Shemoneh Esrei and contemplates that he now stands before the Ein Sof, before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, his King and G-d. Before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, everything is utterly nullified. So his first response is complete self-nullification: “Hashem, open my lips.” He cannot even open his mouth. He asks Hakadosh Boruch Hu to open it for him; he is entirely nullified. And once he finds his way [unclear], he can reach it. This is part of why, when a person contemplates [unclear], with deep feeling and concentration—and certainly when people came to do this—his first response is awe. Afterward, as it were, he returns to himself. That is why the wording “then” is so precise: after he comes back to himself, he can immediately awaken a feeling of love within himself. That is the order of things. But we still need to understand why it truly works that way: why awe comes first and then love. What is the explanation? That is what happens, but why? There is a Chassidic explanation involving decay. As we see in the physical world, for a tree to grow, there must first be a process of decay. You take a seed and put

17:12 it in the ground; it does not grow immediately. First it has to decay. The seed decays, becomes as nothing, and only afterward does a tree begin to grow. This applies to everything. Every kind of growth comes about this way. We see it in all sorts of things, including a person’s stages of life. When someone goes through a new period in life, there is what they call, in the Renaissance, a stage of decay. It is a period of self-nullification, and afterward a new period begins. Everyone has this element of decay. It applies to our subject too. For a person to reach joy and [unclear] in the love of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the first step has to be decay—bittul, self-nullification. That is why awe comes first. Awe is self-nullification; it nullifies my sense of self. You cannot begin serving Hashem with a feeling of self-importance. Love involves a sense of self. Love is genuine; love is very important. But the first response must be self-nullification. That is why the first response is yiras Shamayim, awe of Heaven, which nullifies the ego. After that comes love. The Alter Rebbe continues and says that one then comes to love, and this itself means that... This love is explained as corresponding to the five levels of the soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. Broadly speaking, this is... This is called kelos hanefesh, the soul’s yearning to expire. There is also a story told in Chabad about the Alter Rebbe’s statement here that awe comes first, and only afterward love. There is an interesting story involving the Rebbe, from forty years ago, at the end of [unclear]. Where was it? There was a rabbi,

19:32 Rabbi Fisher [?], Rabbi Feiga [?]. Now, this year will mark forty years since the passing of the Rebbe of [unclear]. The Rebbe sat shiva for seventeen days. Many rabbis came to Lubavitch, including one rabbi who was not a chossid; he was actually from the Litvish world. He came to visit the Rebbe in [unclear]. For some reason, the Rebbe’s holiness took hold of him, and he became completely overwhelmed with bittul. The Rebbe began speaking to him, but he couldn’t answer. He was trembling, trembling. He was completely beside himself. All he managed to say was, “Rebbe, I’m afraid I’m going to become your chossid. I’m afraid I’m going to become a chossid.” The Rebbe smiled and said to him, “Why? Why? What are you afraid of? Why be afraid? It would be an honor for me.” [unclear] There was a Rebbe, a chossid from the south named Yitzchaki [?]. They say that afterward, in the middle of his discourse, the Rebbe called him over and spoke with him. Someone saw him when he returned to his place and asked whether anyone had heard what the Rebbe said. No one had. So he said, “You want to know what the Rebbe said to me? The whole time, I was thinking just one thing: When will the Rebbe take his great eyes off my swinish face?” That was the only thing on his mind. The Rebbe was speaking at length about the Chazon Ish and everything, but he couldn’t hear anything else. You see, that’s a kind of movement of self-effacement. In other words, in that moment his sense of self disappeared. And it illustrates something higher. Chassidim today see that there are two kinds of chassidim.

22:06 There is a chossid who stands near the Rebbe and becomes completely overwhelmed with bittul. He simply can’t function. And there is a chossid on an even higher level of bittul: he doesn’t become overwhelmed; when the Rebbe speaks to him, he hears. That is a higher bittul. It isn’t about being a person whose sense of self is nullified—there is no sense of self at all. Now the Rebbe wants to speak to you. Listen. But let’s not go into other matters; let’s get back to our subject. So he says here, “longing, the soul’s yearning to expire.” The point here is the soul’s yearning to expire. It doesn’t always mean a person fleeing the world, [unclear], or trembling. It simply means that he is in a state of wanting to go beyond his limits. Here, the soul’s yearning to expire means a movement of desire, a movement of being drawn onward, a movement of escape. He wants to cleave to the Master of the Universe. It is a yearning of the soul that affects the body, not an actual departure from its limits. “As it is written, ‘My soul yearns, indeed it pines...’; and it is written, ‘My soul thirsts for G-d...’; and it is written, ‘My soul thirsts for You...’” Three verses that speak about boundless love. Boundless love. There is “My soul yearns, indeed it pines”—the soul’s yearning to expire, a thirst. Then there is “My soul thirsts for G-d”—thirst, which is a matter of fire. That is “My soul thirsts.” Why did the Rebbe bring three verses here? This is understood from the Rebbe’s explanations. The three verses also correspond to the three ideas he discussed earlier. This relates to memalei kol almin. [unclear] The explanation is also given above. The Rebbe cited the verse “My soul yearns, indeed it pines” because otherwise the order of the verses is puzzling. Why does he explain it this way? He first brings “My soul yearns, indeed it pines,” from chapter 84. “My soul thirsts for G-d” is in chapter 42. “My soul thirsts for You” is Psalm

24:04 63. They aren’t in numerical order. That is because the Alter Rebbe is following the order of memalei kol almin, sovev kol almin, and “everything is considered as nothing before Him.” “My soul yearns, indeed it pines” continues, “for the courtyards of Hashem.” Courtyards represent memalei kol almin; a courtyard, [unclear]. That is memalei kol almin. “My soul thirsts for G-d, for the living G-d.” Yes, “living” refers to sovev kol almin. He is life itself, the living G-d; that refers to sovev kol almin. And “My soul thirsts for You,” [unclear], refers to the level where everything is G-dly holiness. So that is the order of the verses, from below upward: memalei kol almin, and “everything is considered as nothing before Him.” That is the point of their order. In any case, Chai Elul is upon us tonight. What happened on Chai Elul? Everyone knows the story. It is the anniversary of 770’s dedication as a home. They bought the building at 770, and the Frierdiker Rebbe moved in. That was Chai Elul 5700. The Rebbe told the well-known story: when the Frierdiker Rebbe entered 770 on Chai Elul 5700, he went into the shul and said, “May it be Hashem’s will that the prayers be inward and heartfelt, that prayer come with the delight of genuine, inward avodah.” That was a blessing, and it marked the beginning of 770 as a home—its dedication on Chai Elul. Fifty years later, in 5750, there was another dedication, for the extension of 770. After the maamar [unclear], it was Chai Elul 5750. They had expanded 770, adding what is called the library and everything connected with it. That was also in 5750, and a maamar was published then. The maamar is in Sefer Hamaamarim Melukat, volume 4, if I’m not mistaken. There is a maamar, “The World Stands on Three Things.” The Frierdiker Rebbe also delivered a maamar in 5700 called “The World Stands on Three Things.”

26:03 And in 5750, at the dedication of the extension of 770, a maamar by the Rebbe called “The World Stands on Three Things” was published for the dedication. I got up this morning and wanted to take the opportunity to mention