Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 41 - Part 9

00:00 In chapter 41, we’re up to the line that begins after the period. The Alter Rebbe says that a person reflects. Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking about awe of the King of Heaven. He explained at length the contemplation needed to arouse yiras Shamayim, awe of G-d: all the ideas one needs to consider to arouse awe of the King of Heaven. Then, at the end, the Alter Rebbe said that a person reflects on all these matters in his mind. Even if, after all that contemplation, he feels no awe at all—not even a feeling of awe or shame in his heart or mind—and the Alter Rebbe also explains why he feels nothing, nevertheless, nothing is lacking in his avodah. The Alter Rebbe explains that there are two things. There is the mitzvah of avodah, of serving Hashem, which is one mitzvah, and there is the mitzvah of “You shall fear Hashem your G-d.” They are two separate mitzvos. So, as we said on the previous page, complete avodah requires both service and awe. Nevertheless, if a person cannot arouse awe, but contemplates that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is King and accepts the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, without actually feeling awe, this still counts as complete avodah as far as the mitzvah of avodah is concerned. It is a mitzvah in its own right, so he fulfills the mitzvah of avodah even though he has no awe. Here the Alter Rebbe continues and tries to bring this person into the realm of awe as well. Rabbi [unclear] writes that in this passage you can see the Alter Rebbe’s approach. The Alter Rebbe tries to bring everyone into this avodah.

02:11 The Alter Rebbe is trying to show that “the matter is very close to you,” and so on, “to do it.” He is trying to explain that everyone can come to serve Hashem in his own way, and here we see him trying to find merit in each and every person. We see this in what follows. On the one hand, the Alter Rebbe says that even if a person has not been aroused to awe, the very fact that he thought about these matters and accepted the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven means that, as far as avodah is concerned, he fulfills its mitzvah. So he has no awe, but he does have avodah. Now the Alter Rebbe goes on to say that, in truth, he has awe as well. It counts as awe too. This is what the Alter Rebbe now brings out. The Alter Rebbe says—you have the place?—the line beginning after the period: “And in truth, he also fulfills the mitzvah of awe.” Even this person, the Alter Rebbe says, fulfills not only the mitzvah of avodah but also, to a certain extent, the mitzvah of awe. It isn’t that the Alter Rebbe is taking back what he said earlier; he is adding a new point. That is, as far as the awe we discussed earlier is concerned—the higher awe that comes from recognizing Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King—this person does not have it. Even though he reflects and accepts the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven because that is what Hashem wants, he feels no awe at all. So he has no awe in that sense. That is why the Alter Rebbe says: Even if you have no awe, it is still good that you have avodah. You serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu like a servant, without a feeling of awe. Now the Alter Rebbe adds that there is a certain kind of awe that can also be included in the mitzvah of awe. It is a different kind of

03:51 awe. It does not mean the same thing by “awe” as we did earlier. Let’s look inside now. “And in truth, he also fulfills the mitzvah of awe.” To a certain extent, the person also fulfills the mitzvah of awe. “By drawing awe into his thoughts”—by the very fact that he thinks about things that inspire awe. He thinks about Hakadosh Boruch Hu being the King of kings, and he thinks about how, because Hakadosh Boruch Hu stands over him and watches him, he must stand before Him with dread and awe. These are all the ideas we discussed earlier in the chapter. So he thinks about the King and about things that inspire awe. Even if, in practice, no awe is aroused in him, he is thinking about these things, and that too fulfills the mitzvah of awe. “For at that hour and moment, at least, the fear of Heaven is upon him, at least like the fear of an ordinary person of flesh and blood.” At the very time he thinks about these things, he certainly has at least some sense of the fear of Heaven—at least the kind of fear one has of a person of flesh and blood. Just an ordinary person, not a king: because that person is in the room, I am embarrassed to do all sorts of foolish things. Even though he isn’t a king. There are two points here: he is flesh and blood, and he is not a king. Still, because he is in the room with me, I feel a certain embarrassment about doing things that are inappropriate. We can see this in practice. Many people—most people, perhaps almost everyone—would not commit a transgression if someone were watching. That person is just an ordinary human being. He doesn’t want to

