Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 32 - Part 5

00:01 On page 41, we are continuing with the conclusion of the discussion, after the point about what Hillel the Elder says. This is what Hillel the Elder says: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the entire Torah.” Based on what we explained about Ahavas Yisroel, which the Rebbe explained here, we can understand the Gemara’s account of Hillel: Hillel the Elder said that the mitzvah of Ahavas Yisroel is the entire Torah, “and the rest is its explanation.” The entire Torah is an explanation of Ahavas Yisroel. What is the Rebbe trying to accomplish here? Why is it relevant here to explain what Hillel said about Ahavas Yisroel? Granted, the Rebbe explains in chapter 32 the great virtue of Ahavas Yisroel, but why is this point relevant here? After all, the Alter Rebbe is not speaking here about Ahavas Yisroel. The Rebbe is following a sequence of explanations: how the entire subject of Ahavas Yisroel follows from the preceding discussion in chapter 31. It is a continuation, as we discussed. It continues what the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 31: that there must be joy of the soul, giving the soul greater importance and allowing it to shine over the body. This is the soul’s joy at leaving exile. But a person must regard his body as lowly. Based on that, the Rebbe explained that this can lead to Ahavas Yisroel. But why, as a continuation of this, is it relevant to explain Hillel’s statement that this is the entire Torah? The Rebbe explains this in one of the sichos, in one place. The Rebbe explains that here the Alter Rebbe is adding something, continuing what came before. The Rebbe says in chapter 31 that in serving Hashem, a person must serve with joy. After all the bitterness, and after a person reflects on how he has been affected by all his undesirable conduct, nevertheless, he says that there must be joy. And the joy

02:17 comes from the fact that my soul can leave its exile and connect with Hashem. The Rebbe then explains the great virtue of this joy of the soul: through it, one can come to Ahavas Yisroel. The Rebbe explained this at the beginning of chapter 32. When a person has genuine joy of the soul, he gives the soul greater importance than the body, so that the body becomes secondary, and he can come to Ahavas Yisroel. Ahavas Yisroel as a mitzvah—an important mitzvah, but a mitzvah. Now, he goes on to add that this joy of the soul, this work a person does on himself to make the body secondary, is not merely preparation for the mitzvah of Ahavas Yisroel as one particular mitzvah. It is preparation for Ahavas Yisroel as an all-encompassing mitzvah that includes the entire Torah. That is how great the virtue of joy of the soul is: a person works on himself so that his joy comes from matters of the soul, while matters of the body do not occupy his whole attention. It reaches that far. It is not merely relevant to Ahavas Yisroel in general, but to Ahavas Yisroel as the foundation and principle of the entire Torah. So the Rebbe now also explains how this makes the Gemara’s statement—that Ahavas Yisroel is the entire Torah—understandable. What does the Gemara say? The Gemara in tractate Shabbos says that a non-Jew came to Shammai and told him he wanted to learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with a builder’s measuring rod; he threw him out of the house. So he went to Hillel and said, “I want to learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot.” Hillel told him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” What you would hate

04:03 having done to you, do not do to your fellow. “This is the entire Torah, and the rest is its explanation.” All the rest of the Torah is an explanation of it. That is the story in the Gemara. The question arises—and the Rishonim already ask it—what does it mean that this is the entire Torah? Is Ahavas Yisroel the entire Torah? We know that the Torah has two groups of mitzvos. There are mitzvos between one person and another, and mitzvos between a person and Hashem. If the intention is that Ahavas Yisroel is the general principle behind mitzvos between one person and another—such as the prohibitions against theft, robbery and fraud, and the mitzvos of tzedakah and tithes—there are many mitzvos like that, right? Many mitzvos connected with Ahavas Yisroel. But there are many mitzvos that seem to have no connection to Ahavas Yisroel. They are between a person and Hashem: Torah study, purity, tzitzis, and so on. What do all those things have to do with Ahavas Yisroel? Rashi already asks this question, and Rashi gives two explanations, two answers. In one answer, Rashi says that “the entire Torah” means most of the Torah, not literally all of it—the majority of the Torah’s laws. That is one of Rashi’s explanations. “This is the entire Torah” means that it is a general principle encompassing many of the Torah’s laws, most of its laws. Of course, that is a strained reading, because the Gemara says, “This is the entire Torah.” So Rashi gives another answer. With regard to “Love your fellow as yourself,” Hashem is also called your “fellow.” It says, “Do not forsake your fellow and your father’s fellow”; that “fellow” refers to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So “Love your fellow as yourself” also refers to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Thus, when we say, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” it has two applications. What you would hate, do not do to your fellow: this refers both to your fellow in the literal sense and to your fellow,

06:09 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is also our fellow. So just as I do not want to do something hateful to my human fellow, I must not do something that Hashem does not want. That is Rashi’s explanation. But it is also clearly a strained reading. And regarding Rashi’s explanation, the Tzemach Tzedek asks in Derech Mitzvosecha: concerning Hakadosh Boruch Hu, too, it says, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him, or what does He receive from your hand?” Hashem is above everything to do with our actions and mitzvos—as though, what difference do they make to Him? So how can we say, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow,” meaning that it is hateful to Hashem, if “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” The Alter Rebbe now answers this here in Tanya, based on what we explained earlier. What does it mean to love a fellow Jew “as yourself”? How can a Jew come to express Ahavas Yisroel genuinely, so that his fellow matters to him as much as he himself does? It is by revealing within himself that the soul is primary. From the perspective of the body and its concerns, genuine Ahavas Yisroel is impossible. The soul must be primary for him—and not merely the soul in general, but the soul as it exists at its source, where “they all have one Father.” He must reveal the soul as it truly exists at its source. It is specifically on this level of the soul—not the soul as expressed through the heart and so on, but as it exists where “they all have one Father”—that there can be true Jewish unity, truly “as yourself.” Based on this principle, that the whole matter of Ahavas Yisroel is bound up with making the soul primary, we can understand why the Alter Rebbe says that it is the entire Torah. It encompasses the whole Torah, including matters between a person and Hashem. This

