Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 32 - Part 9

00:00 The point is that, on the one hand, we said there are sometimes situations, and people, about whom it is said that there is a mitzvah to hate them: when a person commits a transgression, is your fellow in Torah and mitzvos, and meets all the conditions mentioned. So the Rebbe introduces something new here: even those whom it is a mitzvah to hate must, at the very same time, also be loved. How can both be true? The Rebbe says: “And both are true: hatred because of the evil in them, and love because of the good hidden within them.” The hatred is for the evil they have. The love is because of the good hidden within them as well. What is that great good within them? “It is the spark of G-dliness within them that gives life to their G-dly soul.” It is the Divine spark that gives life to a Jew’s G-dly soul. In the Alter Rebbe’s words, that is the Divine spark that gives life to the G-dly soul. Surely one must love that Divine spark. A Jew, a Jew who loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu—someone for whom, as we say, the soul is what matters most and the body is secondary, and whose joy is the joy of the soul. What joy of the soul? As the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 31: the joy of the G-dly soul when it comes out of exile. So surely, when he looks at another Jew, even a Jew who is a sinner and behaves very badly—and therefore he hates him, because he is his fellow in Torah and mitzvos and he has already rebuked him and fulfilled all the other conditions—at the same time, we are still talking about a Jew who, though he has sinned, remains a Jew, and who has a G-dly soul. He has a spark, a Divine spark, and so he loves him; he loves the Divine spark within him. So at the same time that he hates the evil within him, he can also love the good

01:53 within him. Both are possible. We finished that in the previous line. Now the Rebbe adds another point. We’re up to the words “that gives life to their G-dly soul,” in the middle of the line. And also—yes, everyone, are you following?—the Rebbe says something else: “And also to arouse compassion in his heart for it.” It is not enough for a person to hate the evil and love the good, and to hold both of those emotions together. He hates him because of the evil within him, and loves him because of the good within him. There is now a third thing: the attribute of compassion. There is love and there is—there is—there is gevurah: chesed, gevurah, tiferes. These are three attributes of the soul. And a person needs all three. He loves the good within him; he hates the evil within him. And there must be a third attribute, compassion. The Rebbe says: “And also to arouse compassion in his heart for it.” A person must use the compassion he has in his heart and arouse compassion for the soul. “For it” refers to the soul. That makes sense. The G-dly soul is in exile. Shouldn’t we have compassion for it? Because it is in a state of exile—the G-dly soul of his fellow, who has committed transgressions, who sins. His soul is in exile. So we have compassion for the soul that has fallen into exile, “within the evil of the sitra achra, which has gained the upper hand over it in the wicked.” His fellow’s G-dly soul is in exile, within the evil, because the evil has overcome the good in him. So a person must arouse compassion for the soul that has fallen into exile. What does this third attribute accomplish? What? Why? What difference does it make? Why must there also be compassion, besides love for the good and hatred for the evil? The Rebbe explains: “And compassion”—here the Rebbe brings in a wonderful idea—“And compassion”: when a Jew arouses compassion for his fellow’s G-dly soul, for the wicked person whose soul is in exile, then

04:14 compassion nullifies the hatred and arouses love. The fact that he can have compassion for him—compassion has this remarkable power: the moment I have compassion for someone else, I cannot hate the person as a whole. Once I have compassion for him, how can I hate him? I feel compassion. Can you hate someone you feel compassion for? For example, it says that one may not have compassion for a shaygetz. Is that how the saying goes? One may not have compassion for a shaygetz. So the Rebbe Maharash said—wait, I heard this from the Rebbe too, briefly—the Rebbe Maharash said: How much compassion we must have for a shaygetz, when the Torah says we may not have compassion for him! That really is the greatest cause for compassion. The whole point is that here is someone the Torah says we may not have compassion for. The poor fellow—so unfortunate that even the Torah says... So the compassion for him is even greater. How does that help us? Why did the Rebbe Maharash say it? The point is that when you have compassion for a person, you cannot hate him. As long as you look at him simply as a person, you may love him for the good things about him and hate him for the bad things about him. But the moment you feel compassion for him—poor fellow, how did he fall so far? And so on—then the nature of that compassion is to nullify the hatred. He is so unfortunate. How can I hate him? I feel compassion for him. The poor fellow has fallen so far. So when compassion is aroused in me, it nullifies the hatred and, on the contrary, arouses even greater love for the other person. “As is known from what is written, ‘Jacob, who redeemed Abraham.’” Where do we find an example, in serving Hashem, of compassion having the power to nullify hatred and arouse love?