05:44 commit a transgression in front of other people who are watching him. So, as the Alter Rebbe says, it is like “the fear of an ordinary person of flesh and blood, who is not a king, watching him, because of whom he refrains from doing something improper in that person’s eyes.” He won’t do something that the other person would consider inappropriate. Here too, since the person is now thinking about yiras Shamayim, even though he doesn’t feel it, he is thinking about Heaven. So while he is thinking about it, he won’t commit a transgression, because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here. That is the reality: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here. He thinks about that and therefore won’t commit a transgression, because he doesn’t want to do something that would be displeasing to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Even this kind of reaction is not really awe; essentially, it is embarrassment. It is not shame arising from the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but embarrassment because it feels uncomfortable to act that way when Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here, just as it would if another person were here. This is the calculation the Alter Rebbe makes: If another person were here, I wouldn’t do bad things. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here, so I also have to be careful not to do bad things. The Alter Rebbe says that even this level, though it is an extremely low level—responding to Hakadosh Boruch Hu as one would to a person of flesh and blood—can also be counted as a level of awe. At least at that moment, because he thought about it, it counts as awe. The Alter Rebbe says that this level, too, can be called awe. In other words, the Alter Rebbe emphasizes: It is true that, compared with what we discussed earlier, the real meaning of awe, this is not

07:23 what awe means. When we explain the verse “And now, Israel, what does Hashem your G-d ask of you but to fear Him,” “fear” there means awe in its proper sense: some feeling of awe arising from His exaltedness, or from shame, or from a sense of one’s own lowliness. He feels a certain awe of Hakadosh Boruch Hu as his King. Here, that isn’t what is happening. Here it is only embarrassment. You can’t really call it awe. I won’t do it because someone is in the room, so I won’t act foolishly. A young man alone in a room might talk to himself, dance, make noises—what do I know? No one says anything. But then he suddenly notices that someone in the room can see him. Another young man had been there, and he hadn’t noticed. So what does that mean? Does it mean he is in awe of his friend? That is not awe; it is the natural embarrassment a person feels because he doesn’t want to seem abnormal around other people. He doesn’t want to look crazy. Yes, that is a kind of embarrassment. The Alter Rebbe says that, in the broader usage of Lashon Hakodesh, this too is called “awe.” This sort of embarrassment is also called awe, and so it can be included in the mitzvah. At any rate, a person thinks about Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and because he thinks that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here, he refrains in practice from committing a transgression because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here in the room. Though he feels no awe, the embarrassment involved can also be called awe. Where do we see that this too is called awe? He brings an explicit passage from the Gemara: “As Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said to his students: May it be His will that the fear of Heaven be upon you like the fear of a person of flesh and blood

09:08 Etc.” That is the story of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. The Gemara relates in Berachos that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai called his students to him before he passed away, and they began to cry. He said, “I do not know by which path they will lead me.” That whole story is about what Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said before his passing. Among other things, the Gemara tells us what his parting message was. He told his students, “May it be Hashem’s will that your fear of Heaven be like your fear of a human being.” That was the blessing Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai wanted for all his students. As the Rebbe once explained in a sicha, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai lived at the time of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. He was called Rabban—“our teacher.” The Gemara says the title Rabban refers to a nasi. He was a leader, a nasi, a rosh yeshiva. He was, so to speak, the leader of the Jewish people in the period after the destruction. Through the counsel he gave and the instructions from him that we have in the Gemara, he prepared them for life after the destruction. He knew the Jewish people would fall from their spiritual levels. When the Beis Hamikdash stood, the Jewish people had love of Hashem—not ordinary love, but great love; not ordinary awe, but higher awe. The Beis Hamikdash was a place where G-dliness was tangibly revealed, and the Jewish people were on the level of higher awe, a greater kind of awe. But he knew that now, in exile, after the destruction, there would be concealment, a hiding of Hashem’s face. So one could not demand high levels of love and awe. That is why, among the things Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai told his students before he passed away, he said, “May it be Hashem’s will that, at the very least, your fear of Heaven be like your fear of a human being.” So if that were not a spiritual level, how could Rabban

