Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 4 - Part 2

00:01 Speaker 1 The point there is thought, speech, and action—the 613 mitzvos of the Torah. There are mitzvos performed through action, mitzvos performed through speech, mitzvos performed through thought, and so on. Now, what does the soul have to do with all this? The Alter Rebbe explains that the soul, the divine soul, is clothed in these garments. Through fulfilling a mitzvah, the soul is present in them. So the entire soul is connected with fulfilling mitzvos. Within that, he makes two general points. All 613 limbs of the soul are clothed in the Torah’s 613 mitzvos. In general, the soul has 613 limbs corresponding to the 613 mitzvos. So when I fulfill mitzvos through these garments, the entire soul is there too—all 613 limbs. More specifically, he divides this into two: the intellectual faculties and the emotional attributes. The intellectual faculties are clothed primarily in comprehending Torah—that is, in the garment of thought. Through thought, a person grasps Torah according to his capacity for understanding and the root of his soul above. In this way, the intellectual faculties of the divine soul are clothed in Torah. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to explain how this applies to the emotional attributes. The emotional attributes of the divine soul are clothed in the other mitzvos, those connected with speech and action. So let’s continue inside: “And the emotional attributes.” Yes, on page 8. Eight. Page 8, one line after the period: “And the emotional attributes.” “And the emotional attributes, which are awe and love and their branches and offshoots, are clothed in the fulfillment of the mitzvos through action and speech.” That means the emotional attributes. What are emotional attributes? Awe and love, and their branches and offshoots. So they are clothed in fulfilling the mitzvos through action and speech, including Torah study, which is equal to them all. Here the Alter Rebbe specifically mentions Torah study, which is paramount: Torah study is equal to them all. Before this,

02:31 Speaker 1 we spoke mainly about comprehending Torah, about the aspect of the mitzvah of Torah study connected with understanding. That is more closely related to the garment of thought. Now he is speaking about the mitzvah of Torah study through speech. This is the meaning of “and you shall speak of them.” Speaking words of Torah is a mitzvah connected with the emotional attributes, with love and awe, because it is a mitzvah carried out in practice. As the Alter Rebbe will explain later, love and awe are more directly relevant there. They are clothed in fulfilling the mitzvos through action and through the speech of Torah study, which is equal to them all. The emotional attributes become clothed in action. First, let’s understand this in simple terms, before we learn further. The Alter Rebbe will explain in detail how each attribute is connected with action. First, the general explanation: as is well known, the difference between intellect and emotional attributes is that intellect does not necessarily commit a person to anything. Intellect is something outside the person. Its nature is to stand apart, on a higher plane. It is as though the person himself is not there; he steps outside himself, so to speak, and considers a matter abstractly, theoretically, in a way that does not commit him to anything. So a person can grasp, reason, and understand something without that requiring him to live in practice according to what he has understood. He can understand one thing and live in the opposite way. There is the well-known story people always tell about Aristotle. Aristotle studied a great deal and was a great sage, yet in his daily life he behaved like an animal; what is more, he did very lowly things. He said that when he taught philosophy he was Aristotle, but when he was at home he was... something else. He was an animal. The two had nothing to do with each other. That

