Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 5 - Part 3

00:00 The Alter Rebbe explains in chapter 5. He speaks about the union—the union brought about through Torah study. If we focus on the union of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, then the main union, the most wondrous union there is, is specifically through Torah. Although in chapter 4 the Alter Rebbe speaks generally about Torah and mitzvos—both Torah and mitzvos—when it comes to this union, Torah has an advantage that mitzvos do not have. The Rebbe explains that, in general, when we speak about two things uniting, it happens in one of two ways: either the lower encompasses the higher, or the higher encompasses the lower. One or the other. Take, for example, a teacher and student. The teacher can encompass the student: he gives the student something to learn that is beyond the student’s understanding. But first, let’s use a more physical analogy. A person can encompass an object: he takes something in his hand and surrounds it. The object is inside his hand, and the person encompasses the object. Sometimes it can be the reverse: the thing encompasses him. A person is inside a house, and the house encompasses him. So there are things that encompass me, and things that I encompass. The same applies in spiritual matters: either I encompass the thing, or it encompasses me. Now, with Torah, the Alter Rebbe explains that both things happen at the same time. A person both encompasses and is encompassed. That is the wondrous union found in Torah and nowhere else: when a person

02:39 studies Torah, in one sense he encompasses the subject he is studying. We explained that this happens both at the beginning of learning and at the end. At the beginning, he takes up the sugya and grasps it as a whole. My mind encompasses Hashem’s wisdom. At the end of learning, too, after I have finished the sugya and have the overall picture, the conclusion of the matter, I once again encompass it. But there is something else in understanding a Torah subject: I am not only encompassing; I am also encompassed. The Torah’s wisdom encompasses me. When? While I am grasping it. While I am learning, I have to enter into the subject, into the sugya, into a particular detail of the sugya. I am inside the sugya, and the sugya encompasses me. So there is encompassing and being encompassed. The Alter Rebbe then gives an example of this from Torah, from a halachic case. But we are not speaking about just any idea or any ordinary intellect. We are speaking about a higher wisdom, because, as we said earlier in chapter 4, halachah is the wisdom and will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We are speaking about the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, about His wisdom. So when a Jew studies a halachah in Torah—and the Alter Rebbe gives as an example a legal case involving a false claim, of all things—even though it is a false claim, it is still the wisdom and will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So when I study that sugya in the Gemara, which discusses a false claim, a claim of certainty versus a claim of uncertainty, and I delve into it, a wondrous union takes place between my mind and the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, His wisdom. And that union happens in two

04:24 ways. As we said, I encompass the wisdom of Hashem, and the wisdom of Hashem also encompasses me. Or, in other words, as the Tzemach Tzedek puts it, it is both encompassing and internal at the same time. Some things are encompassing, and what encompasses is not internal. Other things are internal, and what is internal does not encompass. Here you have both: something encompassing and something internal, both in the very same matter. The apparent problem is this: according to the explanation we gave in previous classes, as the Rebbe explains it in Tanya, these would happen at different times. There is a time when my mind encompasses the sugya, and a time when the sugya encompasses me. As in the Rebbe’s explanation: at the beginning of learning, I encompass the sugya. But in the middle of learning, I am inside the sugya; it is the other way around—the sugya encompasses me. And after I finish learning, I once again encompass the sugya. So where do we find both at the same time—encompassing and being encompassed simultaneously? The Rebbe explains this in one of the maamarim. It is very interesting. The Rebbe says that even after a person has finished studying a sugya, delved into it, understood it and grasped it—he now has the sugya, so seemingly his mind encompasses it and it is within him—nevertheless, since we are speaking about the wisdom of Torah, the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, which is infinite, however much I have understood is only part of it. There is always a higher part that remains encompassing, which I have not yet understood and which remains above me. So however deeply I enter into the subject and understand it, there is always another