06:23 So he brings the verse, “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham.” What is the plain—what does “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham” mean? Everyone knows that, first of all, “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham” is a verse we say four times every day: “To the house of Jacob, who redeemed Abraham.” But here the Alter Rebbe does not write “to the house of Jacob”; he writes “Jacob.” So what does it mean? The Midrash asks: What does “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham” mean? When did Jacob redeem Abraham? Abraham lived at one time, and Jacob later. Where do we find that Jacob redeemed Abraham? Where do we find such a thing? The Midrash says that Avraham Avinu was in the fiery furnace and was nearly burned. Then, regarding Avraham Avinu, the angels—I don’t know—asked that he be saved in Abraham’s own merit. Hakadosh Boruch Hu said no, it was not enough. Then they asked that he be saved in the merit of Isaac, who would descend from him. That was not enough either. When they said it should be in the merit of Jacob, who would one day descend from him, Hakadosh Boruch Hu saved him. So Avraham Avinu was saved from the fiery furnace in the merit of Yaakov Avinu. “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu saw that Jacob would descend from him, and therefore saved Abraham. That is the plain meaning, as far as one can call the Midrash’s explanation of this verse “plain.” But what does Chassidus add to this? The Alter Rebbe explains it further in chapter 45 of Tanya, and in several other places in his teachings he explains what “Jacob, who redeemed Abraham” means. Abraham represents love. So Abraham is the natural love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu that every Jew has. The G-dly soul’s love is associated with Abraham. Sometimes a Jew’s love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu is in exile. He commits transgressions, makes all kinds of mistakes, engages in all kinds of self-negation. Through this, the G-dly soul and its natural love, the love that every

08:20 The love a Jew inherits from Avraham Avinu—the aspect called Avraham—can be in a state of exile, a state of captivity. So how can we bring that love out of exile? Through Yaakov: by awakening deep compassion for the soul. The Alter Rebbe explains in chapter 45 of Likkutei Amarim that there is a way to awaken love. Sometimes it is explained that love is awakened through contemplation and other means. One way a Jew can awaken his natural love is through compassion, by contemplating the depth of the soul’s exile. On the one hand, it has descended from a lofty height to a deep pit. He contemplates how the soul is a part of G-dliness, the level it is on; and on the other hand, he contemplates how the soul has fallen and descended into a physical state in his own life. That is why his sense of what matters has fallen so low. When deep compassion is awakened in him for his soul, which has fallen from the world of truth, and he feels compassion for it, that compassion causes the love that was in exile within him to emerge from concealment into revelation. This is “Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham.” It means that when a Jew feels compassion for his soul, which has fallen so low, that itself brings love out of concealment into revelation. That is the meaning of “Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham.” This is explained in Likkutei Amarim: how can a Jew himself bring his love out of exile? That is why there are passages in davening in which we arouse compassion: “Our merciful Father, Who shows mercy, have mercy on us.” This whole passage of Ahavah Rabbah is explained there in this way. It is one of the ways a Jew awakens love for Hashem—by contemplating the great compassion: “Our merciful Father, Who shows mercy, have mercy on us.” He contemplates how much compassion is called for in his own case, compassion so great that only Hakadosh Boruch Hu knows its full extent. So that compassion

10:14 that a Jew feels for his soul generally awakens love; it is the nature of compassion to awaken love. We see this plainly. When I feel compassion for someone, that is a way to awaken love for him. So the Alter Rebbe now draws on this in Likkutei Amarim and explains the same thing: when I awaken compassion for the soul, when I awaken deep compassion for this Jew who has sinned, for the G-dly spark within him, for the soul that has fallen so low into the pit, that compassion dispels my hatred and my shame toward him. The Rebbe explains here in the commentary that there are, seemingly, three elements. The first is to hate the evil. I see a person doing wrong, and this person is my fellow in Torah and mitzvos. I have rebuked him, and nevertheless I have not succeeded. So there is a place for saying, “I hate him.” Along with that, the Alter Rebbe comes to the second stage and says that at the same time, I must also love him. Why? Because I hate the evil within him. That does not contradict loving him; these are two different things. I hate the evil within him and love the good within him. Then, the Alter Rebbe says, there is a third element. Apart from the love and the hatred—which at that stage are seemingly equal: I love the good within him and hate the evil within him. From that perspective, there is no more love than hatred or more hatred than love. The love is for the part of his soul that is good, and the hatred is for the evil within him. In that respect, they stand side by side. Then, at the third stage, the Alter Rebbe says to awaken compassion for the person. The moment I awaken compassion, what happens? The hatred toward the person ceases, and there is love instead. But why is there

12:20 love? G-d forbid, not for the evil, not for the evil within him. Here, the love that comes through compassion is for him as a whole. There is the person as a whole—not just the good and not just the evil. Love for him as a whole. I begin to love the person. Why? Because I have compassion for him. How unfortunate he is to have fallen so low. As a result, love for him as a whole is awakened in me. This means that even a person whom the Torah says I must hate—I hate only a particular aspect of him. But in general I love him; in general I love him. And that is expressed in what I will do for him. If I can help him, I will help him. It does not mean that because I hate him, that is the end of it: he is no longer my friend, and I will no longer help him with anything. The Rebbe says that this is the basis for the halachah in the Gemara in Bava Metzia and in the Shulchan Aruch, the halachah of unloading and loading. The Gemara says—this is the source for the mitzvah concerning someone you hate—that if you see the donkey of someone you hate, if you see a fellow Jew whom you hate because he does not conduct himself properly in Torah and mitzvos, and you see that he needs help because his load has fallen and so on, the Torah says, “You shall surely help him.” You must help the person you hate before helping someone you love. Why? Why does the Torah say that the mitzvah of unloading and loading applies specifically to someone you hate? Because of this point: when I have compassion for him, that compassion awakens love for the person. And it shows that although there is a particular aspect of him that I must hate, I love him as a whole, as a person. So the moment I see that something

14:03 has gone wrong for him in another area—he has lost his wallet or has some other problem—I will certainly help him. Of course, one needs to be on a certain level in one’s love of Hashem for this. But this is what the Alter Rebbe teaches us: how a person can come to feel love for a Jew, even a Jew in such a low state, by awakening compassion for him. Now the Alter Rebbe adds a parenthetical point. Seemingly, the Alter Rebbe has finished explaining the matter, and we see that he is trying to explain how, in every situation, there must be love for every Jew, whatever the circumstances. Even a Jew whom one must hate must also be loved. Not only that, but the hatred must be tempered by awakening compassion. The Alter Rebbe continues with a parenthetical statement: “And when King David, peace be upon him, said, ‘I hate them with the utmost hatred,’ etc.” Here there is seemingly a question. There is a verse in Tehillim that the Gemara interprets as referring to certain people of whom King David says, “I hate them with the utmost hatred.” It does not say here, “I hate the evil within them.” The words “I hate them with the utmost hatred” imply complete hatred, with no room left for love. But that does not fit with the entire point the Alter Rebbe is making here: that even toward those who sin, and so on, there must always be love. One must look for the love and temper the hatred. Here it says explicitly, “I hate them with the utmost hatred”—absolute hatred. How does that fit with everything we said before? The Alter Rebbe answers that this statement was said only about the heretics and unbelievers who have no share in the G-d of Israel. King David is speaking about a particular kind of Jew whom the Alter Rebbe has not discussed until now. These are a particular kind of people called

15:58 Minim and apikorsim. These are not simply wicked people who commit transgressions. We are talking here about people who are minim and apikorsim, who have no share in the G-d of Israel, as stated in the Gemara at the beginning of chapter 16 of Shabbos. What does that mean? We need to understand why the type of transgression matters. If you say that every Jew has a Divine spark, then what difference does it make which Jew we are talking about? Every Jew has good in him. So why does it matter which transgression it is—heresy, or a transgression committed out of carelessness? And on the other hand, why does the Rebbe need to emphasize here that “King David said” this about “the utmost hatred”? Why emphasize that it was King David who said it? The Rebbe also asks why he says, “as stated in the Gemara at the beginning of chapter 16 of Shabbos.” The Rebbe does not give a source reference unless it is relevant. That itself hints that the reference matters for understanding the point here. What is the Rebbe telling us? What exactly is the explanation? Here the Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation, and in it, too, we will see the extent of the Rebbe’s Ahavas Yisroel, even toward people as far gone as minim and apikorsim. The Rebbe says this: Regarding minim and apikorsim, the Rebbe himself explains that they have no share in the G-d of Israel. Minim and apikorsim are Jews who do not merely commit transgressions—meaning that their Divine part does not shine openly within them, and because a spirit of folly takes hold of them, they commit transgressions. Rather, minim and apikorsim are people whose Divine soul has become utterly concealed. To the point that they have been cut off; [unclear]. That is what it means that minim and apikorsim have no share in the G-d of Israel. Their Divine part is, as it were, entirely separate from them, as though it is not present within them at all.

18:02 It is about them, specifically, that one can speak of the utmost hatred. A person who is a min and an apikores knows his Master. He knows the truth and deliberately sets out to rebel against Him. In other words, it is not merely that he is driven by desires, and his desires get the better of him, so he becomes an apikores. Rather, this is someone with a deliberate aim. He knows the truth and knows everything; he is not seeking some pleasure, but has made it his method to go specifically against Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And even that is not yet enough. “As stated at the beginning of chapter 16 of Shabbos.” What does it say there? If you look inside the Gemara, it says that “the utmost hatred” refers to people who cause other Jews to hate Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So this is not just someone who, in his private life, is an apikores and does not believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu—or claims not to believe in Him. He says he is an apikores. But what does that mean here? It means a Jew who systematically teaches this to others. He tries to do everything he can to make other Jews into apikorsim. In such a case, when a Jew has become so disconnected, his Divine part is not present within him at that time at all. It is brought somewhere that even these Jews, about whom it says that they can reach a state of actual apostasy—I do not want to get into that subject here. So the reference to the beginning of chapter 16 of Shabbos specifies that these are people who cause other Jews, too, to hate Hakadosh Boruch Hu. About them King David says “the utmost hatred.” And here the Rebbe is precise: “And King David said.” Who can say

19:59 that? King David. Why King David? For two reasons. First, King David was a complete tzaddik. So the concept of the utmost hatred was applicable to him: his love of Hashem was utterly complete, and therefore the utmost hatred for those who cause others to hate Hakadosh Boruch Hu was applicable to him as well. This follows what the Rebbe explained earlier, in chapter 10. More importantly, the Rebbe says, King David was a judge. That is what it says in the Gemara in Bava Basra. King David was a judge; he issued rulings, as the Gemara says there. And a judge can rule only on what his eyes see. He must rule according to what he sees before him. So when he sees a person in the state of a min or apikores, causing people to hate Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he must hate him. But someone who is not on the level of King David cannot speak of the utmost hatred even toward minim and apikorsim. In particular, the Rebbe adds another point: the Frierdiker Rebbe said that today there are no minim and apikorsim of the kind that existed in the time of the Talmud, or even in earlier generations. Today’s minim and apikorsim are simply ignorant people. Who was a min or an apikores in the past? Someone who had studied and was thoroughly versed in the Talmud, a great Torah scholar, and nevertheless deliberately became an apikores. Those were real apikorsim. Like Yeravam ben Nevat, about whom the Gemara says that he was a Torah scholar of extraordinary brilliance, and nevertheless specifically went against Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But a person today is just... The Rebbe once told a story about when the Frierdiker Rebbe was under arrest. There was

21:55 Nachmanson and Lulav there, the Jews who caused the Frierdiker Rebbe all that trouble. During the interrogation, the Frierdiker Rebbe began telling a story, and opened it this way: “Once, an apikores came to a tzaddik.” That is how he began. So Nachmanson, one of them, said to him, “Presumably an apikores like me.” The Frierdiker Rebbe told him, “No, not like you. Eating sandwiches—pretzel sandwiches, as they call them—does not yet make someone an apikores. The apikores in this story knew how to learn. You are just an ignoramus; you know nothing.” Even while under arrest, he spoke without being intimidated. He said it straight to his face: “Eating sandwiches does not yet make someone an apikores. That apikores knew how to learn; you are just an ignoramus who knows nothing.” So he does not fall into the category of an apikores at all. Accordingly, the Rebbe writes in a letter that today this whole category of minim and apikorsim does not really exist. There are simply ignorant people, or just fools, but the genuine min or apikores about whom the Gemara speaks does not exist today. The Rebbe therefore relates that the Frierdiker Rebbe drew close all kinds of Jews. Of course, this was also based on his own approach, but he told a story about when the Frierdiker Rebbe was in Vienna, Austria. There were Jews there who were considered apikorsim, and he drew them close as well. Some zealous religious Jews came to the Frierdiker Rebbe and complained: How could he draw close certain Jews, when they were considered minim and apikorsim, about whom it is said... something like that. So the Frierdiker Rebbe answered them that the laws concerning minim

24:01 And heretics—who falls into the category of a min or an apikores, and about whom do we say, “They are cast down and not brought up”? That’s in Choshen Mishpat, in Choshen Mishpat itself. At the end, at the end of Choshen Mishpat. Before that, there’s all of Orach Chaim, all of Yoreh De’ah, and all of Even Ha’ezer. And then within Choshen Mishpat itself there are many sections before you reach the end. That’s where these heretics are discussed. So the Tzemach Tzedek would tell them: Fine, first check whether you yourselves observe all four sections of the Shulchan Aruch, from Orach Chaim through Choshen Mishpat. If you do, then decide there, according to halachah, whether it’s appropriate to hate him or not. That’s something. That was the Tzemach Tzedek, but... Huh? How is that an answer? To what? To the question. It wasn’t an answer addressing the question in order; it was an answer to the people who asked it. The Tzemach Tzedek, the Rebbe, knew these people, and he knew they weren’t asking in the proper spirit. They were zealots. They were people who were cruel by nature, and were simply using halachah for that purpose. They weren’t ordinary Jews who were thoroughly G-d-fearing, concerned with every halachah in the Chinuch up to that point, and concerned with this one too—people who had grounds for it. Rather, when a zealot wants to... I know them. I can tell you: people who are cruel by nature can find a place in the Chinuch that gives them an opening, and then they’re meticulous about it. That’s what the Tzemach Tzedek wanted to tell them. Don’t pretend that what concerns you is the Chinuch. Isn’t it really that you have a cruel streak? The Rebbe explains this at length in a sicha about Zimri and Pinchas. There’s a sicha in volume eight about the nature of zealotry: where did it come from at that time, and how did it come to Pinchas? And the Jews claimed that Pinchas

25:53 was a zealot because of cruelty. Pinchas went to kill Zimri—that was Pinchas’s zealotry. It wasn’t zealotry for holiness. It was zealotry born of an evil trait; he was just using it for things connected with serving Hashem. But at its root, it was an evil trait. That’s why they called him “the son of Puti.” By that they meant that it came from Yisro, his maternal grandfather. He got it from him—that cruel trait of Pinchas’s. He inherited it from the negative side of his ancestry. So you might say that Pinchas wasn’t a person with pure motives. Why? Because his zealotry came from Yisro’s negative side. But an ordinary person, first of all, has to be very careful with these matters of zealotry, to make sure it truly is... The real meaning is, as we said earlier, that today there aren’t genuine apikorsim like there used to be. They are like children taken captive. They’re simply naive. They aren’t the people meant when it was said that we must hate them. That referred to another kind of heretic and apikores. By the way, so as not to end on unpleasant matters, there’s one explanation here from the Rebbe, a beautiful explanation. I’ll finish with that. The Rebbe explains: Why does it say here—ah, just before this—why does the Alter Rebbe say that we must love Jews because of the hidden good, the spark of holiness within them that gives life to their divine soul, but when he speaks of compassion, he says we must arouse compassion in our hearts for it? “For it” doesn’t refer to the spark; it refers to the soul. So why, when speaking of love, does he say to love the spark, while when speaking of compassion, the compassion is for the soul, not the spark? What exactly is the crux of it? What’s the difference? So the Rebbe gives

27:37 a very interesting explanation: When we’re speaking about love, the more G-dly something is, the more it calls for love. So this is true of the divine soul, and even more so of the spark. The spark is literally a part of G-dliness. The love is greater there. The more elevated, the more spiritual, the more Jewish and the greater something is, the more it calls for love. But when we speak of having compassion for someone in distress, who is more deeply in exile? Who suffers more? Who is more deeply in exile? The spark is not so much in exile. The spark always remains; it says there that it is “guarded from every foe.” The yechidah never goes into exile. It always remains deep within the soul, even when... By contrast, the soul feels the exile and the pain of exile. It suffers more. So the compassion is specifically for the soul, not the spark. We can see, then, how precise the wording in Tanya is: when it comes to love, he speaks of the spark; when it comes to compassion, he speaks of compassion for the soul. In any case, that brings us to the end of chapter 32. And the point of chapter 32 is clear: what Ahavas Yisroel should be—Ahavas Yisroel comme il faut, in its fullest perfection and with all its strength, as the Rebbe teaches us in every detail. And of course, every single person should know this chapter by heart. As is well known, the Rebbe spoke about this several times: this chapter must be engraved in every person’s thoughts and soul, mind and heart, because it is the fundamental foundation of all Chabad shlichus. It is the heart of the entire Tanya: Ahavas Yisroel, and Ahavas Yisroel comme il faut, in all its breadth and worth. Because we can practice true Ahavas Yisroel only if we live according to the point the Rebbe teaches us in chapter

29:23 32.