04:32 Speaker 1 is to say, even great intellect and understanding do not necessarily lead to actual practice; they do not necessarily affect one’s actions. Emotional attributes, by contrast, have an advantage over intellect: they are closer to the person. The heart reaches all his limbs and organs. The heart is the more central organ; it gives life and sends blood and vitality to all the limbs. So once something descends into feeling, into the emotional attributes, it is much more likely to lead to action. That is why the Alter Rebbe says that fulfilling the practical mitzvos specifically requires emotional attributes. And the Alter Rebbe will explain this in detail. “For love”—here the Alter Rebbe begins to spell it out. That was the general point. In particular, the Alter Rebbe says, there are two lines here: love and awe. “For love is the root of all 248 positive mitzvos.” Love, the feeling of love that is an attribute of the heart, is the root and life-force of the 248 positive mitzvos, “and from it they flow.” The fulfillment of the positive mitzvos flows from love. What is the Alter Rebbe adding with “and from it they flow”? He has already said, “Love is the root of all 248 positive mitzvos.” What does “and from it they flow” add? It seems repetitive. The explanation is simple. If you say that love is the root of the 248 positive mitzvos, that could mean love is simply the cause that leads a person to fulfill positive mitzvos. What do I mean by a cause? Like cause and effect. I have love, and that love is the cause of my later going out and actually doing something. With cause and effect, the cause can be in one place and the effect somewhere else. The cause merely brings about the effect; there is no inner connection between them. For example, take a cause and an effect. Say there is a stone here at the lookout point. There is a stone, and a person

06:53 Speaker 1 walks up and falls because the stone is there. So the stone is the cause of his fall, but there is no inner connection between the two. There could be all sorts of examples. Likewise, love could be a cause in the sense that it leads him to perform mitzvos later. Because he loves Hashem, he performs mitzvos, but the love is not felt in the mitzvos he performs. That is what the Alter Rebbe comes to add with the words “and from it they flow.” It means that love has an effect on the mitzvos, making them entirely different. The mitzvos flow from love. These are not merely a cause and an effect with no connection between them. The mitzvos flow from love. When a person loves Hashem and fulfills a mitzvah on that basis, you can see it in the mitzvah: it is a mitzvah, a living mitzvah. It is a mitzvah connected with love of Hashem. You can see in the mitzvah itself that it is connected with love of Hashem. It is a mitzvah, a living mitzvah, a mitzvah full of life. It goes together with love. And that is the true meaning of “clothed.” You can see that the emotional attributes are clothed in fulfilling the mitzvah. “Clothed” does not mean—take, for example, a person wearing a garment. The garment is clothing, but you would not say that you can see the person’s vitality in it. After all, the person is alive and the garment is not; you cannot see life in the garment. A garment is inanimate. The body is a living garment, but an ordinary garment, a piece of clothing, is inanimate. It has no life in it. It stays attached to the person and goes wherever he goes, but no one would say that the garment is alive. It is simply something external. Does

08:36 Speaker 1 the person’s putting it on bring about any change in the garment? The garment remains a garment. But when we say that love and awe are clothed in fulfilling a mitzvah, “clothed” means that they really do bring about a change. Their influence is an inner influence that changes the mitzvah in a certain way, so that it becomes an entirely different mitzvah. When a person performs a mitzvah like a machine, without love or awe, doing it only because that is how his father raised him—by rote—then it is a dry mitzvah. It is a mitzvah, but a dry mitzvah. When he does it with love and awe, by contrast, it is called a living mitzvah. That is what it means for them to be clothed in fulfilling a mitzvah: the mitzvah is alive. So this is what he says.

09:26 Speaker 2 Because after that, what is the garment? What?

09:31 Speaker 1 So that is what it says here. Let’s think about it. Speech and action, in themselves, are garments. They are separate garments, like something lifeless. But when the emotions are now clothed in speech and action, they are clothed in them inwardly and make them into something living. They bring life into them. And without it... So this is the point: the emotions of awe and love are clothed in the performance of the mitzvos, in speech and action. Where are we up to? “And from it they flow, and without it they have no true permanence.” Without love, they have no true permanence. What happens if a person has no love and awe? Think about it again. What does it mean that the mitzvos “flow from it,” from love? A person can do a mitzvah without love. So what does it mean that mitzvos flow from love? It means that mitzvos come out of love. But a person who has no love also keeps mitzvos. He keeps mitzvos without love. As we learned about beinonim, a person—even a beinoni—can keep mitzvos without a feeling of love. So the Rebbe adds here what “from it they flow, and without it they have no true permanence” means. It does not mean that you cannot keep mitzvos without love. You can keep mitzvos without love, but mitzvos without love do not have true permanence. What does that mean? Simply, true permanence means that this is something a person will always do. The Rebbe explains in Likkutei Sichos that if a person keeps mitzvos solely out of kabbolas ol, or merely out of habit, without a feeling of love, then because he has no life in the mitzvah, he may be able to keep it up for a certain time,