06:19 part of the sugya that remains beyond me. It follows that, when it comes to understanding, there is always both encompassing and being encompassed. There is always the part I have grasped, the section and chapter I studied and understood. Take a sugya in Gemara that I studied, for example: I understood the explanations of the Maharsha and the Ran. I understood part of the subject; I grasped it, so I encompass it. But there are also parts I did not understand, which remain above my intellect and encompass me and my mind. It follows that even after I finish studying the sugya, there is both encompassing and being encompassed at the same time. Both are present simultaneously: he encompasses the ideas he has grasped, while other aspects remain above what he has grasped. This is like the well-known story about Reb Mendel of Horodok. As is known, for several years after the Maggid’s passing, the Alter Rebbe would travel to Reb Mendel of Horodok. The Alter Rebbe would go to him like a chossid visiting his Rebbe. Once, the Alter Rebbe was there, and Reb Mendel did not come to the gathering. They waited and waited for him to come and teach Torah, but he did not appear. After a long time, they decided to ask the Alter Rebbe—since he had a closer connection with him, something of a connection as colleagues—to go in to Reb Mendel and find out what was happening and why he had not come to the gathering. The Alter Rebbe went in to Reb Mendel of Horodok and said, “What is happening? We haven’t seen you. Everyone is waiting.” Reb Mendel told him that he had wanted to go out to the gathering, but suddenly a hundred interpretations of this Torah teaching had been revealed to him. He wanted first to think them through carefully and understand all hundred interpretations, and then he would go out to the gathering. So the Alter

08:06 Rebbe said to him, “But once you understand—once you grasp all hundred interpretations of this Torah teaching—another hundred interpretations of it will be revealed to you. As soon as you reach those hundred... It’s like sight: a person can see only so far, but when he comes closer, he sees more and more. So every time you grasp a hundred interpretations, you’ll grasp another hundred. You might as well go out and teach Torah now, and afterward you can come to understand it all.” That is the point here as well. There is the part I grasp, but every time I grasp something, I become aware of something I have not yet grasped. So there is what I encompass—what I have grasped—but there is also what encompasses me, what remains beyond my understanding. After that, there was another question someone here asked. The Alter Rebbe uses a repeated expression here. Why does the Alter Rebbe say, “When Reuven claims such-and-such, for example, and Shimon such-and-such”? Why say “such-and-such”? Why repeat the expression? Why not say, “When Reuven claims this and Shimon claims that”? What is “such-and-such”? What is even more surprising is that later the Alter Rebbe says it again: “And even if this matter never happened and never will happen.” The Alter Rebbe says it again there, but uses “such” only once: “If this one claims such and that one claims such, the ruling will be such.” Why the change? What is the reason he says “such-and-such” twice at the beginning, but later says it only once? I once heard an explanation—I remember hearing it, though right now I don’t remember it exactly. If I’m not mistaken, I heard... I’m not sure from whom. I’m not sure it was Reb Mendel, but I remember hearing a class many years ago in which the explanation of “such-and-such” was that when discussing

09:49 In a dispute between two people, when a person makes a claim, he states his own claim, but also what he disputes in the other person’s claim. There are two things here: his own argument, and how he rejects the reasoning of the other side. So he says “such and such”: one “such” is what he himself claims, and the other is how he rejects the other side’s reasoning. Well, I don’t remember now whom I heard that from. But there is an explanation from the Rebbe, a very interesting explanation. Yes, the Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation here, and it also resolves why at first the Alter Rebbe says “such and such” twice, while later he says “such” only once. The Rebbe says: Earlier, in chapter 4, we learned that a halachah—let’s start this way—a halachah is the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. At its original source, a halachah is the wisdom and will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, His wisdom. Then we say that the halachah descended and became part of the Torah; it descended and was clothed in the halachos set out before us. Then the Alter Rebbe goes on to say, at the end of chapter 4, that the halachah is clothed in physical things. In other words, there are essentially three stages here, you could say: the halachah as part of the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu above, where it is in G-dliness—something in G-dliness. As our Sages say, the entire Torah consists of the names of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Torah, essentially, concerns spiritual matters, matters above in G-dliness. We won’t go into that right now. Then the Torah descended, and the halachah before us became part of the halachos

