Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 5 - Part 5

00:00 So the Rebbe explains the point here. After explaining the great advantage of Torah over mitzvos, and how this involves the encompassing and the internal, and so on, the Rebbe explains that this also helps us understand another advantage of Torah: Torah is the bread and nourishment of the soul. Why is it called the bread and nourishment of the soul? The name is precise. Why bread and nourishment? Because it is like bread. It enters a person inwardly, becomes one with him, and thereby gives him life. It sustains the body. The same is true of a Jew’s soul and Torah. When a Jew learns Torah, Torah is nourishment for the soul—provided that he studies it properly, in depth. If he learns Torah only in an encompassing way, as we explained in the previous class, it is like a person who eats but does not eat properly. The food does not become one with him as it should. He eats quickly, without chewing his food properly, so it remains, in a sense, something external to him. It does not satisfy him or give him life and sustenance. He has to eat in a way that allows the food to enter him and become one with him. In Torah, that happens specifically when one studies with intellectual depth—when he delves into it, studies its details thoroughly, and truly grasps it. Through intellectual study, it becomes one with his mind and, consequently, with his soul. Then it becomes nourishment for the soul. That is how the Alter Rebbe concludes here, at the top of page 10. “Until it is grasped by his intellect.” Let’s begin two lines—two words—down, eighteen lines down.

02:02 “So, too, with the knowledge and comprehension of Torah in the soul of a person who studies it well, with the concentration of his intellect.” A person studies Torah properly, in depth, “until it is grasped by his intellect”—until the Torah he studies is grasped, as we learned earlier. “Grasped” means that it enters him inwardly and becomes one with him. The Torah he studies becomes one with the person studying it, “and he with it”—that is, with his intellect—“and they become one,” literally one thing. “It becomes nourishment for the soul and life within it, from the Life of life, the blessed Ein Sof.” When the Torah he studies becomes, as we said earlier, a “wondrous union, the like of which, and anything comparable to it, cannot be found in the physical world: that they should become one and truly united from every side,” then they are truly one thing. You cannot say where one begins and the other ends—where the person begins and his understanding ends, or where his understanding begins and the person ends. His mind, the Torah, and the person become truly one. Then it becomes “nourishment for the soul and life within it, from the Life of life, the blessed Ein Sof, Who is clothed in His wisdom and His Torah, which are within it.” Since the blessed Ein Sof is clothed in the Torah, and the Torah is clothed in his mind, he receives life from the blessed Ein Sof. The same is true of eating. In simple terms, a person eats. What does it always say in the siddur? We sustain ourselves by eating bread. But when we eat bread, our sustenance does not come only from its physical substance. When I eat bread, my body’s sustenance and life do not come only from the bread’s physical substance. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of Hashem.” Within the bread is what proceeds from the mouth of Hashem. As Chassidus explains, there is a Divine spark, the word of Hashem, within the bread.

04:33 And that Divine spark within the bread is what gives me the strength to live. That is the true life. Yes, as the Baal Shem Tov says. Here, the Alter Rebbe emphasizes a particular point about studying in depth. Why must study specifically be in depth? The Alter Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation in this chapter. There is an advantage to covering material as well, but the whole point of his answer here is to emphasize the advantage of in-depth study. What is its particular advantage? That it enters inwardly. The answer, then, is an inner union. If someone merely covers the material, it is not an inner union. An inner union comes specifically through studying in depth—learning well and understanding, truly comprehending the subject. Only then is there an inner union with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Only then does it become “nourishment for the soul and life within it.” In one of the Rebbe’s sichos, the Rebbe discussed a further dimension of this. He went deeper into the halachic side of why study must specifically be in depth. The Rebbe said that the mitzvah of learning Torah is “You shall meditate on it day and night.” Neglecting Torah study is a very serious matter. The Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, chapter 1, that regarding someone who can engage in Torah study but does not, our Sages made a most severe statement. Neglecting Torah study is very serious. Now, neglecting Torah study is not only a matter of quantity—not only a question of whether one studies or does not study. A person has a mind, and that mind must be occupied with Torah. That is the mitzvah of Torah study: that my mind should be immersed