11:38 Speaker 1 but in the end it will not last. Eventually it will fall away. A person can go on like that for a while, but afterward either a feeling of love will awaken in him, or, if no feeling of love awakens, doing it dryly, without life, may continue for a time but will not endure. Eventually it will fall away. That is the simple meaning of “they have no true permanence”: it is there, and then it stops. It does not continue. As the sefarim say, there is a river that runs dry. Something that is not true is something that stops: the water flows for a while, and then it stops. That is called having no true permanence. But there is more to it. “They have no true permanence” does not only mean that they will stop in the future; it applies even now. The sefarim also discuss this in connection with water. There is true water and there is water that is not true. What is water that is not true? A river that runs dry once in seven years, whose water may not be used for the red heifer. What does that mean on the simple level? If, within seven years, there is a time when the water stops and the river no longer flows, it is called not true. It stops. The sefarim add that it is not only because it will stop in the future. Since it will stop in the future, that shows that even now it is not something inward, something genuine. It is not something intrinsic. “True” means two things. It means something that does not stop, that is always there. “Truth endures.” Truth is something continuous, something constant. But “true” also means that it is intrinsic—that it is not because of

13:29 Speaker 1 any outside cause. It is not because of anything external. It is not for the sake of anything else. It is something intrinsic, something inward, truly genuine. And because it is something inward, something that comes from within, it therefore does not stop. Something that is not genuine, not intrinsic, comes about because of something outside it, because of some cause. So it may be here today and gone tomorrow. Once the cause falls away, its effect falls away. But something intrinsically genuine continues forever. That applies here too: “Without them, they have no true permanence.” This includes both points. When love is missing, when a person lacks love of Hashem in what he is doing, then, first of all, there is no true permanence: it will stop; it will not endure. And even now it is not genuine. The person himself is not invested in it, so it, too, is considered something external to him. “For one who truly fulfills them loves the Name of Hashem and truly desires to cleave to Him.” What does it mean to fulfill the mitzvos truly? It means doing so with love—love of Hashem. A person who loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants to cleave to Him. He has that desire for closeness, and then he fulfills a mitzvah. Those are genuine mitzvos. Why? Because “one cannot truly cleave to Him except through fulfilling the mitzvos.” A person wants to cleave to G-dliness; love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens in him. He has a great desire to cleave to G-dliness, an inward love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So he looks for a way to cleave to Him. “What do I need to do to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu?” And he is told: “You want to cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Keep the mitzvos, because there is no other way to cleave to Him

15:13 Speaker 1 except through fulfilling the mitzvos.” “One cannot truly cleave to Him except through fulfilling the 248 precepts, which are the 248 limbs of the King,” as explained elsewhere. One can cleave to Hakadosh Boruch Hu through fulfilling the mitzvos, because they are His 248 limbs. It is like a person connecting with someone else through the body, by embracing him. Torah and mitzvos are the limbs of the King, and that is the only way a person can connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is like what we say in Shema: “Hear, O Israel,” and “You shall love.” A person awakens love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but then that love has to find expression. It says afterward: “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” A great love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens. Then he is told: “And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart”; “You shall teach them”; “You shall speak of them”; “You shall bind them.” In other words, you have love and longing for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You want to cleave to Him. How does that love find expression in practice? How do we connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Through Torah and mitzvos. The Alter Rebbe says something similar in chapter 40, explaining “Ho, all who are thirsty, go to the water.” A person is thirsty, and he is told, “Go to the water.” What is the prophet saying? A person is crying out that he is thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, but he stays right where he is. So they tell him: “You’re thirsty? Go to the water. Go and drink.” Along these lines, the Alter Rebbe says there in chapter 40: When love of Hashem awakens in a person and he has thirst and desire, he is told, “Go to the water.” Don’t stand there crying out. You have love of Hashem? Bring it into practice. Sit down and learn; fulfill mitzvos.

