Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 37 - Part 3

00:01 Speaker 1 [unclear]. This is where we are. So the Rebbe explains here the idea that “the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah”: the mitzvah itself brings about its reward. What is the reward of a mitzvah? It is the revelation that will take place in the future, when the Ein Sof Himself will be revealed without any garment, down here in this physical world. How do we reach that? Through the mitzvah. Why? Because that is the whole point of a mitzvah. What does a mitzvah do? A person takes something that was in the realm of kelipah, because it received its vitality from kelipas nogah. We are speaking here about something permissible, which can be elevated. If it is forbidden, it cannot be elevated. But a permissible thing has the capacity to be elevated. Until a person performs a mitzvah with it, though, it receives its vitality, its sustenance, from kelipas nogah. When a person uses it for a mitzvah, he takes the vitality that until now was bound up with kelipah and connects it with the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, where there is no concealment. Why is there no concealment? Because this is what Hashem wanted. Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted this esrog. Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted this money to be given to tzedakah. So this object, which until a moment ago was in the realm of kelipah, is now connected with the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And this itself will be the revelation of Moshiach: when Moshiach comes, the Ein Sof, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, will be revealed within the physical world. The Alter Rebbe continues. That is regarding the object used for the mitzvah. As the Alter Rebbe gave three examples here—a mitzvah involving something that grows, an animal product, and an inanimate object: parchment for tefillin, money for tzedakah, or an esrog that grows. That is regarding all practical mitzvos, the objects used for the mitzvah.

02:13 Speaker 1 Now the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain what happens to the person who performs the mitzvah. The Alter Rebbe says: “And the power of the vital soul.” Regarding the person performing the mitzvah, too, there is this connection between the lower realm and Hakadosh Boruch Hu and His will. “And the power of the vital soul within the body of the person performing the mitzvah is also invested in this action.” When a person shakes the lulav and esrog, he uses strength that belongs to the animal soul. We are simply talking about physical strength, physical energy—the energy and physical abilities a person uses for everything in this world. He takes those abilities and uses them to shake the lulav, put money into tzedakah, or write tefillin. He performs the action of the mitzvah, using the strength of the animal soul. In other words, he takes energy from kelipah and connects it with the mitzvah. It “is also invested in this action, rises from kelipah, and is included in the holiness of the mitzvah, which is His will.” This energy rises out of kelipah and becomes included in the mitzvah, in His blessed will, which is united with the blessed Ein Sof. It becomes one with it, absorbed in the light of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So when a person performs a mitzvah, two things happen. There is the physical object—from the inanimate, plant, or animal realms—which leaves kelipah and connects with His will. And there is also the body and animal soul of the person performing the mitzvah, which likewise leave kelipah and become included in the Ein Sof. Through both of these, a dwelling place in the lower realms is made. That is regarding practical mitzvos, mitzvos connected with action, which are, in fact, most

04:16 Speaker 1 mitzvos—practical mitzvos. Esrog, tefillin, mezuzah, and so on: mitzvos involving an actual action. The Alter Rebbe continues. Now the Alter Rebbe turns to mitzvos that seemingly do not involve a physical object. The question arises: if the entire goal is what we have been discussing—a dwelling place in the lower realms, taking something physical and connecting it with His will; if making a dwelling place in the lower realms, working with the physical, is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu desires—what do we do with all these mitzvos that seemingly have no physical object? The Alter Rebbe continues: “And also in the mitzvos of Torah study, the recitation of Shema, prayer, and the like.” What about these mitzvos, which are primarily spiritual? Torah study—what, seemingly, is its mitzvah? It is a mitzvah of knowledge, and knowledge and comprehension are spiritual matters, matters of understanding. The same applies to the recitation of Shema. Its mitzvah is accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, or recognizing the oneness of Hashem. These, too, are mitzvos connected with faith, awareness, understanding, and such things, or even with love of Hashem. In other words, they involve feelings of the heart and contemplation in the mind about spiritual matters. Prayer, too, is about supplication and requests—all sorts of things that seemingly involve no physical object with which the mitzvah is performed. The Alter Rebbe says: “And also in the mitzvos of Torah study, the recitation of Shema, prayer, and the like, although they do not involve an actual physical action”—although there is no physical action involving an object under the dominion of kelipas nogah. Seemingly, the person is not dealing here with any object from this physical world, from

