Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 29 - Part 1

00:00 Speaker 1 [unclear]. My dear brother. Don’t throw it away on your own. What are we? So here the Alter Rebbe has told us what our problem is. What happened? The problem of... the problem for a Jew is a dullness of the heart. What is the problem with dullness of the heart? The problem is that even though he understands everything we have discussed—he has learned twenty-eight chapters of Tanya about himself, learned them and understood them. He also understands all the ideas about how one needs to serve Hashem; he understands the concepts as they are [unclear]. And even though he understands it all, he still has a kind of dullness of the heart. [unclear]. Because of this, even when he concentrates on the subject, it does not produce a feeling in his heart. And the Alter Rebbe says that this should give a person strength to reinforce his concentration as well. So you see his condition: he remains unmoved. Although he understands everything, it still doesn’t take hold. The idea does not illuminate him. His concentration on it does not reach his heart; the subject he is concentrating on does not shine for him. And he says that this is what produces dullness of the heart. Even though he understands and contemplates, including in Torah, he is not stirred during prayer to have a living feeling and a heartfelt connection. That makes it hard for him to overcome himself in order to... And what is really the reason? The reason is that this is a light of holiness, while we are dealing with physicality and coarseness. Here he explains that an ordinary person who is not a beinoni may have a material and coarse will, so that there can be

02:42 Speaker 1 both dullness of the mind and dullness of the heart. That is why the Alter Rebbe’s wording indicates that he is speaking here about a beinoni. So here you are speaking only about dullness of the heart. To reach them. So you say: what did he say in Tanya, chapter 7? [unclear] With a beinoni, the idea takes hold in his mind, but in his heart there may be coarseness from the kelipah. So it can be in the intellect. And he says here that it can also be seen in one’s actions, yes? The kelipah therefore gains strength within him, causing dullness of the heart. So what is the advice for overcoming dullness of the heart? Let’s go back and start from “And the reason,” because this is really where the explanation begins. Nine lines earlier, the line beginning “And the reason.” “And the reason” in Tanya. Yes? “And the reason is the coarseness of the kelipah.” What is the reason that a beinoni has this problem of dullness of the heart? Where do this dullness and [unclear] come from? The reason is the coarseness of the kelipah, which raises itself above the holiness of the G-dly soul, concealing the Shechinah through its coarseness. So the coarseness of the kelipah acts to darken the beinoni’s holiness. Understand? That is the difference between a rasha and a beinoni. With a rasha, there is materiality and coarseness of the will. He may be materialistic in his very nature. He has a coarse mind—there are people like that, with coarse, materialistic minds—and such a mind is not a vessel for G-dliness. Or sometimes he has a coarse heart; there is coarseness in his heart. He is a coarse person. Some people are coarse, and that coarseness shows itself in everything. So of course holiness will not find expression there. But a beinoni is a person who reaches these subjects; he doesn’t have that. In essence, he is a more refined person. He is not inherently coarse. In other words, when it comes to other subjects, ones that are not about G-dliness,

04:45 Speaker 1 he has refinement. He is inherently refined in mind and heart. But when it suddenly comes to contemplating the greatness of the Creator, that refinement does not express itself. For example, people sometimes say of chassidim that they have wonderful aptitude and talents for understanding a subject in Nigleh. They have all the... they understand the concepts and explain them. They have aptitude and a certain natural sensitivity to holiness. But when it comes to Chassidus, to a G-dly concept, it doesn’t register with them. That does not mean he lacks aptitude. On the contrary, he has subtle faculties. It is not that he is simply coarse; rather, the coarseness is in a particular area. The kelipah, because of its coarseness, conceals the G-dliness within his nature, this inner aspect. That is why he says, “And the reason is the coarseness of the kelipah.” The coarseness of the kelipah raises itself above the holiness of the vessel and darkens the light of holiness within him. And since the whole cause of this is the kelipah—it all stems from the coarseness of the kelipah—what must be done? The kelipah must be broken. The coarseness must be broken. By breaking that coarseness, the G-dly light can penetrate. It must be struck down and humbled to the dust. So what is the advice? To break and humble the kelipah. That is, to set aside fixed times. The Rebbe goes on to explain specifically what must be done. He does not leave it vague. He explains precisely what to do to accomplish this, to break that particular materiality within oneself. So he says, “That is, to set aside fixed times.” A person needs to set aside times for himself. No, that does not mean doing this all day. There are specific times that need to be set aside, to humble himself so that he is “despised and contemptible in his own eyes.” A person needs to set aside times and humble himself to the point that he is despised and contemptible in his own eyes.