16:52 Speaker 1 That is how you will have a connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the point. So when a person truly loves Hashem, how is it expressed? In fulfilling the mitzvos. That is why love is the root, foundation, and life of fulfilling the mitzvos. The Rebbe Rashab, n"e, adds an explanation here in Kuntres HaAvodah. What does it mean to “truly fulfill them”? The Rebbe Rashab says there that true fulfillment—“one who truly fulfills them loves the Name of Hashem”—is possible specifically through love of Hashem. He says that true fulfillment means fulfilling them with vitality. What does true fulfillment mean? It means doing it with vitality. That is like what we explained: it is something that comes from within the person, not something external to him. That is the idea of truth and vitality. Then he adds another point: “Truly fulfilling them” means fulfilling them with hiddur, beautifying the mitzvos, and with attention to detail. All of this comes specifically through love of Hashem. In other words, love of Hashem helps not only with fulfilling the mitzvos with vitality—with the life and the genuine commitment we spoke about earlier. There is another point as well: through love of Hashem, the hiddur is much greater. When a person lacks love of Hashem, he fulfills a mitzvah for some reason or other, but not out of love. He does it out of awe, or because that is what one does, or because that is what he was taught. Even if he does it, he will do only what is required. Hiddur means beautifying it, doing more than what is written in the Shulchan Aruch. Hiddurim come specifically when there is love; then he takes special care to beautify the mitzvah. The same applies to careful attention to details. Details and hiddurim

19:06 Speaker 1 Those are two different things. Hiddurim are about beauty—doing something in a beautiful way. For example, a person can buy tefillin that meet every detailed requirement, but they may not be especially fine. Or they can be mehudar, meaning they are among the finest tefillin, written by one of the finest sofrim. That is already a matter of hiddur. It goes beyond following the Shulchan Aruch and attending to every detail. Dikdukim means the details of the laws: being meticulous about every single detail according to halachah. Hiddurim go further than that. They add beauty, sometimes even outward beauty. And all of this—the dikdukim and the hiddurim—comes specifically when there is love of Hashem. There is a story about the Rebbe Rashab, of blessed memory. We were speaking about how love of Hashem leads to cleaving to Him, and from that comes genuine fulfillment of mitzvos, with hiddur and so on. So there is a story about the Rebbe Rashab. The month of Cheshvan begins this week, and there is a very interesting incident. The Frierdiker Rebbe tells it in one of his letters, in his writings, I believe. This was in the later years, when the Rebbe Rashab was already living in Rostov. One early morning, the Rebbe Rashab sat and studied Chassidus with the Frierdiker Rebbe. He said they were studying, if I’m not mistaken, a page from the Siddur with Chassidus, and spent several hours on a profound subject and its intellectual explanations. The Rebbe Rashab discussed extremely deep ideas in Chassidus. The Frierdiker Rebbe said that, to him, they were wondrous, subtle, refined explanations that the Rebbe Rashab spoke about at length. It was early morning, around five or six. When the Rebbe Rashab finished explaining the entire intellectual content of the maamar, he began speaking about studying Chassidus and the intellectual side of Chassidus. Then he related the well-known statement of Reb Hillel of Paritch. Reb Hillel of Paritch, as is well known, was exceptionally meticulous