06:13 Speaker 1 kelipah. It all seems to be entirely spiritual service: contemplation, feeling, and various things involving the G-dly soul. Seemingly, kelipah has no part in it. The Alter Rebbe explains: “Nevertheless, we hold that thought is not equivalent to speech.” If a person thinks about the oneness of Hashem but does not say the words “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” or thinks about prayer but does not say the words aloud—particularly with Shema, where the mitzvah is speech, “and you shall speak of them”—if he does not say the words, he has not fulfilled it. The same is true of prayer. Even if he has all the proper intentions for prayer, if he does not express them in speech, he has not fulfilled it. According to halachah, a person must also use the power of speech for the mitzvah. We hold that thought is not equivalent to speech; thought alone does not fulfill the obligation. One must say the words: “He does not fulfill his obligation until he brings them forth with his lips.” There must be expression through speech and the mouth. And we hold that “the movement of one’s lips is considered an action.” When a person uses his lips to say Shema, pray, recite Tehillim, or study Torah, that is already considered a bodily action. The person is performing an action here. This is also the halachic principle: the movement of one’s lips is considered an action. The Gemara says that someone who drives his animal on Shabbos is liable. The Gemara asks why he is liable—he did not perform any action. The point is that his speech itself, the movement of his lips as he speaks to the animal and causes it to walk, is an action. So the Gemara says that from there we learn that the very movement of the lips, and the very fact that

08:05 Speaker 1 When a person moves his lips, that counts as an action. It is a minor action, but it is an action: moving one’s lips is considered an action. So the Alter Rebbe wants to say here that even in these mitzvos, the body is involved, and so is the animal soul. Ah, sorry—there is also an action involving kelipah. What was the Alter Rebbe’s question? That seemingly, Shema, prayer, and Torah study are spiritual mitzvos, so where is the idea of making a dwelling for Hashem in the lower realms? Where is the refinement—the refinement of the lower realms? So what is the Alter Rebbe’s answer? Since according to halachah one fulfills the mitzvah only by saying the words aloud, the act of speech counts as a refinement of the animal soul. The G-dly soul cannot do it on its own, without physical lips, mouth, tongue, and teeth. It can do so only through the vital, animal soul that is actually clothed in the limbs of the body. For a person to pronounce those letters, he has to use physical organs, and for those physical organs to move, they need the animal soul. So the soul of kelipah is involved here too. The faculties a person needs in order to speak are also faculties of the animal soul. He uses those faculties to say the words of prayer and Torah, and so there is a refinement of the physical here too. When the Alter Rebbe says “lips, mouth, tongue, and teeth,” he wants to include all the places where sounds are articulated. As is known, the letters of the alef-beis are divided into five groups according to where they are articulated. So here the Alter Rebbe mentions four—but “mouth” includes two. There are the lips, the tongue, and the teeth, and then—what is missing? There are the lips, tongue, teeth, palate, and throat. So the palate and throat—

10:04 Speaker 1 The Alter Rebbe includes them under “mouth.” Why? They explain afterward that the throat and palate are, as it were, part of the mouth as a whole. The lips, tongue, and teeth, by contrast, are distinct parts within it. That is why the Alter Rebbe mentions them separately. In any case, the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize all the organs a person must use to speak, through which the animal soul is refined. Now the question is: What exactly is the Alter Rebbe asking here, and what is his answer? At first glance, the Alter Rebbe seems to be saying something simple: He asks, “Aren’t Torah study, prayer, and Shema non-physical mitzvos?” And what does he answer? “The mouth is involved too, so they do count as physical mitzvos.” What is the reasoning here? What was the whole back-and-forth, and what does the answer resolve? There is something very deep here, a remarkable insight that the Alter Rebbe introduces concerning these mitzvos. What is it? Generally, the straightforward way these matters are explained in various sefarim is just the opposite of what the Alter Rebbe says here. Take, for example, the well-known Sefer HaChinuch, which discusses the various mitzvos. On a straightforward reading, when we speak of spiritual mitzvos, the main thing is the spiritual aspect of the mitzvah. That seems obvious. Take the mitzvah of Shema, for example. On a straightforward level, it is a spiritual mitzvah. As Sefer HaChinuch writes, there are mitzvos that apply constantly. It is well known that there are six constant mitzvos, which a person fulfills twenty-four hours a day.

11:53 Speaker 1 Which mitzvos are they? Belief in Hashem, knowledge of Hashem, love of Hashem, love of Hashem, fear of Hashem, and the prohibition against following one’s heart and eyes. There are six mitzvos that a person needs to fulfill twenty-four hours a day. Where do we find all these mitzvos? In Shema. Shema is when a person contemplates all these things. It speaks about love of Hashem, belief in Hashem, fear of Hashem—it is all written there. So that is the time when a person says—Now, Sefer HaChinuch is known to write about this. Why? He writes about it regarding various mitzvos: prayer, Shema, the Beis Hamikdash, and many other mitzvos. Sefer HaChinuch asks: Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu command all these mitzvos? What is their purpose? Sefer HaChinuch has a well-known expression: “The heart is drawn after one’s actions.” I once heard it phrased that way. “The heart is drawn after one’s actions.” What does that mean? It is human nature that if, for example, there are two people, Reuven and Shimon, and Reuven says, “I don’t like Shimon; I just don’t like him”—can you force him to love Shimon? You cannot force a person to love. But what can you do? You can tell him: Do things for him. Do many things for him, do him many favors, speak to him, take action. Through repeated actions, eventually an emotion will awaken in your heart. That is human nature. Yes? That is what “the heart is drawn after one’s actions” means. So when a person prays every day, says Shema every day, does all sorts of things every day—when he performs many actions—through those actions his heart is stirred as well, and eventually—

13:41 Speaker 1 Eventually his heart is awakened. What does that imply? On the basis of this principle in Sefer HaChinuch, what really matters here? Is it saying the words of Shema? No. What matters is the feeling of Shema. That is the main point of Shema: it is something spiritual. And why do we say that Shema must be recited? Why emphasize so strongly that it has to be expressed in speech? Not because there is anything special about the speech itself, but because the action, the speech, eventually helps me direct my heart to it. It is like the saying, “The voice arouses intention.” So what is the goal—the voice or the intention? Surely the intention is the goal. It is just that, by nature, when a person says something aloud, the voice arouses his intention. If I have the intention without the voice, why would I need the voice? The voice is only a means of arousing the intention. In the same way, it would seem that with these mitzvos, the emphasis is not on speech. Speech is secondary, incidental. The main thing here is the feeling; the action simply helps bring about the feeling. And that is the Alter Rebbe’s question: If so, where is the idea of making a dwelling for Hashem in the lower realms? With tefillin and an esrog, there is a physical object that becomes holy, that becomes an object used for a mitzvah—a mitzvah object or a sacred object. There is an object that is acted upon and lifted out of the domain of kelipos. But Torah study, Shema, prayer—mitzvos whose very essence is a spiritual state, where all the speech is secondary, just an external element—then there is no—

15:31 Speaker 1 There is no dwelling in the lower realms. What does the Alter Rebbe introduce here? He teaches that even in these mitzvos, the action is primary. Hakadosh Boruch Hu truly wants the speech. It is not as it might seem from Sefer HaChinuch, that speech is only a means of influencing the heart, the feeling. The intent is specifically the words; the speech is the point. The action is primary, not an action merely as an expression of feeling. The intent is the action itself. That is what the Alter Rebbe—this is the meaning of the principle that thinking is not equivalent to speaking. Why does halachah require speech? Not as something incidental, and not just to show that the person truly means it. It is not that the Sages prescribed all sorts of intentions. Rather, this is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted. What Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants is not the feeling; He wants the action, the actual speech itself. Prayer is a mitzvah performed through speech. The mitzvah is for a person to say the words of prayer with his mouth. That is the mitzvah itself, and it is a major insight. By the way, what is the reasoning behind it? This is the Alter Rebbe’s point: Since the entire purpose of fulfilling a mitzvah is to make a dwelling for Hashem in the lower realms—since that is what a mitzvah is all about, what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted was for a person to draw Him into the physical world—the ultimate purpose of the mitzvah lies in its physical aspect. Saying the words of prayer, the act of speech—that itself is the point. No, speech is not merely a means of producing a feeling. Speech itself is the intent. And this is what the Alter Rebbe explains: Speech is a faculty of the animal soul. Why does the speech itself matter so much? If speech were only a means—It is as if you were to tell someone; the analogy is as if—

17:22 Speaker 1 Imagine telling someone, “I don’t care whether you love me. What matters to me is that you say you love me.” G-d forbid—that’s nonsense. What do I mean? When someone says, “I love you,” are the words the point? The point is the feeling. So what difference does it make whether he says the words? Here, though, we’re saying no: Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants the words. He wants you to say those words. Similarly, when a person is happy, he dances. What’s the point—the dancing? The point is the feeling of joy, which naturally expresses itself in dancing. But to say that the dancing itself is the point? That is the Alter Rebbe’s innovation. That was the difference between before the Alter Rebbe and after the Alter Rebbe. He explains this whole idea at length in the sicha. That is precisely the difference. Before the Alter Rebbe, for someone engaged in avodas Hashem, the feeling was primary. Simply put, as the verse says, the main thing was to accept Hashem upon oneself, to love Hashem and fear Hashem, to be joyful and to cleave to Him. “And Avram journeyed on, traveling southward.” Southward refers to love, the right side: his love was awakened. That was Avraham Avinu. Everything he did was only a means of awakening that love. So the act itself was not an object of holiness, an object of mitzvah. What changed after the Alter Rebbe? A new idea emerged: Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants the act itself, not as a means to anything else. That itself is the purpose. Why? Because that is a dwelling place in the lower realms: taking something that is a separate existence, something physical, something of kelipah, and connecting it to the Master of the world. And the Alter Rebbe’s innovation is that this applies not only to practical mitzvos. His innovation is that even with a mitzvah involving an obligation—

18:58 Speaker 1 Spiritual mitzvos, too, have a special significance in the act and in speech. Take a mitzvah like reciting Shema or davening. The very utterance of the letters of Tehillim, of the davening and of Shema matters. In that itself, the idea of a dwelling place in the lower realms is expressed.