06:45 Speaker 1 The wording comes from the verse: “despised and contemptible in his own eyes.” It is from chapter 15 of Tehillim. So a person needs to feel that he is “despised and contemptible in his own eyes.” “A broken heart” is “a broken heart.” The word “etc.” refers to what comes before it, not what comes after it. Some mistakenly read it as “etc., and a broken heart”—“a broken heart.” “A broken heart” is also from a verse, but that is not the exact wording of the verse as quoted here. The wording in the verse is “a broken heart,” “a broken heart.” The verse is in chapter 51, which we say in the bedtime Shema. So, first of all, it does not say “and a broken heart”; it says “a broken heart.” Yes, and the phrases are not written together. It says “a broken heart,” and then it says “a broken spirit.” They appear in two verses. So this is not a continuous quotation of the verse. Therefore, “etc.” must refer to what comes before it. The verse says, “despised and contemptible in his own eyes.” That is the wording in Tehillim, chapter 15: “despised and contemptible in his own eyes,” etc. So it goes with “despised and contemptible in his own eyes,” etc. A person needs to bring himself to be “despised and contemptible in his own eyes,” as it says, and to have “a broken heart.” When a person breaks his heart, there is “a broken spirit.” Through breaking the heart—that is, by striking himself down through contemplation, as the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain what he should contemplate to bring about a broken heart—he also breaks the spirit. “Spirit” means the spirit of the sitra achra. The “broken spirit” is the sitra achra. The sitra achra is called a spirit. Why is it called a spirit? There are two explanations. First, because the sitra achra is primarily a matter of spirit, the element of air, which has no substance. The Rebbe explained in chapter 1 what the element of air is. The element of air

08:33 Speaker 1 includes all those things that have no substance in themselves. So the Rebbe explained that the kelipah in particular is called a spirit—yes, “a broken spirit”—because it is like a stormy wind. In other words, it has no real substance; it is all emptiness, matters of kelipah. There is also another explanation for why the sitra achra is called a spirit: spirit is connected to the middos. As is known, among the levels of nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah, ruach relates to the middos. And since a person’s emotional life is a matter of middos, it is called ruach. So through “a broken heart,” when a person breaks himself by contemplating his condition, as he explains later, he brings about “a broken spirit”: he breaks the sitra achra, which is what causes his coarseness and dullness. Once the sitra achra is broken, the light of his contemplation can shine within him. This will help the light of what he has contemplated illuminate him. “A broken spirit” means the sitra achra, which is the person himself in the case of a beinoni. The sitra achra is, after all, the person himself; that is how matters stand with a beinoni. A beinoni is not a tzaddik. And what is the difference between a beinoni and a tzaddik? It is not merely an external difference; externally, it is the opposite. The Rebbe explained earlier that a beinoni sees the evil within himself, and it is bad in his eyes and [unclear]. But outwardly, a beinoni looks like a tzaddik. If you look only at the outside, you won’t... The Rebbe himself said that outwardly there is no difference between a beinoni and a tzaddik. Yes, outwardly there may be none, and that is why they are all called tzaddikim. The Rebbe explained ... what we learned in an earlier chapter of Tanya. But what is the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni? The Rebbe explained in the first chapters that it is an essential difference, not an external one—

10:20 Speaker 1 In his conduct. This is a difference in essence. What does that mean? That the beinoni, in his essence, is kelipah. So what, does that mean he has a connection to evil? He has desires, he has middos, and all the rest. So in his essence he is like a rasha. That is why the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 13 that even if people call him a tzaddik, he is still considered “like a rasha.” What does “like a rasha” mean? It means a beinoni. Why is a beinoni called “like a rasha”? We learned this in chapter 27, where he brought the explanation of “You created tzaddikim; You created resha’im.” What did the Alter Rebbe explain “You created resha’im” to mean? The question is: How can you say “You created resha’im”? A person has the power to choose. So what did the Alter Rebbe explain? That “resha’im” here means beinonim. It is not that Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes a person into a rasha. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives him the capacity. There are people whom Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in a way that they would be tzaddikim, and others whom Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in a way that they would be beinonim, because of their middos. Why does the verse mention resha’im first? Why? Because in essence, in terms of his middos, his desires, his impulses—how do you say it?—in terms of his impulses, as anyone who understands the words of Tanach knows. Yes, in terms of his impulses.