10:47 Yochanan ben Zakkai ask for such a thing? In other words, if it were something that should not be, if it did not count as serving Hashem at all, did not count as any kind of awe, how could Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai ask his students for it? How could he speak to them about something that was not genuine? So from this we understand—especially since he used the words “fear of Heaven like fear of a human being”—that this too can be included in the category of awe. At the very least, it counts as some degree of awe. And so the Alter Rebbe says that even a person who cannot arouse a feeling of awe within himself, but thinks about these things—because he thinks about the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here, he will not actually commit a sin out of embarrassment, just as he would be embarrassed if someone else were watching him. That too can be called awe. So he has two qualities here. He has the quality of service, because he serves Hashem like a servant, and he also has the quality of awe—at least this kind of awe. The Alter Rebbe continues with the wording of the Gemara about what Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai told his students: “Know that when a person commits a sin, he says, ‘May no person see me,’” and so on. We see that when a person sins, he says, “I hope nobody catches me doing it.” In other words, he is afraid of another person. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai says that even this is a positive quality. Even this concern that keeps a person from sinning—because he does not want to be seen by another human being—counts as a kind of awe. That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying. Up to this point, then, he has explained various levels of awe, various

12:27 kinds of awe, from the beginning of chapter 41 until now. He explained that awe is “the beginning of service, its essence and its root,” and within that itself he explained many levels—this kind of awe, that kind of awe, several different forms. Now the Alter Rebbe continues: “But this awe”—the awe we are discussing here. What does “this awe” mean? He does not mean only what he just said at the end, the awe Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai spoke about. What does he mean? He means everything he has discussed throughout the chapter, from the beginning of chapter 41. Here, with the words “this awe,” the Alter Rebbe is referring back to everything from the beginning of chapter 41 until this point. Everything we have discussed, all the kinds of awe discussed here throughout the chapter—all of it is called lower awe. All these levels of awe are considered lower awe. In other words, what kind of awe have we been discussing here? Lower awe, basic awe, simple awe. It is “the beginning of service, its essence and its root,” and every single person must have it in order to serve Hashem and fulfill all the mitzvos—both by doing what is required and by turning away from evil, as we explained at length earlier. So this is the lower awe we are discussing, “the fear of sin that precedes wisdom.” This level is also called the fear of sin that precedes wisdom. The Gemara says—rather, the Mishnah says in Pirkei Avos: “Anyone whose fear of sin precedes his wisdom, his wisdom endures.” Reb Chanina ben Dosa says this there. Reb Chanina ben Dosa says that the fear of sin must precede wisdom. What does it mean for the fear of sin to precede wisdom? Wisdom refers to Torah. So before wisdom, before the level of wisdom and Torah, there must be a preceding fear of sin.

14:19 That is what we are discussing here. It is lower awe: a person is afraid of rebelling against the King, because through sin he would become a rebel against the King. So this is considered the fear of sin that precedes wisdom, and every single person must have it. Higher awe, on the other hand, is awe born of shame. There is a higher kind of awe, at the other end of the spectrum, which is not considered fear of sin. He is not afraid of the sin. What, then, does he fear? He feels awe and shame. He is awed and ashamed before the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is not the embarrassment we spoke about earlier, when Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said that a person is embarrassed as he would be before another human being. That does not come from any awareness of greatness. It is simply that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here, so he does not want to do something improper in His eyes. That is not considered awe born of shame. Awe born of shame means that a person contemplates the greatness of the Infinite, and that infinite greatness, the exaltedness of the Infinite, shines within his soul and mind. It brings him to feel shame before His greatness. That is already considered higher awe. And this awe must come after wisdom. Why? Because first you need to learn, to know about Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to know His greatness. Then you can come to this kind of awe. In particular, as explained in Chassidus, to reach higher awe one must receive it as a gift from Above. A person cannot reach higher awe through his own efforts, because higher awe means sensing the exaltedness of the Infinite as it is from Above. And when does one receive this gift? Only through holiness, Torah and mitzvos. As it says, “Hashem commanded us to perform all these statutes, to fear Hashem.” Yes, this refers to awe—higher awe—to