19:13 Speaker 2 A place for davening—you can connect this to davening. It’s like a minyan for davening. Ten make a minyan, according to Rabbi Moshe.

19:22 Speaker 1 I don’t know; I’m learning Tanya now. I don’t know—we’d have to lay out this whole section.

19:27 Speaker 2 I don’t have it.

19:28 Speaker 1 I don’t know what it says. Take a look at it.

19:31 Speaker 2 Davening.

19:31 Speaker 1 The Rebbe says it more explicitly, even if you have doubts about this. The Alter Rebbe writes explicitly at the end of Tanya, in chapter 53. The Alter Rebbe writes: What is a mitzvah performed through speech? There are mitzvos performed through action, and there are mitzvos performed through speech. What is a mitzvah performed through speech? Torah study—and also reciting Shema and davening. Yes, as we said, it is a mitzvah performed through speech, not a mitzvah performed through intention.

19:57 Speaker 2 For the mitzvah.

19:58 Speaker 1 No, you’re saying the opposite. The mitzvah is the speech, and you also need intention. Yes, but the mitzvah is speech. Now we come to davening. You’re asking a very good question. I don’t want to go into it now, because that isn’t the subject here in Tanya. Davening is a whole subject of its own. The Rebbe cites in his sichos a teaching of Reb Chaim on the Rambam, who proposes that, with the mitzvah of davening, intention is part of the mitzvah. If a person had no intention while davening, he has not fulfilled the mitzvah. He says this is because the entire mitzvah of davening is learned from “and to serve Him with all your heart”; the very substance of the mitzvah is service of the heart. The Rebbe says that this is not necessarily so and disagrees with him. There is a whole lengthy discussion about davening—specifically, whether the mitzvah of davening is a mitzvah performed through speech or one performed through intention and thought. Yes. There is also another explanation that the Rebbe does not bring here, but that appears in the Rebbe’s maamarim. The Rebbe makes another point about this: in his maamarim he adds more about mitzvos involving intention, such as the six constant mitzvos, love and fear of Hashem. These would seem to be spiritual mitzvos, but the Rebbe always emphasizes when the mitzvah is actually fulfilled. This too is an innovation; it certainly isn’t stated here. With spiritual mitzvos, the mitzvah is fulfilled when it is felt in the flesh of the heart. In other words, if a person loves Hashem but his heart does not change as a result—do you know what it means for the heart to change? There is a cold love, and there is a love that makes the heart start pounding. When someone is stirred by a great love, his heart beats differently. It beats

21:42 Speaker 1 faster. There is, so to speak, a physical effect in the heart: it is moving differently, not in its usual way. The Rebbe says that as long as this has not brought about a physical change in the physical heart, he has not fulfilled the mitzvah. Because all this—it goes even further. It emphasizes just how much the physical aspect of the mitzvah matters: its material act, its dwelling place in the lower realms. Even there, he isn’t emphasizing the advantages of speech. These are mitzvos that consist entirely of feeling, yet when does a person fulfill the mitzvah? Not through the feeling itself, but when the feeling brings about a change in the physical flesh. When a person contemplates Ahavas Yisroel, when does he fulfill the mitzvah? The Rebbe says: not through the understanding of Ahavas Yisroel itself, but when his physical brain undergoes a change. When someone contemplates deeply, an actual physical change takes place in the matter; there are various signs of it, and so on. In other words, it has to affect the physical matter. This is something the Rebbe adds here, but his main emphasis is on speech. That is the meaning of “the movement of his lips is considered an action”: it happens with the physical mouth. This is the point: the speech here comes from the animal soul, because the faculties a person uses to speak are the faculties of the animal soul. He elevates them to holiness. That itself is the purpose. It’s not just some secondary matter; because this is what a dwelling place in the lower realms means, without it the main thing is missing. Exactly, exactly. [unclear] Yes, it follows that the act is primary. But the Rebbe also says [unclear] in connection with mitzvah, tzavsa vechibur—joining and connecting—the whole idea. This was an innovation in the sichos of 11 Nissan: with a mitzvah, the very act of performing it creates the connection. Today I’m giving the whole analogy

24:28 Speaker 1 of a simple person and a great sage or a high-ranking minister, between whom there is no connection at all. The great person gives him a simple instruction, and the simple person carries it out. The very act of fulfilling the instruction, without any intention or feeling—simply doing what the other person wants—creates the tzavsa vechibur, the connection with the one who commanded him. That is the whole idea of a mitzvah. Here the Rebbe also emphasizes the point of the dwelling place in the lower realms that is brought about here. In other words, we take something from the world and connect it.