Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 41 - Part 3

00:04 Speaker 1 We’re up to “And behold, Hashem stands over him,” on the second line. At the end of what we learned about “And behold, Hashem stands over him,” the Alter Rebbe says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu stands over each and every person and looks at him, sees what he is doing, and also examines his innermost thoughts and heart: how does he serve Hashem? Is he serving Him properly? So the Alter Rebbe draws a conclusion here. When a person considers all this, what follows? That he must serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “to serve before Him with awe and fear, like a man standing before a king.” The Rebbe emphasizes in the sicha—the same sicha we discussed in the previous class—that “to serve before Him” means every kind of service, throughout the day. This is not something required only at special times of the year. Rather, “to serve before Him” applies to every kind of service, all day long, twenty-four hours a day: all your actions, all your ways. This must be a person’s constant attitude. That is, although Chassidus generally explains that there is a difference between weekdays and Shabbos and Yom Tov, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—times when a person stands closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and, correspondingly, times when he is farther away—Chassidus speaks of three levels: weekdays, Yom Tov, and Shabbos. Weekdays are a time for work: “For six days, work shall be done.” On Yom Tov, work is forbidden, but preparing food is permitted. And on Shabbos, no work at all may be done. Chassidus explains that this depends on the level at which one stands before the king. When a person stands right before the king, then what work may he do? None at all. Because when a person stands directly before the king, he cannot move even a finger. He must be

02:27 Speaker 1 in a state of complete bittul. By contrast, when a person is in the king’s country, but not directly before the king, he can certainly move a finger. That is no sin. He can act and do his work. Chassidus explains that this is the difference between Shabbos, Yom Tov, Rosh Hashanah, and weekdays. On Shabbos, a person stands directly before the king. In a general sense, this is also true of Yom Kippur and Shemini Atzeres. That is why no work at all may be done then: when standing before the king, one must be in a state of complete bittul. Yom Tov is a lower level, so some kinds of work are permitted and others forbidden. Weekdays are a still lower level. That is when a person is in the world, and therefore it must specifically be a time of “For six days, you shall do your work.” So ordinarily we do make these distinctions. Nevertheless, the Rebbe points out that here the Alter Rebbe is speaking about “And behold, Hashem stands over him.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu stands over him twenty-four hours a day. So how must a person serve Him? “With awe and fear, like a man standing before a king”—not merely like someone in the king’s country. A person in the king’s country also has a measure of awe, fear, and respect. But obviously it is not the same. When he stands before the king, directly before the king, his awe and fear are entirely different. So here the Alter Rebbe demands that, at all times, throughout the day and in every aspect of serving Hashem, a person maintain that sense of awe before the king, as one standing directly before Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Why? Because “And behold, Hashem stands over him.” As the Alter Rebbe has just said, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is present with every Jew. Consequently, at all times, in every kind of service, he must have

04:13 Speaker 1 that attitude—the attitude of someone standing before the king. Of course, there is a difference between this and standing before the king as we speak of it on Shabbos or Yom Kippur. The level of revelation on a weekday is different. But here the Alter Rebbe calls for bittul, awe and fear, and respect. What kind of awe and fear? The kind that comes when a person pictures Hakadosh Boruch Hu standing directly before him, as though he were before the king. The Rebbe cites the story in Likkutei Dibburim about Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. Someone described to him what it was like for a soldier to approach the king: the whole progression, from a soldier going in to his commander, the commander to the general, until finally he reaches the king. And then the man fainted. He fainted just from picturing the awe and fear of standing before the king. The Rebbe brings this as an example: a person pictures himself standing before the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That will certainly awaken awe and fear in him. At the same time, the Rebbe says, there must also be a sense of joy along with that awe and fear. Standing before the king should also bring joy—joy in the very fact that he has merited to stand before the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Both are demanded of a Jew. On the one hand, he must feel the awe and fear of standing before the king. On the other hand, he must feel the joy of having merited to be the king’s servant. There is a teaching of the Maggid of Mezritch that is relevant here; it’s interesting. The Alter Rebbe is speaking here about yiras Shamayim, the beginning of divine service. The Alter Rebbe is speaking about yiras Shamayim,

06:06 Speaker 1 about what a person needs. What is the basic yiras Shamayim that the Alter Rebbe asks of each and every person? It is “the beginning of service, its essence and its root”: recognizing that he is the king’s servant, that there is a king and he is a servant, and that he must serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu rather than rebel against the kingship. That is the point the Alter Rebbe is demanding here. That is the yiras Shamayim he is asking for. The Alter Rebbe does not say a single word about fear of punishment, and that is one of the innovations in the teachings of Chassidus. Works of mussar discuss the beginning of divine service, its foundation, as fear of punishment. What is a person afraid of? He is afraid that if he does not keep Torah and mitzvos, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will punish him. We also find the concept of fear of punishment in the Torah: “If you follow My statutes,” things will be good, and if you do not, things will be bad. But here the Alter Rebbe does not say a word—not half a word—about fear of punishment. He is speaking about “the beginning of service, its essence and its root,” the foundation of divine service. But what is the fear? Not fear of punishment, but fear that comes from recognizing, “He is the king and I am the servant.” A Jew feels awe and respect for Hakadosh Boruch Hu because He is the king, and for that very reason does not want to rebel against His kingship. When you commit a transgression, you become a rebel against the kingship. It is true that other maamarim in Chassidus—not the Tanya—discuss this, [unclear], and in several other places in Chassidus it is explained that when a person sees himself in a state where he has many desires, where his yetzer hara is strong,

07:52 Speaker 1 and he cannot rid himself of it, he must also think about fear of punishment, because there really is punishment for a transgression. It is not as though, as some imagine, in Lubavitch there is no Gan Eden and no Gehinnom—only [unclear]. There most certainly is Gan Eden, there is Gehinnom, there is reward, and there is punishment. All of that exists in Lubavitch too. But Chassidus does not want a person to be preoccupied with it. Chassidus wants him to be focused on seeking the truth, not on self-love or reward and punishment, which are a matter of [unclear]. Nevertheless, the Rebbe says, citing several maamarim, that even at the beginning of divine service, when a person sees that he needs to free himself from outright evil, fear of punishment must also enter into his reckoning if it will help him do so. For example, suppose a person is in a river and is about to drown. His life is in danger. When people come to save him, he will not start setting conditions: “I only want to be rescued with some sophisticated device. Huh? If you bring me just a bit of straw or something, I won’t take it. It has to be something one hundred percent reliable. If it isn’t one hundred percent safe, I won’t use it.” That would be foolish. A person has to save himself. That is the simple point. Anything that will save me—I’ll use it to get out. The main thing is to escape outright evil. Similarly, when a fire needs to be put out—G-d forbid, a fire has broken out in the house—a person will not say, “I’ll only use clean water to put it out.” He uses whatever he has, even dirty water. Likewise,

09:33 Speaker 1 Fear of punishment is also good for getting rid of outright evil. But it still isn’t the ideal. It is entirely fear of punishment: a person is thinking about himself, afraid of the blows he’ll receive. That isn’t fear of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In the same way, the demand of a person is that even the beginning, the mainstay, and the root of his service should be to serve Hashem—not himself. So the foundation of serving Hashem is bittul: feeling that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the King and I am His servant, and I don’t want to rebel against His kingship. Every Jew has this by nature. It only needs to be brought out. That is the point of what the Rebbe has explained so far. Now, in one of the Basi Legani maamarim, the Rebbe brings a very, very interesting teaching from the Maggid of Mezritch. The Maggid says this: It is written, “And now, Israel, what does Hashem your G-d ask of you, except to fear Hashem your G-d?” What does this verse mean? This verse is the source for what the Rebbe is discussing here. The Rebbe also brings it later, in chapter two. Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks a person “to fear Hashem your G-d.” The Maggid asks: What does that mean? Why does it say specifically, “to fear Hashem your G-d”? He explains this with a parable. Once, a child went out to play. He played and played in a place that wasn’t so good. In short, while he was playing, a little piece of wood got stuck in him—a splinter. What do you call it? And apparently some kind of—huh?

11:28 Speaker 2 A splinter.

11:28 Speaker 1 A splinter. A small, thin piece of wood got into his flesh, under his skin, and it hurt terribly. The child cried out in pain. His father came home and said, “What am I going to do?” The father took the child; they had to remove the wood that had entered his body. How do you do that? At least, how did they do it in those days? You have to make a small cut. Sometimes, to remove something that has gone in deep, you have to cut. Well, cutting hurts a great deal, and the child doesn’t want it. He is in pain, crying and afraid: his father is cutting his flesh. So, says the Maggid of Mezritch, there is the father’s fear and there is the child’s fear. The child is afraid of the pain. What hurts him? His father is cutting into his flesh. He cries out; it hurts, and he doesn’t want to be cut. But what is the father afraid of? He is afraid of the fact that a piece of wood has entered the child’s flesh. If the wood stays there, it could cause an infection, get into his system, damage his blood, G-d forbid, and even kill him. So the father fears the fact that the wood has entered the flesh. The child fears having his flesh cut; he doesn’t want to be cut. They tell him: You shouldn’t be afraid of what frightens you—the pain of your father cutting. You should be afraid of the wood in your flesh. That is what should frighten you. The Maggid says that the same applies when a person commits a transgression. There are two things here. There is the transgression itself, which is a rebellion against the King’s authority. That is what the transgression itself is. When you commit a transgression, your act is a rebellion against the kingship of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. After

13:17 Speaker 1 that, there are consequences of the transgression. There is also the cutting that has to be done: you must receive a punishment to cleanse the transgression, to remove the dirt, to take out that piece of wood, that bit of filth. So a small child is afraid. Of what? Of punishment. He is afraid of being cut to remove the dirt. He cries out; he doesn’t want to be cleaned. That is why he cries. But what is the father afraid of? Of the thing itself. So when the verse says, “And now, Israel, what does Hashem your G-d ask of you, except to fear Hashem your G-d,” it means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants our fear not to be fear of punishment, but “to fear Hashem your G-d”—to fear what Hashem fears. What does Hashem fear? The transgression itself. So that is what the Rebbe is saying here as well: What should a Jew’s fear of Heaven be about? Not the punishment he’ll receive, the cleansing he’ll need afterward, but the rebellion itself, the transgression itself. When you commit a transgression, you become a rebel against the King’s authority, and that should matter deeply to you. And this is because a Jew is a servant, and so on. This also relates to the story the Rebbe brings in Hayom Yom for one of these days—I think it is 5 Cheshvan. The Rebbe tells a story there about the Tzemach Tzedek. The Tzemach Tzedek was in Petersburg, where the authorities wanted to impose a very harsh decree. The Tzemach Tzedek fought the government to have the decree rescinded, with tremendous mesirus nefesh. He was imprisoned twenty-two times over it, and it demanded a great, great deal of mesirus nefesh from him. They relate that someone asked him—I don’t remember exactly who it was. One of the people involved in the debate said to the Tzemach Tzedek, “How can you stand

15:05 Speaker 1 against the government? After all, it says in the Gemara”—he was a learned man; he knew the Gemara. He was one of the maskilim. Later he grew close to the Tzemach Tzedek, became very close to him. He was deeply impressed by the Tzemach Tzedek and did many good things. His name is recorded—[unclear]. So this man asked the Tzemach Tzedek, “How can you fight the government? It goes against an explicit halachah in Shulchan Aruch. It says that one who rebels against the king is liable to death. The Gemara says that one who rebels against the king is liable to death.” The Tzemach Tzedek answered him, “One who rebels against an earthly king is liable to death of the body. But one who rebels against the kingship of Heaven is liable to death of the soul, and that is worse.” So there are two things. There is the rule that one who rebels against the king is liable to death of the body. But what did the Tzemach Tzedek tell him? There is also rebellion against the kingship of Heaven, and rebellion against the kingship of Heaven brings death of the soul. What does “death of the soul” mean? A person becomes separated from G-dliness. That separation from G-dliness—the consequence of rebelling against the kingship of Heaven—is worse. So that is what the Rebbe is saying here: this is not something limited to the level of the Tzemach Tzedek. It belongs to each and every person. Every Jew has it by nature.

16:15 Speaker 1 A Jew does not want to be, and is afraid of being, a rebel against the kingship of Heaven. But what is needed? We have to awaken that feeling. How do we awaken it? Through what the Alter Rebbe has explained up to this point. The Alter Rebbe now continues: “Let him remain with this thought”—the second line from the top, yes—“let him remain with this thought and dwell on it at length.” The Alter Rebbe says we have to contemplate this thought deeply and spend time on it. Depth refers to the quality of the contemplation, and length to the amount of time. In other words, the Alter Rebbe says that every person must, according to... I once mentioned here—this was before Tisha B’Av, when we learned that the Rebbe wrote to one of the students about this too. The Rebbe, after all, would always write that one should study this subject.