16:11 reach the state of fearing Hashem. “To fear Hashem” means higher awe, and that comes through “Hashem commanded us to perform all these statutes,” through Torah and mitzvos. So the Alter Rebbe is describing the two ends of the spectrum here. There is fear of sin, and there is awe born of shame. Fear of sin means that he is afraid of sin. According to what we explained here, what does it mean that he is afraid of sin? He is afraid that through sin he will become a rebel against the King. If he commits a sin, that sin will cut him off from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, make him a rebel against the King, cut him off from G-dliness. He does not want that. He is afraid to sin because he does not want to be separated from G-dliness. That is what the Rebbe discussed here, and it is lower awe, the basic lower awe that every single person must have. And within this too there are many levels. So the Rebbe groups them all together: generally speaking, it is called lower awe. There are levels within it, but it is lower awe, the beginning of service, which comes before wisdom. Then there is higher awe, awe born of shame, which comes after wisdom. Since today is the Mitteler Rebbe’s birthday and yahrzeit—we have now reached 9 Kislev—there is a story connected to the subject of awe that we are discussing. There is an interesting story about the Mitteler Rebbe that Reb Shlomo Brook related. He heard it from one of his students, who heard it from Reb Chaim Shaul Brook, who heard it from chassidim who had been with the Mitteler Rebbe. What was the story? He related that the Mitteler Rebbe would speak Chassidus at great length. Everyone knows that, among all the Rebbeim, the Mitteler Rebbe was especially associated with Chassidus. He would speak Chassidus expansively, at length [unclear]. Chassidus would just pour forth from him without

17:55 Boundaries. Once there was some celebration where the Mitteler Rebbe was present, along with chassidim of the Mitteler Rebbe. There were also chassidim of the Chernobyler Rebbe, if I’m not mistaken. Either the Chernobyler or the Ruzhiner—one of the Polish tzaddikim. There were chassidim there, and that tzaddik’s practice, I think—I’m not sure now whether it was the Chernobyler or the Ruzhiner—was not to say words of Torah at the table. At the tish, as they call it, he hardly spoke at all. He would say words of Torah... [unclear]. He did not say words of Torah at the table. So there was a bit of an argument there. On the one hand, the Mitteler Rebbe would say Chassidus for hours, pouring it out without limits. On the other hand, Reb Nachum of Chernobyl, or whoever exactly was there—perhaps it wasn’t someone from Chernobyl. Whoever it was among those tzaddikim, he didn’t say words of Torah. There was a bit of pressure about “your Rebbe,” I don’t know. That’s chassidim for you: every chossid thinks his Rebbe is the greatest. So what happened was that the Chabad chassidim began marveling at how abundantly the Mitteler Rebbe said Chassidus. One of the chassidim of that Chernobyler tzaddik said that there was an explicit Gemara. The Gemara says that Shimon HaAmsoni was a Tanna who would expound every instance of the word “es” in the Torah. Every time “es” appears in the Torah—“In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth”—he had interpretations and teachings derived from each one.

19:54 When he reached the verse, “You shall fear Hashem your G-d,” the Gemara says that “es” comes to include something additional. Every “es” in the Torah comes to include something. So when he reached “You shall fear Hashem your G-d”—we’re talking now about fear of Heaven—he didn’t know what the “es” came to include. What does it add? When he reached that verse, he withdrew. What does “he withdrew” mean? He stopped. He didn’t know how to explain it, so he stopped offering interpretations. Then someone there said—the Tzemach Tzedek said there—what is the plain meaning of the Gemara? Shimon HaAmsoni used to expound the verses and offer teachings. This was meant as a reference to the Mitteler Rebbe. He said that Shimon HaAmsoni gave many teachings of all kinds, but when he reached “You shall fear Hashem your G-d,” he withdrew: once a person acquires fear of Heaven, he no longer speaks. As long as someone is far from “You shall fear Hashem your G-d,” and lacks fear of Heaven, he gives teachings; he talks. But when he reaches fear of Heaven, he withdraws. How can you speak when you are standing before Hakadosh Boruch Hu? This was how they justified the Chernobyler Rebbe’s approach of not speaking at the tish: out of fear of Heaven, he becomes utterly humbled and restrained before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and so he does not expound. The chassidim didn’t know what to answer. Later the story reached the Mitteler Rebbe. The Mitteler Rebbe said, “But there’s a continuation!” The Gemara goes on. Where is that Gemara? In Kesubos. The Gemara about the rain. Yes. The Gemara continues: “Until Rabbi Akiva came.” And Rabbi Akiva expounded, “‘You shall fear Hashem your G-d’—this includes Torah scholars.” Rabbi Akiva reached

