Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 35 - Part 4

00:01 We’re holding in Tanya, chapter 35, in the middle of the chapter, at the note at the bottom of page 88. Today we’ll study the note the Alter Rebbe writes here. Since it’s been a long time, let’s review the point the Alter Rebbe is explaining. The Alter Rebbe is addressing the verse, “For this thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” The main emphasis is on “to do it”: in serving Hashem, the essential thing is action. He cites the Zohar, which compares a person to a lamp. The body is like a wick, and the Shechinah is like a flame that rests above a person’s head, just as a flame rests on the wick of a lamp. What keeps the flame on the wick? Oil. Without oil, the flame won’t stay lit. In spiritual terms, the wick is the body and the animal soul, and the flame is the Shechinah. What is the oil? The oil is good deeds. That’s what the Zohar says. Just as oil connects the flame to the wick, so too, for a person, good deeds make that connection. The Alter Rebbe asks: Why should good deeds, the performance of mitzvos, be needed for the Shechinah to shine within a person? Every person has a soul, and through that soul a person has love and awe of Hashem and all the soul’s faculties. Why aren’t the soul’s love and awe enough? Especially since the soul’s love and awe are spiritual. And especially for a tzaddik, whose love

02:39 and awe of Hashem are his entire being. So why aren’t the tzaddik’s love and awe enough to serve as the oil that sustains the flame on the wick? Why are good deeds, the fulfillment of mitzvos, also needed? Especially when love and awe are spiritual, while the performance of mitzvos is physical. Seemingly, what sustains the Shechinah should be something more spiritual. The Alter Rebbe explains that love and awe—even in a perfect tzaddik who serves Hashem with love and awe filled with delight—still involve a sense of self. Any service that comes from the person himself, even when he reaches the loftiest love and awe, originates in his own being and understanding. His understanding brings him to feel love and awe, even at the highest level, but some sense of “I” still remains. So he is not completely nullified. The performance of mitzvos, by contrast, is not bound up with what I feel. It is the Divine will. It is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants. And so, in performing mitzvos, a person is in a state of complete bittul. What does this explain? The Alter Rebbe says that the resting of the Shechinah means the revelation of G-dliness, and the revelation of G-dliness means “there is nothing besides Him.” That is what the revelation of G-dliness means. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the reality; Hakadosh Boruch Hu is “there is nothing besides Him.” So the revelation of G-dliness means that “there is nothing besides Him” becomes manifest. The resting of the Shechinah means that this truth shines and is revealed. G-dliness means the revelation that apart

04:41 from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, nothing else exists. Nothing. That is the meaning of the resting of the Shechinah. So when you have love and awe, since some sense of self still remains and the person is not completely nullified, G-dliness is not present there. G-dliness is present only where there is complete bittul. Where is G-dliness revealed? Where “there is nothing besides Him,” where there is bittul. In love and awe, the bittul is lacking; it is not complete. So the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, does not rest there, and that is not the resting of the Shechinah. Where does the Shechinah rest? Where there is no independent existence at all. And where do we find this bittul, in which a person is completely nullified to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Specifically in fulfilling mitzvos. In fulfilling mitzvos, we are doing what Hakadosh Boruch Hu freely wills. That is what the Alter Rebbe explained up to this point. So the Alter Rebbe is giving us a deeper understanding of the special quality of fulfilling mitzvos. This point is explained elsewhere as well. By the way, we are now in the days of Shavuos and Matan Torah, and you see this in all the Shavuos maamarim. They explain the advantage of fulfilling mitzvos after Matan Torah over the mitzvos fulfilled by the Patriarchs. We also learned something along these lines in tonight’s maamar. What is the advantage of fulfilling mitzvos after Matan Torah? After all, the Patriarchs were on a far higher spiritual level. Avraham Avinu was nullified to the attribute of chesed of Atzilus. He loved Hashem and had mesirus nefesh. Yitzchak served Hashem through awe, and Yaakov through compassion.