09:03 in Torah. Now, if my mind is capable of understanding more deeply, but I merely cover the material—if I do not make the effort to understand it more deeply and study only superficially—then part of me, part of my intellect, is neglecting Torah study. This is the Rebbe’s point. Yes? It turns out that not all of a person’s intellect is engaged in Torah study. A person has intellectual capacity; his intellect can grasp a certain amount. If I use only one percent of my mind because I am merely covering the material, then I am using only one percent—one percent, five percent, only a portion. It follows that the remaining percentage of my intellect is not engaged in Torah. So part of the person is not learning Torah; that part is neglecting Torah study. In effect, while he is learning, part of him is not learning. One part is learning and another part is not, so he is also neglecting Torah study. That is the [unclear]. That is why in-depth study is so important. But a person is flesh and blood and has limits. We cannot study in depth twenty-four hours a day. Right? So we also need to cover material. Besides, covering material helps with in-depth study. When a person has a broad base of knowledge, it helps him study in depth. After all, if a person learns only five pages of Gemara all year, his mind will [unclear]. He also needs to cover material, because ultimately that helps him study in depth. That is why we do not study only in depth all the time. But looking at the matter closely, if a person is able to study in depth and settles for merely covering material, then, in a subtle sense, he is neglecting Torah study even while he learns,

10:55 because part of his mind is not learning. There is something else. I heard this from Reb Yoel; I heard it from him myself, and it is written in a book as well, though I do not know where. He told of a chossid of the Tzemach Tzedek called Ephraim Yosef[unclear], Yosef the Maggid[unclear]. He was the Tzemach Tzedek’s uncle, and he was a very great chossid, a holy man. They tell extraordinary, wonderful stories about him. Yes. Reb Yoel said that Rabbi Yosef would say that if a person learns Chassidus by merely covering the material rather than studying it in depth, it is not considered learning at all. That is what Ephraim Yosef[unclear] would say: it is considered not learning. Why? Because Torah has an outer dimension and an inner dimension. Nigleh is called the outer dimension of Torah, while Chassidus is called its inner dimension. With the outer dimension of Torah, if you grasp it only on the surface, you have grasped something. But if you grasp the inner dimension of Torah only on the surface, you have grasped nothing. The inner dimension of Torah is inward, and to grasp it requires an inward approach. “Inward” means studying in depth. It means a person brings himself fully into the subject. If he learns just to acquire information, he is learning on the surface. You cannot learn the inner dimension of Torah from the outside; it does not work. You cannot grasp its inner dimension that way. There were [unclear] who did so. Reb Yoel would often take us to task for not learning Chassidus properly—not working at it, not trying to understand it, just learning a bit here and moving on, without putting our minds to work to understand. He would tell us this saying. I heard it from him several times. I am telling this story to emphasize this point, that

12:48 Chassidus in particular. The study of Chassidus has to have quality. To study the inner dimension of Torah, you have to bring the inner powers of your soul to it—the inner powers of your mind. You have to work hard with your head to understand it. Of course, one needs to work harder in the revealed parts of Torah as well. And to emphasize this point, the end. Thank you. Let’s continue. The Alter Rebbe says here: “As it is written in Eitz Chaim, Gate 44, chapter 3, concerning the garments of the souls in Gan Eden.” Now, the mitzvah. This point we made—that Torah specifically is food—is not merely a figure of speech in the verse. It is meant literally: Torah specifically is something internal. Specifically food; specifically Torah is food. This also has a basis in what Eitz Chaim says. Eitz Chaim speaks about what the soul receives through Torah and mitzvos. Eitz Chaim says that the garment—and the reward for a mitzvah—is commensurate with the mitzvah. Chassidus explains that the reward for a mitzvah is not like reward in general. There are two kinds of reward. There is the reward of a person who works and receives a salary. There is no inherent connection between the work he does and the salary he receives. A person works as a teacher and is given money. The money does not come from the teaching; it comes from somewhere else. He needs to support his family. The pay and the work are two separate things with no inherent connection. But there is also what is called a natural reward: a reward that comes as a result of the very action a person performs. When we speak about the reward for a mitzvah, the reward is a result of the action itself. The reward for a mitzvah is the result of the very thing he does. That is the reward. Consequently, the reward must correspond to the action he performs. The soul in Gan Eden receives a reward for Torah and mitzvos. So from the reward, we can understand the nature of the Torah and mitzvos that produced it. That is what he is saying here. Eitz Chaim says that the soul in Gan

