Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 18 - Part 2

00:00 Speaker 1 Since we’ve started learning Tanya from the text, I think everyone should have a Tanya too, so they can follow along inside. I don’t want to spend time on this now, but we need to make sure there are copies of Tanya available outside as well. That way Tanya is at hand, and we can look inside more. So the Rebbe begins here in chapter 18 by explaining the meaning of the verse, “For the matter is very near to you.” It isn’t just near—that we already explained in the previous chapter, chapter 17. Now the Alter Rebbe is focusing on the fact that the verse says very near. It means that Torah and mitzvos are near to us in the sense of “in your heart”—they are truly very near. How do we explain that? The Rebbe begins by explaining that, although we said earlier that the way to attain love and fear of Hashem is through contemplation, and that “in your heart” is near to everyone because each person has a mind and faculties with which to contemplate and attain love and fear, nevertheless, even a person who cannot do that for some reason—whether he lacks knowledge or lacks the capacity for deep contemplation, and therefore finds it difficult to concentrate and arouse love and fear through contemplation—even he can attain “in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” He can observe all 613 mitzvos, turning away from evil and doing good in every detail, and do so with love and fear as well. But what kind of love and fear? Not love and fear that come from contemplation, but love and fear that every Jew possesses. In other words, through the love and fear—the hidden love in the heart of every Jew. This love and fear come from the hidden love that the Jewish people possess, which is an inheritance from our forefathers. That is the love we are going to discuss

02:43 Speaker 1 now. First of all, the Alter Rebbe calls this love “hidden love.” That is its name. What does “hidden” mean? He says it is hidden in the heart of every Jew. In the simplest sense, “hidden” means it is there. Hidden love is present in each and every person. “Hidden” means it is not revealed or immediately apparent, but it is there. To understand this, think of the difference between the love children have for their parents, or siblings have for one another, and the love between friends and the like. The love between siblings, or between a child and a father, is there, but they do not necessarily feel it or think about it all the time. It is natural; that is simply how it is. It is hidden not necessarily because something is concealing it, but because it is something essential, something natural, something deeply rooted in the soul. It is there by virtue of their very essence. In the same way, every Jew has a love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu that is hidden in the heart of the Jewish people. It is something natural in a Jew’s soul. In the chapters that follow, the Alter Rebbe will also explain a second meaning of “hidden”: that this love is concealed by the sackcloth garments of kelipah. That is another matter. He will explain in chapter 19 that there is another kind of concealment, in which the G-dly soul is covered over. But the simple meaning of “hidden” is what we have been discussing. The author of Tanya says this applies to each and every person—that it is something everyone possesses. He explains that this is because it is an inheritance. We did not go out and acquire it; we received it as an inheritance. That is the whole point of inheritance, and we will study it in detail shortly.

04:36 Speaker 1 But the fundamental point about inheritance is that it passes on naturally. Inheritance has nothing to do with a person’s efforts, with whether he achieved something or did something. It comes naturally from father to son. Here too, this hidden love is “an inheritance to us from our forefathers.” We received it as an inheritance. It is something natural, passed down among the Jewish people and present within them by nature. Now the author of Tanya will begin to explain the point. This is the foundation of the chapters we are about to learn: every Jew, whoever he may be, even if complex explanations and lofty spiritual levels are beyond him, can fulfill “in your mouth and in your heart.” He can be complete in thought, speech, and action, turn away from evil and do good, and be careful about every detail. And not only can he observe the positive and negative mitzvos; he can do so with a feeling of love and fear of Hashem. That too is near to him. But what kind of love and fear? Love and fear that come from the hidden love. That is the foundation, and the author of Tanya is now going to develop it. To introduce the subject, he asks four questions. Just look inside. A little further on in Tanya, the author writes: “But first we must thoroughly explain”—to understand how every Jew can fulfill all these mitzvos, we first need to explain several points—“the root of this love and its nature, how it is an inheritance to us, and how fear is included in it as well.” So there are four questions here. The first is about “the root