06:22 Chesed, gevurah, tiferes. The Patriarchs reached great levels of love of Hashem and lofty unifications. And yet, the essential point... it still wasn’t that. They did not reach the ultimate unity. Despite all the levels, unifications, and bittul the Patriarchs attained, they reached only a level belonging to created beings—a unity in which the world still has an existence of its own. They did not reach the true resting of the Shechinah. Specifically after Matan Torah, although we do not have all the spiritual levels of the Patriarchs, we have mitzvos—mitzvos here in this world—and it is specifically in them that Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself is present, the reality of Hakadosh Boruch Hu that is beyond created beings. What is the explanation? It is the same point the Rebbe makes here. All the revelations the Patriarchs reached came through their own understanding, comprehension, and feelings; they came from their own being. Certainly, their bittul permeated their innermost selves and all their faculties. As the Rebbe says, all their limbs—their entire bodies, their souls, minds, understanding, and hearts—everything was a vessel for unity twenty-four hours a day. But the foundation of it all was their own being, their own comprehension and feeling. After Matan Torah, by contrast, the point is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants it this way. It is not what I feel, but what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants. Bittul means yielding to what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants: His will is these tefillin, these tzitzis. So on the one hand, if we are talking—and we’ve discussed this before—about quantity, then of course our bittul, our small measure of bittul, is only a practical connection, only

08:06 The garments, the practical actions. But inwardly, I’m still not connected to the unity. I don’t feel love or awe, and I don’t feel that anything is missing. Inwardly, I’m not connected. The whole connection is only external, in what I actually do. I put on tefillin, I wear tzitzis, I learn Torah, I do all the practical things—I actually perform the mitzvos. So in terms of the extent of the bittul, the bittul is smaller: it’s only in the garments, only on the outside, only in practical action, not in the person’s entire being. But in terms of the essence of the bittul, the bittul in mitzvos is far greater, because mitzvos are His will. It isn’t based on what I feel or grasp. It isn’t built on my own sense of self. It comes from what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants. In a mitzvah, what matters is His will. And that is the point the Alter Rebbe explains here: why oil is needed for the wick. What does “oil for the wick” mean? Oil means something that is completely nullified. The whole nature of oil is that it is consumed by the flame; it does not remain as it was. It enables the flame to cling to the wick. Bittul is the whole way oil works: it is consumed, and then the oil and the flame can come together. Where is there bittul? Specifically in good deeds and the practical performance of mitzvos. True bittul is found specifically in performing mitzvos, because that is where the principle of “there is nothing besides Him,” the unity of Hashem, comes into play. Now, that is what this note will address. Look inside; let’s see what the Rebbe says. This note is one of the most famous notes. It is cited in hundreds of places in Chassidus. It is always cited because it contains one of the great innovations of Chassidus. So here it is in the text of the Tanya. He says: “And as I heard from my teacher, of blessed memory.” The Alter Rebbe says, “As I heard…”

09:53 “…from my teacher, of blessed memory”—that refers to the Maggid of Mezritch. This is apparently the only place where the Alter Rebbe mentions the Maggid of Mezritch by name in a maamar. Elsewhere he says, “I heard from my teachers,” and in the Shulchan Aruch there is an explanation in the name of the Baal Shem Tov. But here the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya, “I heard from my teacher.” Although the Alter Rebbe wrote on the title page of Tanya that it is all “from books”—sorry, “from books and from teachers”—yes, meaning the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid, for some reason he emphasizes it here: he heard this from the Maggid of Mezritch. Let’s read it inside: “As I heard from my teacher, of blessed memory, an explanation of and reason for what is written in Eitz Chaim.” The Alter Rebbe heard from the Maggid of Mezritch an explanation of why Eitz Chaim says that the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, does not become united even with the world of Atzilus. Even Atzilus, which we know is a G-dly world. It is not an independent existence. Atzilus is the world of unity: Hashem is One. Yet even in a world like Atzilus, Ein Sof does not become united with that world except by first being enclothed in the sefirah of Chochmah. Ein Sof must first be enclothed in Chochmah, and only afterward, through Chochmah, can it be present and shine in Atzilus. In other words, for all the qualities of Atzilus, it cannot be a vessel for Ein Sof. Atzilus is the loftiest world, and nevertheless, even Atzilus is not a vessel for Ein Sof. What is a vessel for Ein Sof? Chochmah specifically. And through Chochmah, it can reach Atzilus as well. Why? Now, this is what is written in Eitz Chaim. Up to the words “in the sefirah of Chochmah,” it is written in Eitz Chaim. Eitz Chaim says that for Ein Sof to be revealed in Atzilus, it must first shine in Chochmah, and through Chochmah it reaches Atzilus. Those are the words of Eitz Chaim. But what is the meaning and reason for this? That is what the Alter Rebbe brings in the name of the Maggid: “For Ein Sof, blessed be He, is the True One.”