14:55 Eden has a garment and has food. In Gan Eden, the soul also eats. There is food in Gan Eden. We tell children that Gan Eden has all sorts of things in it. Some people even take the language of the Midrashim literally. When simple people hear “Gan Eden,” they picture trees and flowers and so on. There are rivers of gold, horsemen. The Midrashim describe all sorts of things in Gan Eden in seemingly physical terms. There is also the well-known wording: “The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah.” That, too, uses physical language: they sit, and they have crowns on their heads. All these physical descriptions have spiritual meaning. So the Alter Rebbe says that in Gan Eden the soul has garments and food. The soul has garments in Gan Eden. Those garments are the mitzvos. The mitzvah I perform down here becomes my garment in Gan Eden. Through the mitzvah I fulfill now, I have garments above. And Torah is the soul’s food—Torah studied for its own sake. So the garments are the mitzvos, and Torah is the food. The soul’s food in Gan Eden comes from the Torah it studied in this world. Now, in one of the Rebbe’s notes, the Rebbe focuses on the wording, “The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah.” There are two things there. “The righteous sit with their crowns on their heads”—Torah. What does that mean? A crown represents something encompassing. And “enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah”—enjoyment is internal. These are the two things the Tanya discusses here. The reward in Gan Eden has two forms: an encompassing reward and an internal reward. “Their crowns on their heads”—Torah—is encompassing,

17:14 the encompassing reward the soul receives. And there is “enjoying the radiance of the Shechinah,” an internal reward. In simple terms, in Gan Eden there are things the soul can grasp and understand. That is its food. It is not actual food or eating; it means that there are aspects of G-dliness with which the soul in Gan Eden unites inwardly. That is its food: aspects of G-dliness. The soul in Gan Eden comprehends, grasps, and absorbs them; they enter it inwardly and become completely united with it. That is its food, and that is the reward for the Torah one studies in this world. A Jew studies Torah in depth in this world, and when he reaches the world above, he receives an internal reward. He receives access to aspects of G-dliness that he can now understand inwardly. And then there is an encompassing reward. The mitzvah I perform makes a garment for the soul. What does “encompassing” mean? There are aspects of G-dliness that cannot be revealed inwardly. They are lofty aspects of G-dliness, beyond measure and limitation, which a person cannot grasp inwardly even in Gan Eden. So they affect him only in an encompassing way. What does that mean? There are several possibilities. It may mean faith, or that it brings him to bittul, or that it affects him in some other way. We would need to examine exactly what its effect is. But in any case, some things act in an encompassing way. These are called the soul’s garments, as distinct from the soul’s food. There is a well-known story about this. The Tzemach Tzedek related a story he heard from the Alter Rebbe. I do not remember all the details exactly, but the gist is that the Alter Rebbe once told the Tzemach Tzedek that during an ascent of the soul, when he was in the world above, he saw a place in Gan Eden from which a great light shone. There was some

19:37 place, some level in Gan Eden, with an extraordinary light. He inquired about the soul on that level and learned that it belonged to a simple man. He was someone who had lived his life as a simple man, an ordinary wagon driver. So the Alter Rebbe began to investigate: Why had this soul, apparently a simple man, merited such a great reward? Why was there such a great light in his place in Gan Eden? He learned that the man really had been simple, but there was one thing he had been exceptionally careful about: saying the letters of Torah. He recited words of Torah all the time. He knew several chapters of Tehillim and several chapters of Mishnah. He knew some passages of Torah, and he recited the letters of Torah constantly, without limit. Even though he was an unlearned man and there were matters of Torah and mitzvos he did not know, and so on—he was a simple man—he recited the letters of Torah so abundantly that, as the Alter Rebbe says later, the letters of Torah have an aspect of breath, [unclear], and that is encompassing. There is an encompassing effect of the letters, just as there is an encompassing effect of mitzvos. So the encompassing effect of the letters of Torah brought a great light upon him. But the Alter Rebbe said that the problem was that this man had not developed internal vessels; he had not studied a topic in depth. For him, it was only the letters. So, if I remember correctly, what happened was that he had a very great light, but it was all encompassing. It was all encompassing, and inwardly he had no vessel to receive the revelation of his Gan Eden. It was all encompassing. The Alter Rebbe put it this way: It is like a person

21:30 who has very long clothes. What does he gain? The clothes are long. That does not help. So the Alter Rebbe also told the Tzemach Tzedek that a person must make sure to prepare himself inwardly as well, so that his vessels will be suited to…