21:25 Speaker 1 in his observance of mitzvos, with extraordinary hiddurim and attention to detail. Reb Hillel of Paritch observed mitzvos in a remarkably beautiful way. Someone once asked him why he went so far in observing mitzvos, with so many hiddurim, stringencies, and safeguards. He said that all the hiddurim and meticulous practices he observed in fulfilling mitzvos were so that, through them, an idea in Chassidus would become clearer to him—he would understand it better. Here is one example of Reb Hillel’s meticulousness, of his hiddurim. They say that when Reb Hillel went to immerse in a river, he would not remove his yarmulke until he was in the water. He would enter the water with his yarmulke still above the surface, and as soon as he came out, it was on his head. In other words, there was not a moment when his head was uncovered. That was one of Reb Hillel’s stringencies. Once, while he was in the river, the wind blew his yarmulke away, so he stayed underwater. He did not come up. He nearly drowned there, but he would not come up without it. Eventually someone arrived, saw him, and understood what had happened. In short, the person retrieved his yarmulke, and then he came up. He was in danger for at least a short time. That is just one example of what Reb Hillel was like. Reb Hillel also wore three head coverings. Not one, not two—we are particular about two coverings—but three, all the time, day and night. They tell of a time when he was ill, with a very high

23:36 Speaker 1 fever. He was lying in bed, and the Tzemach Tzedek came to visit him. The Tzemach Tzedek saw that he was burning up with fever, yet he was lying in bed wearing three hats. So the Tzemach Tzedek took off one of his hats, saying, “You’re ill; you need to…” Then Reb Hillel asked the Tzemach Tzedek to say Chassidus, and the Tzemach Tzedek agreed. The moment the Tzemach Tzedek began saying Chassidus, Reb Hillel sprang up and put all three hats back on his head. So what did Reb Hillel say was the reason for all his hiddurim? Through hiddurim, a person becomes able to grasp the teachings of Chassidus. The Rebbe Rashab, of blessed memory, said: “That is what Reb Hillel says. I say the reverse: all the effort invested in Chassidus—all the intellectual study and the inner work of Chassidus—is so that a person will develop a geshmak, a delight, in beautifying a mitzvah.” The whole purpose of the intellectual study and the work of Chassidus is for a person to develop a geshmak in hiddur mitzvah. That is the goal. Then the Rebbe Rashab closed the book, got up, and said, “Well, it’s time for mikveh; let’s go to the mikveh.” There was only one mikveh there in Rostov. The Rebbe Rashab arrived at six in the morning, and it was still closed. Usually he would give notice the day before if he was going to the Ohel, so they would prepare the mikveh. But this time there had been no preparations. The Rebbe Rashab arrived, and the door was locked. He knocked, the attendant woke up and opened the door for him, and the Rebbe Rashab went into the mikveh. It was dirty. He called the attendant over. After all, the Rebbe had not told him he was

25:54 Speaker 1 coming. He had arrived by surprise. The mikveh was very dirty. The Rebbe Rashab went in and saw the mess: the floor was dirty, and when he reached the water, he saw what looked like flies on it and various little creatures moving around. In short, the Rebbe Rashab called the attendant, who began to cry. He had not known the Rebbe was coming; they always told him the day before. But the Rebbe Rashab said to him, “No, I deliberately came without warning or preparations, because I wanted to see what the mikveh looks like.” There is great significance to this. He told him, “You need to understand the responsibility you bear. If you don’t maintain the mikveh properly, it could lead to serious transgressions, even prohibitions punishable by stoning. If a woman goes to the mikveh and, because it is dirty, does not immerse properly, that could lead, G-d forbid, to a violation of the laws of niddah.” He reprimanded him very strongly and told him that a mikveh must always be kept clean, beautiful, and spotless. Then they began renovating the mikveh. A few years ago, this very mikveh was found. Anyone familiar with the history knows that a few years ago, in Rostov, they discovered the mikveh intact underground. It had been covered over for seventy years, and throughout that time nobody knew it was there. When they recently uncovered it, they could see that it really had been built beautifully, with features intended to make it attractive, even eighty years ago. So the ultimate purpose of Chassidus is to achieve greater hiddur in observing a mitzvah. In other words, the Rebbe says here that when one truly fulfills [unclear], specifically through Chassidus, one reaches…

27:50 Speaker 1 …[unclear], and then one comes to…