11:38 of the Torah. Then there is the way the halachah operates in the world. It is a halachah in the Torah, but there is also the way it reaches the world as a halachah that concerns the physical world and a legal ruling—the way it is expressed in a physical case, having descended into these physical circumstances. So when Reuven and Shimon arrive in Beersheba, and Reuven and Shimon begin to argue and quarrel, one says “such and such.” There is a “such” here. There is one descent from the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu into the wisdom of the Torah, and a second descent from the wisdom in the Torah, as it is clothed in a halachah, into reality in the world, into the physical Reuven and Shimon. So this is what the Alter Rebbe says: “When Reuven claims such and such.” The meaning of “such” is “like this”—like. In other words, Reuven is a physical Reuven, a person in the world named Reuven. Reuven arrives with a tallis, yes, physically. Not the Reuven and Shimon written about in Tractate Bava Metzia. This is physical: Reuven and Shimon coming to beis din. “And Reuven claims such.” What does “Reuven claims such” mean? He makes a claim like the one written in the Gemara, like the one written in the halachah, in the Mishnah. So Reuven claims “such.” And the “such” in the Mishnah is like the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the way it is studied in Atzilus. That entire Mishnah about two people holding a tallis exists in G-dliness, in the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the meaning of “such and such.” Yes? One “such” is what Reuven claims, the claim written in the halachah; and the second “such” is that the halachah itself descends from that matter as it exists in G-dliness, in the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is “such and such.” Shimon claims “such and such” in the same way, and the ruling is “such and such.”

13:41 So here too, that is the meaning of “such and such.” The physical Reuven acts like the case in the Mishnah, and the Mishnah is like the way it is studied in Atzilus. “Such and such.” But that is the Alter Rebbe’s first instance. In the second instance, when the Alter Rebbe speaks of a case that never has happened and never will happen—when he speaks of a halachah that does not occur in the world—he says: “Even if this matter never has happened and never will happen, with people coming to court over these claims and demands.” So here you have no physical reality in the world, because it never has happened and never will happen. It is a halachah that will never arise physically in the world. All that remains is the halachah as it is written in the Mishnah. It is a Mishnah, but it will never happen in the world. It is a halachah whose case does not exist in reality—an idolatrous city, for example, or other cases about which it says that they never happened and never will happen. So when you study the Mishnah, you have only one “such”: the Mishnah is like the way the matter exists in the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But you do not have the second “such,” the physical one, because physically it never happens. That is why, the second time, when he speaks about a halachah that will not occur in reality, he says “such” only once. So here you see how interesting it is, how precise every word in Tanya is. The repeated wording and every detail are absolutely precise. What the Alter Rebbe says here, “such”—yes, it is all absolutely precise. What is the Alter Rebbe adding with this point? Incidentally, we’re talking here about two people holding a tallis—this very Gemara is what everyone is studying now in yeshivah.

15:34 I don’t know if you’ve seen this. There is a note by the Frierdiker Rebbe. Everyone knows that in many works of Chassidus, when maamarim discuss how a matter is studied below and also above, they always bring the example of two people holding a tallis. You see it in many works of Chassidus. There are two examples that come up in many works of Chassidus: “I am glad to call you Meir,” and two people holding a tallis. There is a note by the Frierdiker Rebbe from 5685, I think—5684 or 5685—about a night vision. He writes that in this vision, a Rebbe from Shimchin[unclear] came to him and told him, “In your Rosh Hashanah maamar, speak about this. Include the subject of two people holding a tallis. Explain that passage,” because it related to a matter that needed to be settled there, something very heavenly. He asked him to include an explanation of two people holding a tallis. I don’t remember exactly. We’ll have to look it up later. I read it a long time ago; I need to check precisely how the story goes. But what I remember is that there was something in heaven, some judgment that needed to be settled, so he asked him to mention two people holding a tallis in the Rosh Hashanah maamar, with the explanation according to Chassidus, in order to settle matters there. You can see from this that when the Rebbes spoke Chassidus, it was not merely talk. They also settled matters above by saying Chassidus in this way. There is the whole explanation of two people holding a tallis, involving a spark of a soul and two souls, and whose spark it is, and so on. It came up for a reason. It did not come up for no reason;

17:29 it was to settle matters above. It is all here. What is the Alter Rebbe adding here? The Alter Rebbe goes on to say that even if this matter will never happen, nevertheless, since this is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu willed, when a person studies it, he unites with the wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What is the Alter Rebbe adding with this point? “Even if this matter never has happened and never will happen”—what does he want to add by that? Why does it belong here? He has already explained that through Torah study we unite with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What does he want to add with this point about a case that never has happened and never will happen? So, briefly, the point of the explanation is this: If we were to say that all the Torah’s halachos concern only practical cases, things that will actually occur in the world, we might think that the Torah and mitzvos are not the intrinsic will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Take, for example, a person of tremendous intellect, an extraordinary thinker with the deepest ideas, and you see him tying his shoes. He is doing something that does not express his intellect. Or he is fixing something there. Is that his wisdom? Is that what shows how wise he is? No, it has nothing to do with it. But is he doing it in practice? Yes. Why? Because he needs to. He needs shoes to walk down the street, and something happened—the lace tore—so he fixes it. No one would say that this is his great wisdom. In practice, he needs it. The matter has to be taken care of, so he deals with it.