11:54 What does “Ein Sof, blessed be He” mean? It means the true unity of Hashem. That is what “Ein Sof, blessed be He” means. It refers to the truth of Hashem’s unity, what we spoke about earlier: “There is nothing besides Him.” As Chassidus explains, in truth nothing exists apart from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is true unity—the True One. There are several ways of speaking about unity. There is, for example, the way the Rambam explains unity. But the True One is the unity revealed by Chassidus: the true unity of Hashem, in which there is no other existence. It is not just that there is no other G-d, no other power or authority; there is no other existence. The True One—the full truth of Hashem’s unity. That is the meaning of “Ein Sof, blessed be He”: the truth of Hashem’s unity, that He alone exists, He and none besides Him. The True One means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only existence, and apart from Him there is no existence at all. He, and none besides Him. “And this is the level of Chochmah,” and so on. This sense that He alone exists and there is none besides Him—that itself is what is felt in Chochmah. That is the level of Chochmah. Because Chochmah is koach mah, the power of “what,” this truth is felt in Chochmah; that is why Chochmah specifically has this capacity. In other words, what did the Maggid explain here? The Maggid explained the following. Really, this needs some explanation. I’ll try to explain it a little, as much as one can explain the basic idea.

13:40 What the Maggid is saying is this: What does “Ein Sof, blessed be He” mean? It means “there is nothing besides Him.” That is the meaning of “Ein Sof, blessed be He.” What is Hakadosh Boruch Hu? He alone exists, He and none besides Him. Nothing exists apart from Him. That is Hakadosh Boruch Hu; that is the truth. The truth is that there is nothing besides Him. That is what this means; that is Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What is Chochmah? Chochmah is a level. It is a level in the chain of spiritual descent, a sefirah, a level in that order where this truth is felt. “And this is the level of Chochmah.” Chochmah is the level where “He alone exists and there is none besides Him” is felt. That is all that exists; nothing exists apart from Him. Now, you could say that in Binah, too, I can understand that He alone exists and there is none besides Him. A person can contemplate and understand it intellectually—even at the level of the sefirah of Binah in Atzilus. Binah, too, can understand that He alone exists. But when we speak of Binah, there is my understanding and there is the thing being understood. They are like two things, one understanding the other. There is the existence of the one who understands, the subject being studied, the whole discussion at a distance from the thing itself. A person stands outside it and understands. What does he understand? That He alone exists and there is none besides Him. So I can understand the idea, say Chassidus, explain it to myself, and offer explanations for how Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only existence and nothing exists apart from Him—because creation from nothing is taking place constantly, and with all sorts of arguments that explain the idea. So you understand that He alone exists and there is none besides Him. But the very act of understanding already places you outside that reality of “He alone exists and there is none besides Him.” Because understanding means that there is an existence here,

15:20 Someone who understands. But chochmah is not a matter of understanding. Chochmah is not “I understand, I grasp it.” It is not my grasp of something. Chochmah is bittul, koach mah. The power of chochmah is a faculty of the soul where it is not that I understand that He alone exists, as though there were two things and one understood the other. Rather, in chochmah, the truth that He alone exists and there is none besides Him is felt as it is. That is what is felt in the soul: the true reality that He alone exists and there is none besides Him. And that is the level of chochmah. So for the Ein Sof to be revealed even in the world of Atzilus, Atzilus, for all its qualities, is ultimately a world. As we said, even binah of Atzilus is binah; it is an existence. There is a sense of existence here, a grasp of something, and that is already not “there is none besides Him.” So for the Ein Sof to be revealed in Atzilus, it must first shine in chochmah. In chochmah, because of its bittul, the truth that He alone exists and there is none besides Him shines. Through chochmah, it can then shine throughout Atzilus as well. Chassidus explains that, in general, the bittul of chochmah is felt throughout the world of Atzilus. After all, Chassidus explains that when we speak of the four worlds, then, generally speaking, chochmah shines in the world of Atzilus. Although Atzilus has ten sefiros, overall the bittul that comes from chochmah shines in Atzilus. Binah shines in the world of Beriah, the middos in the world of Yetzirah, and the aspect of malchus in the world of Asiyah. These correspond to the four letters of Hashem’s name, apportioned among the four worlds. So that is Atzilus in general. But how does it get there? Through the chochmah of Atzilus. In other words, the essential revelation that He alone exists and there is none besides Him belongs specifically to the chochmah of Atzilus. And once it shines in the chochmah of Atzilus, then through the chochmah of Atzilus it also imbues