06:34 Speaker 1 of this love.” What is the root of this love? What exactly is the question? It is very simple. As we discussed in the previous chapter, and as we learned at the beginning of Tanya, love is generally an emotion of the heart. How is love aroused? Through the intellect. A person contemplates something with his mind, and that contemplation gives rise to a feeling. That is how it works: emotions result from thought. So if someone asks, “I love a certain person, or I love something in particular—singing, a singer, studying a particular field of wisdom. I feel drawn to something. Why do I love it? What is the root of that love?” What does “the root” mean? What is the reason? How did you come to love it? The answer is that I understood intellectually that this thing, or this person, has special qualities, and therefore I love it. So the root of the love is the intellect—the thought and understanding that gave rise to it. But here you say that hidden love does not come from the intellect; it is an inheritance. In other words, it is not an intellectual matter. If so, where does it come from? What is its root? Until now we knew that the root of love is the intellect. There are fathers and children: Chochmah and Binah are the fathers, as you see in the chapters, and the emotions are born from the intellect. Here you say that this love does not come from Chochmah and Binah. So what is its root? That is the first question. The second question the Alter Rebbe asks is contained in one word: “its nature.” What does that mean? In Chassidus, we often encounter the word “inyan,” meaning the point or purpose of something. In Castilian, you might say objetivo—what is the objective? What are you trying to achieve? As you might ask in Hebrew, “What do you want with this? Where are you trying to get through it?” That is what “its nature” means here: what is sought, what is its purpose? So what is the question? What is the purpose of this love? What is sought through it? Where do you want this love to lead? What is the substance of the question? It is this:

08:48 Speaker 1 When a person loves something or someone, every love has something it seeks. It has a purpose; love is a means. For example, I love this person. Why? Because he is wise and teaches me wisdom. Through him I become wiser; I learn things. A person who loves wisdom also loves someone who teaches him and gives him wisdom. Or I love someone because he has good character traits, so I learn good character traits from him and receive good from him. Whenever there is love, there is something sought through that love—some benefit, some purpose. Through this love I gain something; I get something from it. That does not have to be selfish, G-d forbid. I do not mean gaining something for my ego. But there must be something one seeks, even in matters of G-dliness. That is what we are discussing here. A person loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So what does it mean to say, “I love Hakadosh Boruch Hu”? I

10:38 Speaker 1 I love Hakadosh Boruch Hu because Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives me life. Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the best thing, the truest thing. Because “closeness to G-d is good for me,” because it is good in my eyes, because “He is your life.” Chassidus explains at length various things that a person seeks through this love. As you see earlier in Tanya, when someone loves another person, he wants to be close to him, and he wants to... So you know that by observing the mitzvos, you draw close to G-dliness. That is why you want to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is what we mean by what a person is seeking—the particular point. Now, generally, if you want to know what the person is seeking, that also depends on his contemplation. What is the aim of this love? It depends on what he contemplated. If I contemplated that G-dliness is good, then what I seek will be the goodness of G-dliness. That is what I am looking for. If my contemplation was that G-dliness is truth, that it is life—“for He is your life”—then what I seek will be: I want life. If the contemplation is that G-dliness is wisdom, is understanding, that G-dliness is, is, is true wisdom, I don’t know—then that is what you will look for in it. In other words, what you seek will also follow what you contemplate. What do you want to achieve through this love? To quench your thirst. It says, “I am thirsty”; I want something, and through G-dliness you quench that thirst, and so on. So what a person seeks depends on how, on what I understood; that will also determine what I seek, the benefit. What do I want to gain? But here the question comes up again: Since we are saying that this hidden love is not connected with intellect, not connected with contemplating a particular subject, as we said earlier, the question still remains: What is the point? What is the aim of this love? Where do I

12:25 Speaker 1 want to get with this love? To receive, to unite, to draw close—what am I seeking? So that is another question. But the Rebbe will explain this in the following chapters. In chapter 19 he will answer this question. Then there is a third question: How is it an inheritance? Yes, how do we receive it as an inheritance? What is the question here? The third question. How? Ah, okay. How do we receive it as an inheritance? What is the question? The question is this: Awe and love are an inheritance. Those are two things that don’t go together. How can you inherit love? That isn’t the usual sort of thing. What does a person generally inherit? You can inherit property. Your father left a house, left a car, left money. So people pass things on as an inheritance, right? They pass on things. To pass on love as an inheritance is something else... Sometimes you might say that you don’t only inherit money; sometimes you can also inherit a character trait. Sometimes a person receives—his father is a wise man, so the child will also be a wise man. The father is a good person; the child will also be good. But with character traits, that isn’t inevitable. First of all, not necessarily. Not always. Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. Why? “The sons of Torah scholars are not Torah scholars.” The Gemara discusses this. Torah scholars don’t always have sons who are Torah scholars; there are various reasons for that. In other words, the son will not necessarily be like the father in his character traits. But even if he is, that still has nothing to do with love. Love is something that moves me emotionally in a specific way. For example, say in the physical world there is someone who loves a certain food, right? My father likes eating fish. I don’t like eating fish. Is that supposed to be inherited? Because my father likes it, do I have to like it? My father likes