19:19 That still doesn’t reveal that this is his deep wisdom. We could have thought the same thing about Torah and mitzvos. If all of Torah and mitzvos dealt only with laws that have practical application, we might have said that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself is above all of this; it has no connection to Him. Rather, there is a world, and certain matters in the world need to be put in order. We need laws; we need to know how to conduct ourselves. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “Act this way; act that way.” We wouldn’t have grasped what Torah and mitzvos truly are. But there are laws about things that never happened and never will happen—things that, in reality, could never occur—and we study them. This reveals that wisdom and will are not there merely because there is a world that needs to be perfected, and therefore there are Torah and mitzvos. It reveals that Torah and mitzvos are intrinsic. Whether something has practical application or not, we need to study it because it is intrinsic. That’s how it is. This is Hashem’s Torah. That’s why the Rebbe wants to show how profound Torah and mitzvos are, even the part that has no practical application. It reveals that they are Hashem’s own wisdom and will, and when a Jew studies them, he becomes united with Him. So the Alter Rebbe says: “And this is a wondrous union.” Here on page eighteen: “And this is a wondrous union, the like of which, or anything comparable to it, is not found at all in the physical realm: to become truly one and united from every side and angle.” This union, in which something is both encompassing and internal at once, is something for which we have no analogy in the physical world. In the physical world, something is either encompassing or internal. It can’t be both at once. For both to happen—that you encompass it and it encompasses you—that

20:59 doesn’t work. It’s one or the other. But here we’re saying that you have both in the same thing. This is possible only with wisdom, and specifically with the wisdom of Torah. As we explained in the previous class, you could say that this exists in other fields of knowledge too. Every kind of wisdom has this, but in other fields there is separateness: the wisdom, the concept being understood, and the person understanding it are all separate things. Here, it is all one. I am studying Hashem’s wisdom, and I have Hashem Himself, because He is the wisdom itself. So this is the greatest unity there can be. “And this is an exceedingly great and wondrous advantage, without end, that the mitzvah of knowing and comprehending Torah has over all the practical mitzvos, and even over mitzvos performed through speech, and even over the mitzvah of Torah study performed through speech. For through all the mitzvos performed through speech and action, Hakadosh Boruch Hu clothes the soul and surrounds it with the light of Hashem from head to foot.” This is the great advantage being discussed here. The Rebbe says that mitzvos are not wisdom; mitzvos are the supernal will. A Jew knows that when he fulfills a mitzvah, Hashem’s will is drawn upon him. But this is something encompassing. Will is encompassing, and so its effect on the soul is also encompassing. The relationship takes the form of something encompassing. It is only encompassing because there is just one side here: Hashem surrounds the soul. There is no second side, in which the soul grasps and takes hold of something of Hashem. A mitzvah is will, and will is encompassing. So with a mitzvah, Hashem surrounds me; there is only one side to the union. But with a law of Torah, “besides the intellect being clothed in Hashem’s wisdom, Hashem’s wisdom is also within it.” You have both.

22:42 Hashem’s wisdom is within you, and you are also within that wisdom—it surrounds you. The mind comprehends, grasps, and encompasses in its understanding whatever it can grasp and comprehend of the knowledge of Torah. Here you have a summary of it all. At once, you have both something encompassing and something internal. This unity of the encompassing and the internal at the same time exists only in Torah. And what are we learning from all this? What is the Alter Rebbe teaching us here? The Alter Rebbe is teaching us how wondrous Torah study is. As we’ve said, other maamarim discuss various advantages of mitzvos, of Torah, and of other matters—making a dwelling place in the lower realms. There are things in which mitzvos have an advantage over Torah. But here we’re talking about achieving unity, a deep, internal bond. That belongs specifically to Torah. And it doesn’t have to be Torah study about matters with practical halachic application. It can be any subject in Torah, even something that never happened and never will happen. On the contrary, when it never happened and never will happen, it expresses the intrinsic will even more. So when a Jew studies Torah—Hashem’s wisdom, the laws of Torah—and understands the whole matter with his mind, he has the most wondrous thing there can be.