07:52 is what the Alter Rebbe now comes to explain. This also explains why the Alter Rebbe cites this particular teaching of our Sages, rather than the well-known teaching in Vayikra Rabbah in which Rabbi Akiva says, “This is a great principle of the Torah.” Why does the Alter Rebbe specifically cite the story of Hillel, who says, “This is the entire Torah”? After all, Rabbi Akiva said something similar. Rabbi Akiva said, “Love your fellow as yourself—this is a great principle of the Torah.” Why not cite that teaching of our Sages? The answer is simple: Rabbi Akiva’s wording is “a great principle of the Torah.” It does not emphasize that this is the entire Torah. It is a great principle of the Torah. In other words, the Torah contains other things as well. Ahavas Yisroel is a principle. It is not an isolated matter or merely a broad idea; it is a great principle, but a great principle within the Torah. There are still other matters in the Torah. That does not yet say that it is the essence of the Torah itself. Hillel’s words, by contrast, are: “This is the entire Torah.” What Hillel said goes much deeper: he says that this is the essence of the Torah. So what is the explanation? The Rebbe now explains: “For the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul over the body, ever higher, to the Source and Root of all worlds.” Since the entire foundation of the Torah is to raise and elevate the soul over the body, ever higher, to the Source and Root of all worlds. In other words, the root of the entire Torah is that a person raises—meaning, gives supreme importance to—matters of the soul over matters of the body. Ever higher, to the Source and Root of all worlds: that is the purpose of the entire Torah. So the Rebbe is actually giving two answers here as to why we say that Ahavas Yisroel is

09:59 The entire Torah. There are really two answers here. First, the Rebbe says: “For the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul above the body, higher and higher, to the Source and Root of all worlds.” The foundation of the entire Torah is to raise the soul above the body. And as we said earlier, what is Ahavas Yisroel about? The soul is primary and the body is secondary. So when a Jew works on himself to make the soul primary and the body secondary—which is the foundation of Ahavas Yisroel—that is also, by extension, the foundation of the entire Torah, because the whole Torah is about raising the soul above the body. That is one point, and there is another point as well. But first, let’s explain this lofty idea. What does the first answer mean? The point of Torah and mitzvos is that spirituality should matter more to a person than physicality. To raise the soul above the body. That is what Yiddishkeit is about. In other words, the inner point of all Torah and mitzvos is to reveal the soul’s superiority. The Gemara says, for example, “What difference does it make to Hakadosh Boruch Hu whether you slaughter from the neck or from the back?” Why should it matter to Hakadosh Boruch Hu how a person performs shechitah? Rather, “The mitzvos were given only to refine people.” That is the whole point of Torah and mitzvos. What is their inner purpose? To refine people. To make a dwelling place for Hashem in the lower realms. A Jew who lives according to Torah and mitzvos is a Jew for whom the soul is primary. A person, on his own, is physical. How does he look at the world from his own perspective? He sees the world as he wants it. From his own perspective, he sees himself as an independent existence. So a person loves himself, loves his body, and wants everything for himself. Then the Shulchan Aruch comes along, and with everything, the Shulchan Aruch tells you how to give it

12:10 to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You get up in the morning and say the Amidah, even though it goes against what you want. You want to run off to work? You have to daven. You have to learn. You have money? Give tzedakah. In other words, the inner point of Torah and mitzvos is that spirituality, the soul, should be primary for a Jew, and the body should be secondary. So as long as the body is primary for a person, as long as the body is what matters most to him, it is hard for him to keep Torah and mitzvos. Torah and mitzvos are about not listening to the body, about making spirituality primary and physicality secondary. Turning something into nothing, as it says in the sefer. And this is what the Alter Rebbe is saying here: Ahavas Yisroel is the test. This is what he says: “For the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul above the body.” That means Ahavas Yisroel is the test. Where do I stand in my Yiddishkeit? I want to know where I stand. There are Jews who keep Torah and mitzvos. Everyone keeps them, tries to keep them. So the next question is: If a person wants to know where he stands in Torah and mitzvos, what is the test? What shows that a Jew truly keeps Torah and mitzvos? Whether he has Ahavas Yisroel. Ahavas Yisroel shows what matters to me: whether physicality is primary for me or spirituality is primary. Because as long as physicality is what matters most to me, I cannot have genuine Ahavas Yisroel. As long as the concerns of the body are important to me, genuine Ahavas Yisroel is impossible. I care about myself. My ego comes first. My desires come first. And so, when some matter of Torah and mitzvos comes up, the yetzer hara may overcome him.

14:07 And he will not do what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants; he will do what he wants. Sometimes he will even look for a way to justify himself according to the Torah. By contrast, when he has Ahavas Yisroel, it shows that the soul is primary for him. In other words, it is the test of where he stands with regard to Torah and mitzvos. This, then, is the first explanation the Alter Rebbe gives here for why we say, “This is the entire Torah.” Hillel the Elder is explaining to the convert: You want to take upon yourself the essential point of Yiddishkeit, the entire Torah on one foot. You want to take upon yourself the essential point of Yiddishkeit. That point is brought out through Ahavas Yisroel, because there you cannot fool yourself. With Ahavas Yisroel, it becomes clear whether the soul or the body is primary for you. And that is the test for the whole matter of Torah and mitzvos.