14:41 Speaker 1 it; I don’t like it. That is a general question. And it applies quite plainly to love, because this also relates to what we said earlier. Love is connected with some sort of explanation, some sort of understanding. A person understands that a certain thing is good and is therefore drawn to it, or he has grown accustomed to it, or... There can be all kinds of explanations. The son doesn’t have to have that love. The son may understand different things, understand them differently, think differently, or see it differently from his father, or he may not have grown accustomed to it. There could be a thousand reasons. So love is not something you can describe with the word “inheritance.” Again, even if we say that certain things probably do get passed on, logically speaking, that still doesn’t mean they have to. Here you are saying that every Jew has this. How can you say that? You could say that many Jews inherited it, or some Jews did. But to say that every Jew, by virtue of being a Jew, has love—how can you say that love is inherited? The only thing we know in our world that is certain to be inherited, that cannot fail to be inherited, is the essence. What do I mean by “essence”? If you are a human being, you will give birth to human beings. An animal is not born from a human being; that is how things normally work. Yes, a human being gives birth to a human being. A bird is not born from a human being. A donkey is not born from a bird. There is the essential part: a human being gives birth to a human being. An animal gives birth to an animal; a plant produces a plant. Yes, that is something essential. Essence is something that is passed on automatically. It is something that—you know, a human being is born a human being. But what kind of

16:38 Speaker 1 person? Whether he will be wise or foolish, and especially when it comes to his traits, whether he will love one thing or another—that is not something essential, so it is not inherited. And that is the depth of the Alter Rebbe’s question: “How is it an inheritance?” Here you are saying that every Jew inherits love of Hashem. Love is not inherited. The last question: “And how does it also include awe?” The fourth question, says the Alter Rebbe, is: How does awe enter into this love? You say that every Jew has a certain love. On the other hand, we say that to observe Torah and mitzvos, to turn from evil and do good, you need not only love but awe as well. Yes, to be careful about all 248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions in their entirety, you need not only love of Hashem but awe of Hashem as well. With love alone, you still will not be a beinoni. You need both love and awe. We have hidden love, but where does awe come into it? So that is the fourth question: “And how does it also include awe?” How, in simple terms, does awe enter into hidden love? Love and awe are two opposite qualities. They are not just two separate things; they are opposites. Love and awe are opposites. So if love of Hashem is in our nature, where is the element of awe in it?

18:07 Speaker 2 In the love through which one believes that one will face judgment—how does that raise the question as well?

18:13 Speaker 1 Noach the prophet. Oh, that helps me explain it. Yes. So the Alter Rebbe—this is exactly the distinction. When it comes to contemplation, the Alter Rebbe explains that one particular contemplation arouses love, while another particular contemplation arouses awe. If a person wants to arouse love and awe, there is a contemplation for love and a contemplation for awe. The contemplation that leads to love has to do with closeness, while the contemplation that leads to awe has to do with distance. You contemplate closeness, and that gives rise to love. You contemplate how wondrous and exalted and great He is, and rebellion, and all kinds of things, and that arouses awe. You actually need two different contemplations. But here you are saying no: here, you are saying that it all comes from one place, hidden love. So that is love. Where is awe in it? After all, to be a beinoni you also need awe. So where is it here? That is the fourth question. How does it all come together? Do you agree? Good. So it is two lines. But when you look carefully, you see that every word here matters. There is a deep, fundamental question here about the whole subject of the hidden love we are discussing. And now the Alter Rebbe begins to answer the question. The Alter Rebbe says: “The explanation is that the Patriarchs are indeed the chariot.” The central point of the Alter Rebbe’s explanation is that “the Patriarchs are indeed the chariot.” “Therefore, they merited to draw down nefesh, ruach, and neshamah to their descendants after them, forever.” Because the Patriarchs are indeed the chariot, they merited to draw down and give nefesh, ruach, and neshamah to every Jew for all time. What does that mean here? So here he answers the first and third questions—how does awe come together with it? The Ari says this. No, sorry, sorry, sorry, I made a mistake. The Ari first answers the third question. What was the third question? “How is it an inheritance?” That is the question he answers first. “How is it an inheritance?” What