11:33 Speaker 2 Impulses.

11:34 Speaker 1 Huh?

11:35 Speaker 2 Impulses.

11:36 Speaker 1 Impulses. Yes, in terms of his inclinations, his instincts, he falls into the category of a rasha. The point the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 13 is that the very fact that the beinoni prevails and does what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants is also not through his own power, but because Hakadosh Boruch Hu helps him. So that is another difference. In other words, on his own, we have to look at his physical side. On his own, he cannot prevail. The fact that he overcomes his yetzer, even in the body and in actual deed, is because Hakadosh Boruch Hu helps him. So it follows that, in his essence, the beinoni on his own is really a rasha. But what does he do? He behaves like a tzaddik. Accordingly, in his essence, the beinoni is connected to the sitra achra. So what is the Alter Rebbe saying here? That his essence is sitra achra. Because his essence is sitra achra, when he breaks his heart, when he brings himself into a state of a broken and contrite heart, he breaks his own essence. That is the breaking of the sitra achra. They are not two separate things; they are the same thing. Because his essence is sitra achra, being in a state of a broken and contrite heart breaks the sitra achra. And once the sitra achra is broken, then we understand why G-dliness had not affected him before. Why? It is not that he lacks understanding. He understands G-dliness; he contemplates it. So why does it not affect him? Not because he lacks understanding, but because he has timtum halev, a dullness of the heart. The kelipah is in a state of coarseness. Through

13:20 Speaker 1 breaking the kelipah, the sitra achra is broken too, and G-dliness can enter his heart. For in a beinoni, it is the person himself, while the holy, G-dly soul is like something additional. So what follows? What is the beinoni’s essence? What is his “I”? The beinoni’s “I” is his heart. His G-dly soul is like something additional, for all the reasons we have been discussing. About the G-dly soul within him, we say, “The soul You gave me is pure.” With regard to the G-dly soul, the point is “You gave me.” In other words, who am I? I am an animal; I am an animal soul. Who is the “I”? My “I” is the animal soul. But “You gave me” a soul, as something additional. G-dliness is like something additional to him. This implies that the person himself is not his soul. His soul is not his “I.” But with tzaddikim it is different. He wants to emphasize here that the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni is one of essence. This explains why the beinoni is susceptible to timtum halev, and it also explains why breaking it helps reveal the light. Why? How does that remedy it? But with tzaddikim, as we said, it is the other way around: the pure soul, the G-dly soul, is the person himself. For a tzaddik, what is his “I”? What is his essence? His essence is G-dliness, the G-dly soul. And his body is like flesh belonging to him. His body is like flesh. In other words, it is the reverse for him. What is his essence? G-dliness. [unclear] And the physical is like something additional to him. As Hillel the Elder said to his students. He gives an example from what the

15:31 Speaker 1 Midrash says about Hillel the Elder. Hillel the Elder was certainly a true tzaddik. What do we say about Hillel? What did Hillel the Elder say to his students? When he was going to eat, he would tell his students that he was going to perform an act of kindness for the lowly and poor one. Who was the lowly and poor one? His body. Because he regarded it as a stranger. To him, it was something foreign. He was going to do a kindness for that poor wretch. He looked at his body as though it were some poor soul. The Midrash there tells the story of Hillel the Elder and cites the verse, “A kind man does good to his own soul.” There is a kind of kindness that a person does for his body. There are some people here who are very fond of performing acts of kindness for their bodies. Yes, but what was the point with Hillel the Elder? When he went to eat, he felt as though he were doing his body a favor; it was like something foreign to him. His body was like something additional. For him, the main thing was G-dliness. Yes, there are people who come to sit and study Chassidus. When such a person goes to study, he is going to do a kindness for his soul. Simple as that. Yes, so that does not apply to us. For us, the spiritual side is an act of kindness. The poor soul, “a wise but poor child.” His soul is poor; it thirsts for G-dliness. So I am going to do it a favor. I sit down to study the Rambam’s laws, and I am doing an act of kindness for my soul. With a tzaddik, by contrast, it is the reverse. Hillel the Elder says—the Midrash says—that what gave him life was G-dliness, holiness, Torah and mitzvos. So in the middle of a lesson he would stop and say that they had to do a kindness for the body. He regarded the body as a poor person who needed

17:26 Speaker 1 kindness. That is a tzaddik. His essence is G-dliness, and the physical is like something additional. The Midrash there tells another story as well. He went to bathe—Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. They asked him, “Our teacher, where are you going?” And he said he was going to fulfill the mitzvah of washing the body. What kind of mitzvah is washing the body? He explained it with an analogy to a king: if a king gives me a special gift, I will certainly take care of it and keep it clean. The body is a gift Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us; it is His image, so I have to care for it, clean it and wash it. In other words, in everything physical he did, you could feel that it was not because physical things were his interest or his essence. Quite the opposite. It was an act of kindness he was doing for something else, something apart from himself. “Because he regarded it as a stranger, he said he was doing it a kindness by feeding it, for he himself is nothing other than the G-dly soul, since it alone gives life to his body and flesh. For the evil in the vital soul, which is clothed in his blood and flesh, has been transformed into good and incorporated into the holiness of the G-dly soul.” That is how it is with a tzaddik. You see, that has become his essence, and so his essence is G-dliness; everything else is foreign to him. We are looking at this passage in Tanya and reading it quickly, but what is the Alter Rebbe saying here? He is saying several things. The point we need to grasp is that there are two kinds of people here, a tzaddik and a beinoni. For the tzaddik, G-dliness is the main thing; it is his “I,” his essence. The physical is something else to him. Whereas for the beinoni, it is the reverse. What is essential to him is

19:13 Speaker 3 his animal soul. The animal soul is his essence.

19:16 Speaker 1 And holiness is my soul, because that is something additional, something that has been added to me. But what do we see inside the text? If we look carefully here, he is really speaking about two points, just two things. First he tells the story of Hillel, which implies that the body is something separate. The soul is the main thing. It is like a poor person, and he goes to do a kindness for that poor person. So what do we understand? What is the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni? Both have a body and a soul. The question is which is primary and which is secondary. For the beinoni, physicality is primary and spirituality is something additional. For the tzaddik, it is the opposite. Spirituality is primary for him; the soul is who he is, and the physical is secondary. Then we go on another line and see that the Rebbe says something much deeper. The Rebbe adds one line here: “For it alone gives life to his body and flesh.” The Alter Rebbe is saying something much deeper. It is not merely that the body is secondary to the soul. For the tzaddik, there is, in fact, no such thing as a body in its own right. The entire reality of the body, for him, is a G-dly matter. It is not merely a personality drawn to good; the point here is the tzaddik’s very essence. From the outset, nothing exists besides G-dliness. Even the body is a G-dly matter. That is already a much deeper point. According to this, what is the difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni? It is not just a matter of primary and secondary. The essential difference is that, for the beinoni, the physical is a reality. There is a reality besides G-dliness. For the tzaddik, by contrast, there is no separate reality. What is the body for him? “It alone.” What does G-dliness mean? The body—his body, the whole essence of his body—becomes itself a G-dly matter. This is actually one of the foundations of Chassidus. After all, the Alter Rebbe began

21:22 Speaker 1 the Tanya. At the beginning of Tanya, the Alter Rebbe teaches us the fundamental point: What is the difference between the G-dly soul and the animal soul? What is the essential nature of each? The Alter Rebbe explains that the animal soul is the vital soul, which is clothed in a person’s blood to give life to the body. Yes? In other words, what is the essential difference between the G-dly soul and the animal soul? “A part of G-d above.” That means the main difference is not merely a matter of primary and secondary: that for the G-dly soul, mitzvos are primary and the physical is secondary, while for the animal soul, the physical is primary. No. The difference is what counts as reality for each. For the G-dly soul, reality means G-dliness. There is nothing else. “A part of G-d above.” What does that mean? Just as Hakadosh Boruch Hu alone exists and there is none besides Him, that is what the soul feels: He alone exists and there is none besides Him. What is a soul? A Jewish soul means that the feeling that nothing exists besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu—that He alone exists—shines within it. That is what it means to be a Jew. That is the essence of a Jew. Everything is G-dliness. So if that shines fully in a Jew—which is the defining point of a tzaddik, in whom Yiddishkeit shines fully—what he feels is that only G-dliness is real. What is the body? The body, too, is a G-dly matter. For him, there is no reality besides Him. The animal soul, by contrast, is described as being clothed in the blood to give life to the body. There is a body; there is a separate reality. That is what the animal soul feels. So it follows that even if a person—even if, on a subtle level, a person says that his body... Even if a person reaches a level where the body is secondary for him, it is still a reality to him. It still has not been transformed into material of holiness. When is it

23:20 Speaker 1 considered transformed? When he feels that the entire reality of the physical is only G-dliness. The moment he feels that it is physical, that it is a reality of its own—“clothed in the blood to give life to the body,” meaning that the body is a reality—that itself already makes it separate from G-dliness. This is the essential difference between a tzaddik and a beinoni. For the beinoni, the physical is a reality; it is a separate “something.” And that separate sense of self is sitra achra. What does sitra achra mean? It is something that does not come from G-dliness. The Alter Rebbe explains in chapter 6 of Tanya what sitra achra means: a sense of being a separate entity. And so, the Alter Rebbe says, when a person wants to feel love of Hashem in davening and sees that it is not happening—he tries to arouse himself, he meditates on Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but he does not feel it; it does not shine within him—why is that? Because of timtum halev, a blocked heart. What must he do? He must work on his sense of self. It is a matter of ego, of the coarseness of the kelipah, as he explains: it is simply coarseness. In other words, this is not some external action; it is not all about self-mortification. Yes? Otherwise, one looks at it as self-mortification: since the body gets in the way, one must work on the body so it will not interfere—mortifying oneself, weakening the physical so it will not interfere with loving Hashem. Here the explanation is not something external. Here the point is to enable G-dliness to shine within me. Yes, that... Since that sense of self results from the sitra achra, G-dliness is not felt within him. When he works on his entire sense of self, the sitra achra is thereby nullified, and then... There is a well-known saying attributed to the Rebbe Maharash. The Rebbe Maharash said—there is nothing, uh, there is no

25:35 Speaker 1 thing, well... Nothing is straighter than a crooked ladder, and nothing is more crooked than... That was in Hebrew. And nothing is more whole than a broken heart. I was mainly getting at that third point: nothing is more whole than a broken heart. It is a saying; the Rebbe also says it in Shulchan Aruch. Yes, nothing is more whole than a broken heart. What is the explanation? It is such a saying. When is a ladder straight? When it has a certain bend to it. The same is true of the heart: when is the heart whole? The Rebbe says a wonderful point in the maamarim. I also have a source for it in the revealed dimension of Torah from the Rebbe. Everything is rooted in the revealed dimension of Torah, this too. So where in the revealed dimension of Torah do we find a source for the idea that a broken heart is something whole? Where is there a source for the idea that a broken heart is whole? It is in the laws of korbanos. After all, it says that in offering a korban, everything must be whole. Yes, everything must be free of blemish. The animal must be whole, without a blemish. The knife used to slaughter the animal must also be free of any defect. Yes, the floor, the altar—there are laws about them. Yes, in the laws of korbanos, everything connected with the korban must be completely whole, perfect, without any blemish or defect. Once it has a defect, it is disqualified. What about the person bringing the korban? A person comes to bring a sin offering. What about him? He is a sinner; he committed idolatry. So he has many blemishes. He is full of faults. He came because he committed idolatry. So it turns out that the animal is whole, the utensil is whole, the knife is whole, the altar is whole. Only the person bringing it—

27:37 Speaker 1 The person bringing the offering has a blemish—spiritually. He has a blemish; he is lacking, he has sins. But what’s the mistake? He came to bring the offering with a broken heart. Now he wants to do teshuvah, and that’s why he brings an offering. And since a broken heart is something whole, this shows that nothing is more whole than a broken heart. The person bringing the offering has that brokenness of heart; he wants to do teshuvah. Since that brokenness makes him whole, the person bringing the offering is also... The last sicha we heard from the Rebbe—the last one I heard, because after that there was Shabbos—was on Thursday night in Adar. The last time the Rebbe spoke over a microphone or telephone was on Thursday night in Adar. After that, there was a Shabbos farbrengen. I wasn’t in New York then; we were in Australia, so I didn’t merit to hear the last farbrengen. But the last time the Rebbe was heard on audio was the sicha he gave on Thursday night in Adar I. In that sicha, the Rebbe spoke about the half-shekel. It was the eve of Shabbos Shekalim. The Rebbe spoke about the half-shekel: Why do we bring half a shekel and not a whole shekel? The Rebbe said that the idea of a half is... [unclear]. This is precisely the point of the half-shekel. Sometimes, as the Rebbe expounded it, a Jew is called upon to recognize that he is not entirely complete. That is what the Rebbe is saying here in Tanya as well: the bitterness needs to break the shell around the heart, yes? And awaken the light of the soul. So sometimes one needs to...

29:32 Speaker 1 For the words. And the heart is essentially the sitra achra; from it, a spiritual side is revealed, and the heart can turn toward good.