17:10 all the sefiros with that feeling, with that point, so that the point that He alone exists and there is none besides Him will be felt in them as well. But where is the source of “He alone exists and there is none besides Him”? Which sefirah is intrinsically suited to it? Specifically the sefirah of chochmah, because of its bittul, because of what chochmah is. So why does the Alter Rebbe bring these ideas here in this way? It is along the lines of what we explained inside: the Rav explained the difference between a complete tzaddik who serves Hashem with awe and a great love filled with delight, and the performance of a mitzvah. Even a complete tzaddik who serves Hashem with awe and a great love filled with delight is wholly devoted to G-dliness. He is a servant, a tzaddik, without an evil inclination; he serves G-d with awe and a great love filled with delight. He has reached love of Hashem on the loftiest level. He is entirely connected to G-dliness. Nevertheless, there is still someone there. It is like the matter of binah. He understands that He alone exists and there is none besides Him. But there is a “he” here. There is a person here. There is an existence outside Hakadosh Boruch Hu. There is something here. And without that, there is no... So “He alone” is not present. It is no longer “He alone exists and there is none besides Him.” That is the greatest contradiction to “He alone exists and there is none besides Him.” The performance of mitzvos, by contrast—here the point is not what I grasp, but what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants. So here the bittul is genuine bittul. And this is the same idea. This is the quality of chochmah. The Rebbe once said that the Rav writes here, “As I heard from my teacher.” That, too, is connected with this whole idea. In other words, the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize that for a person to attain such a level of bittul in his avodah, so that what shines in the chochmah of Atzilus will shine in his soul—there is also chochmah in the soul, the soul’s chochmah, as we learned earlier in chapter 18.

19:26 The soul, too, has this point of chochmah, and there, too, the truth of G-dliness shines. For a person to reach a state where the truth of G-dliness shines within him—that He alone exists and there is none besides Him—that requires “as I heard from my teacher.” It has to be something received from the Rebbe. A person can study and toil, study nigleh and Kabbalah and Torah, toil in prayer, and reach the highest levels of love, yearning, and connection to G-dliness. But there will always remain some sense of self. Ultimately, an existence is still an existence. An existence that loves Hashem. An existence that loves Hashem. An existence separate from Hashem. There is still the question of how he grasps G-dliness. One cannot reach the point of true bittul—that He alone exists and there is none besides Him—on one’s own. Because as long as I go on my own, I always remain within my own existence. However much I try to transcend it, the little “I” is still there: I am in a state of trying to nullify myself. At the foundation, ultimately, there is always at least an “I” here. As the Rebbe explains, there is the statement, “I was created to serve my Maker.” So seemingly, what bittul! I was created to serve my Maker. My whole being is only to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. My entire life is only to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But from the outset, I have not freed myself of the “I.” Even if we go further and say, “I was created for no purpose other than to serve my Maker”—the Rebbe explains that this is a deeper bittul, but it is still “I.” So there, too, at least in a subtle way, the existence of “I” remains. “I was not created”—wait, even expressing it in the negative is still... Whether “I was created” or “I was not created,” ultimately the whole discussion is about how connected I am to G-dliness. The foundation is “I.” For there to be