21:59 a higher level of fear, and he expounded that “‘You shall fear Hashem your G-d’ includes Torah scholars.” A person who is a Torah scholar—that means wisdom grows out of his fear, the concept of higher-level fear. When one reaches a higher level of fear, the level of a Torah scholar, then he can expound. Ah, even though he has fear, he can still expound. That was Rabbi Akiva. That’s the difference. Shimon HaAmsoni had indeed reached a lower level of fear, so he couldn’t speak. But Rabbi Akiva came and revealed that, on the contrary, the verse “includes Torah scholars”: a Jew at the level of a Torah scholar can expound. And that was the difference between the Mitteler Rebbe and that tzaddik—the Mitteler Rebbe spoke at length. There’s also a story connected with this... As with all these matters, since we’re speaking about the Mitteler Rebbe: the Mitteler Rebbe has a sefer called Derech Chaim. It was said that the Mitteler Rebbe wrote Derech Chaim to explain this very point, this foundation of faith. The whole sefer is based on this point in chapter 41. There the Mitteler Rebbe explains at length the idea of fear of Heaven and kabbolas ol, which is “the beginning, the core, and the root of the service.” There is an introduction. In the introduction to Derech Chaim, the Mitteler Rebbe writes at length about how to reconcile the statements “If there is no wisdom, there is no fear” and “If there is no fear, there is no wisdom.” He explains the difference between the fear that precedes wisdom and the fear that follows wisdom—lower-level fear and higher-level fear. The Mitteler Rebbe goes into detail there about the many levels of fear: fear of sin, the fear of tzaddikim, and, within these, several further levels.

23:54 It’s very interesting to study the introduction to Derech Chaim. It’s a foundational introduction to the love of Hashem in general. There the Mitteler Rebbe explains the various levels among people who have fear of Heaven: whether their fear of Heaven helps them avoid sin, how much it helps them, what kinds of transgressions they commit—all sorts of things. It’s very interesting to see how broadly and at length the Mitteler Rebbe explains the different levels of fear. Then, throughout the continuation, especially in the early chapters, the Mitteler Rebbe explains that without—without kabbolas ol, all of one’s service counts for nothing. Kabbolas ol is what brings holiness into it all. So the Mitteler Rebbe says that a person who throws off the yoke—the expression he uses there is, “No one shall see the face of G-d and live.” When kabbolas ol, accepting the yoke of Heaven, is lacking, a person has no connection to G-dliness. That is the first foundation for having a connection to G-dliness. Therefore, the Mitteler Rebbe says that the central focus of teshuvah must be on this foundation. Teshuvah must first address the throwing off of the yoke: removing that attitude from a person and accepting the yoke of Heaven. That’s also in chapter 2. The Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, explains these ideas there as well. So I mentioned a particular story. There was a sicha about fifty years ago. It was the two-hundredth anniversary of the Baal Shem Tov. The Rebbe went to a camp then and spoke to the children there. The Rebbe gave them a sicha, explaining each of the Rebbeim and connecting each one to the Baal Shem Tov. It’s a very beautiful sicha, printed among the sichos, and the Rebbe also quoted it.

25:41 The Rebbe spoke to children and told them a story, a vort from each Rebbe. He explained the central point each Rebbe emphasized, and then connected it to a vort and a story from the Baal Shem Tov. He began with the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe, and continued through to the Frierdiker Rebbe. When he came to the Mitteler Rebbe, the Rebbe explained that his central point was kabbolas ol malchus Shamayim—accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. In his book Derech Chaim, the Mitteler Rebbe explains at length that the foundation of serving Hashem must be kabbolas ol malchus Shamayim. This means that a person should feel, twenty-four hours a day, that he is a servant of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, who commands him. That gives him the strength to succeed in everything else he does in serving Hashem. The Rebbe then connected this to a story about the Baal Shem Tov. As a child, the Baal Shem Tov would go into the forest to study, work on his learning, and daven. He went there often, and people asked him how he was not afraid of the forest, the lions, the animals, and everything else. The Baal Shem Tov said that his father had left him this instruction: “Listen to Him, and fear nothing except Hakadosh Boruch Hu alone.” That was the Baal Shem Tov’s foundation. So it is understood that this is also a foundation of Chassidus: yiras Shamayim and kabbolas ol malchus Shamayim are the foundation of a Jew’s service of Hashem in general, and particularly in the way of Chassidus. Especially today, on the Mitteler Rebbe’s day, it is understood that this must be the main focus of our service of Hashem.