20:41 Speaker 1 The third question was: How can love be inherited? Love isn’t something that comes by inheritance. So the Rebbe answers that love of Hashem is not a character trait. Love of Hashem is part of one’s essence. What did we explain earlier, when we raised the question? Something essential, something intrinsic, is passed on by inheritance. That’s certain. From a father, from a parent: a speaking being gives rise to a speaking being, a living being to a living being, an inanimate thing to an inanimate thing, and a plant to a plant. In other words, essence is inherited. Anything that isn’t part of the essence may or may not be inherited. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but it’s not certain. So that’s really the answer to the question. But the love of Hashem we’re discussing here isn’t love as a character trait. If love is a trait, a quality, then the son might indeed have it or he might not. Here we’re saying that we received love of Hashem from the Patriarchs because the Patriarchs were a vehicle for G-dliness. For them, love of Hashem was not a particular trait or quality of the soul. For the Patriarchs, love of Hashem was bound up with being a vehicle. What does “vehicle” mean? It means that your entire existence consists of having no independent existence. Your entire existence is to be a vehicle. You have no existence of your own, no agenda of your own; your whole existence is that the rider acts through you. That is a vehicle, and that is what the Patriarchs were. “They themselves were the vehicle.” Notice the precise wording: “They themselves were the vehicle” means that being a vehicle was their essence. A person might act a certain way in one particular matter and thereby be a vehicle. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. Of the Patriarchs it says, “They themselves were the vehicle”: being a vehicle was their entire essence. The Rebbe says more about this later, in the following chapters—chapter 23 and chapter 34. The Rebbe says that—

22:49 Speaker 1 at every moment, there wasn’t a single second when they ceased to be a vehicle for G-dliness. This was true of every limb. In one place the Rebbe says “all their limbs,” and the Rebbe says [unclear]. That’s the precise point: all their limbs—love of Hashem permeated every limb. That is when it becomes your essence. Someone else might have a commitment to a particular matter, a particular action, which he carries out with his foot, his hand, or his eyes. But of the Patriarchs we say “all their limbs”: every movement of the Patriarchs, every limb, was entirely a vehicle for G-dliness. The Patriarchs did not make a single movement that was not in accordance with Hashem’s will. And the Rebbe applies this to time as well: there wasn’t a single moment when the Patriarchs were not connected with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Right? Every moment, even while asleep—this wording sometimes appears in maamarim of Chassidus. Right? So every moment for them was like that. Consequently, it was their essence. Since being a vehicle for G-dliness was intrinsic to the Patriarchs, since they were essentially nullified to G-dliness, G-dliness became part of their essence. And that is why they merited to pass it on. This answers the question of how it can be inherited: it is part of the essence, and essence is inherited. This tells us something very fundamental about a Jew. The difference between a Jew and a non-Jew is not merely a difference in conduct, or in abilities and talents. Without Chassidus, someone might ask: What is a Jew’s special quality? Well, he has a Yiddishe kop, a Jewish head, as people say. Jews have a good head; they have a better mind, a better grasp of things. Others will say that Jews have more refined qualities, that they’re better people, and all sorts of things one might say about Jews. But none of that is the essence. Those are particular qualities that a person may or may not have. You can argue about them all you want. It still doesn’t mean

24:50 Speaker 1 that they must necessarily be so. That’s not the point. The point is that the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew lies in their essence. The Patriarchs were a vehicle for G-dliness; that was essential to them. And since it was their essence, every Jew born, generation after generation, from Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and from Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah, has an essence connected to G-dliness. That answers the question of how it can be inherited. “Therefore they merited to draw down nefesh, ruach, and neshamah for their descendants after them, for all time, from the ten sefiros of holiness in the four worlds of Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah.” These souls that every Jew has come from the ten sefiros, and the ten sefiros themselves are in the four worlds. We’ll discuss the details shortly—let’s leave that for next time. So that is the Alter Rebbe’s point here.