21:28 a revelation of “He alone exists and there is none besides Him,” the true oneness of Hashem, where the only reality is Hakadosh Boruch Hu and nothing else—that is why the Alter Rebbe wrote, “As I heard from my teacher.” This is received through... It is received through the Rebbe, through hiskashrus. It is passed from Rebbe to Rebbe. It is something that is passed on, something we need to receive through, through, through... through hiskashrus with the Rebbe. In the Rebbe himself, the idea naturally shines, and through hiskashrus one can also receive some light from it. That is why they recount that the Alter Rebbe once said that when he came to the Maggid of Mezritch, he was deeply impressed. A great... The Alter Rebbe had been with him, and when he saw the Maggid of Mezritch, the Alter Rebbe formed a bond with the Maggid and became his chossid, and so on. There is a saying that the Alter Rebbe once said that with the Maggid of Mezritch, one could see supernal chochmah in a physical body. There is such an expression that the Alter Rebbe used about the Maggid of Mezritch. What does it mean? One could see supernal chochmah as it is present in a body, as it dwells in a body. What does this saying about chochmah mean? It is the idea that He alone exists and there is none besides Him: that a person living in this world can have that bittul shine within him, just as it is—that He alone exists and there is none besides Him, that there is nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu—and have it truly shine within him. Not through a self that grasps the idea, but with the truth that there is none besides Him shining within him as it is. That is what he saw in the Maggid. That is the meaning of a rav, of a tzaddik: someone in whom G-dliness shines as it truly is. Not G-dliness as a separate existence grasps it, but G-dliness as it is in its essence—utter, complete bittul. There is also a saying about this. There is also a saying that the Rebbe wrote about this, if I am not mistaken. He cites the Alter Rebbe as saying

23:55 About the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid—that they could instill yirah ila’ah, sublime awe, even into an inanimate stone. Something like that: they could instill yirah ila’ah even into a stone. That is roughly how it is worded; I can’t quote the exact wording today. But that is the point. Yirah ila’ah means this awareness that He alone exists, and there is nothing besides Him. It has already been explained that yirah ila’ah is connected with the yud of Hashem’s Name. That is how they explained it. This awareness that He alone exists, and there is nothing besides Him—they could instill it even into an inanimate stone. In other words, this awareness shone within them, and so they could reveal it in everything. There is the story of how the Baal Shem Tov would go out to a field with his students on Friday night to welcome Shabbos, and the goats there would dance too. The goats would stand up on their hind legs and dance along with the Baal Shem Tov and his students. They felt the holiness of Shabbos. In other words, what shone within the Baal Shem Tov had an effect even on the goats—even on the Baal Shem Tov’s goats. Out there in the field, they too felt the bittul that shone within the Baal Shem Tov. They say that the Rebbe Rashab once remarked that when he walked to shul, there were some who stood and stared at him like goats. Sometimes he would see young men standing there, staring. He didn’t see people simply standing and looking at him; he said there were young men standing like goats—but not like the Baal Shem Tov’s goats. At least something happened to those goats. Some people stand like goats, but nothing happens to them. No, no, no, no.

25:58 … Anyway, this point that the Alter Rebbe makes here in the note is one of the greatest foundations of Chassidus. The Rebbeim cite it all the time: true bittul, the awareness that He alone exists and there is nothing besides Him—that bittul is true submission. There is a story about the Alter Rebbe that expresses how chassidim lived with this idea. The Alter Rebbe once called Reb Moshe Vilenker and asked him, “What is Hakadosh Boruch Hu?” He asked him three times, but Reb Moshe did not answer. Then he asked him, “What is emunah?” He asked several times, but again Reb Moshe did not answer. Then he asked him, “What is a neshamah? What is the neshamah of a Jew?” He asked that too. The Alter Rebbe then became absorbed in dveikus for some time, and answered him in a melody: “What is Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the One who alone exists, the only reality, and there is nothing besides Him. What is emunah? Emunah is believing that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only reality, and there is no reality besides Him. And what is a neshamah? A neshamah is something in which it shines that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only reality, and there is no reality besides Him.” That is all of Chassidus in a few words. That is what the Alter Rebbe told Reb Moshe Vilenker. Essentially, it is what the Alter Rebbe says here: He alone exists, and there is nothing besides Him. That is the whole point of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings.