Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 41 - Part 10

00:01 Here the Alter Rebbe begins to explain a new subject. Of course, it is all a continuation, but until now the Alter Rebbe has explained fear of Hashem, and from here he begins to explain love of Hashem. As we explained in earlier classes, all of chapter 41 continues what the Alter Rebbe began explaining at the end of chapter 40. There he quoted the Zohar’s statement that “Torah without fear and love does not ascend on high.” When a person studies Torah without love and fear, that Torah does not ascend. He explained that love and fear are not the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose is the Torah and mitzvos themselves, because they are what make a dwelling place for Hashem in the lower realms. So what is primary? Torah and mitzvos. But for the Torah and mitzvos to ascend, for them to have the quality of light and revelation and be connected to the infinite light of Hashem, love and fear are also needed. That is the analogy of love and fear as wings. Wings are not the bird itself, but they enable the bird to rise. So too, love and fear are called “wings” in the language of the Zohar: they raise the Torah and mitzvos, enabling physical Torah and mitzvos to ascend and connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is why love and fear are also necessary to raise Torah and mitzvos. But the purpose is not love and fear in themselves. Rather, love and fear must lead a person to actual service, to observing the positive and negative commandments. That is the purpose of the soul’s entire descent below: to make a dwelling place for Him in the lower realms. So in chapter 41, the Alter Rebbe explains that in every... that there must be at least the minimum—“the beginning of service, its core and its root,” and all of that.

02:09 Yes, the Alter Rebbe says, “However, one must always remember the beginning of service, its core and its root.” So what is the beginning of service? It is fear, kabbolas ol. Why? Because it is the foundation; without it there is no holiness, no bittul, none of what we discussed. Then, here at the top of page 57b, the Alter Rebbe returns to the wings he explained earlier. A bird needs two wings to fly, right and left—love and fear, chessed and gevurah. So too, for a Jew to serve Hashem, he must have both approaches: love and fear. If he has no fear at all, then apart from lacking bittul and everything we discussed before, he is also not a servant. The Torah says [unclear]. Without fear, he is not a servant, and he lacks the wing associated with fear. Now the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain the other side. What happens if a person has only fear, only kabbolas ol, and no love? That is not enough either. The Alter Rebbe now begins to explain that the other side, love, is also necessary. Let’s continue with the Alter Rebbe, on the third line from the top: “And fear alone...” Hm? You can look inside, in the Tanya. “And fear alone is one wing.” This applies to fear as well. If a person has only fear of Heaven, only kabbolas ol, that too is just one wing, “and with it, it does not ascend on high.” It cannot rise with fear alone. “Although he is called a servant in his service”—although he is a servant, so he does not lack

04:04 the quality of servitude. He has kabbolas ol, he has fear. But being a servant is not enough to ascend on high. In terms of servitude, yes, kabbolas ol and fear are enough. But for Torah and mitzvos to ascend on high, servitude is not enough. There must also be the aspect of a son. This is the point the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize here: for the mitzvos to have their effect—to be revealed, to ascend on high and to connect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—a Jew must have both approaches. He must have the approach of a servant, fear, and also the approach of a son, love. He must also be on the level of a son. “And he must arouse at least the natural love hidden in his heart.” A person must arouse the love within himself—at least some love. “And the natural love hidden in his heart must be revealed at least in his mind.” Yes, there must be love. What kind of love? There are many levels of love. Broadly speaking, there is love aroused through contemplation, and within that there are many levels of contemplation that arouse love. Here we are talking about the beginning of service, so the same principle applies to love as to fear. The Alter Rebbe said that one needs at least natural fear. Even if a person cannot arouse fear through contemplation, he must arouse the natural fear every Jew has: fear of Heaven, the fact that a Jew does not want to rebel against Hashem’s kingship. Likewise, every Jew has a natural love. What is natural love? The Alter Rebbe explains—we should recall one more point—that a person must have at least natural love. He also emphasizes that it must be present at least in the mind. We discussed the same thing regarding fear: even if a person

06:09 cannot arouse fear in his heart, he must at least have fear in his mind, as we discussed earlier. At the very least, he should think about fear, contemplate it and understand it in his mind. The same applies to love. The Alter Rebbe says that even if he cannot arouse revealed love in his heart, he must at least have love in his mind. What does love in the mind mean? The Alter Rebbe explains: “to remember his love for the one Hashem.” A person needs to remember that he has a natural love—not just any love, but love for the one Hashem—“in his thought and in his desire to cleave to Him.” That means his love for the one Hashem should be present in his thoughts and in his desire to cleave to Him: he wants to be attached to G-dliness. A Jew naturally wants to be attached to G-dliness. That is what he needs to remember. In other words, he does not need to create this love on the spot. He does not need to produce a new love that was not there before. It is not that a person has no love for Hashem and must develop a new one. A Jew inherently has a natural love, because he wants to be attached to G-dliness. That is the nature of every Jew’s soul. The problem is that he forgets it. So his task is to awaken the memory of that natural love, to remember it, “and this should be his intention when engaging in this Torah study or mitzvah.” This, too, must be included. As we said, it also needs to be there. In other words, the point is not merely to think about love and remain a Jew only in his heart, as people say—he has love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu in his heart, but it never leads to action. The whole point here is that love must produce actual deeds. That is why the Alter Rebbe says:

08:14 This feeling, this intention to be attached to G-dliness, is something a person needs to have in mind while actually learning Torah and observing mitzvos. How? Through this mitzvah, to attach his G-dly soul, his vital soul, and their garments to Him, as explained above. When a person performs a mitzvah, he needs to think about and reflect on the fact that through it, his G-dly soul, his vital soul, and all their garments become attached to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as explained above. The Alter Rebbe explained this at length in chapter 35 and the chapters that follow: how, through every mitzvah a person performs and every bit of Torah he learns, his G-dly soul, vital soul, and their garments become attached to Him. Through mitzvos, this happens with the outer garments; through Torah study, with the inner garments. All of this was explained at length by the Alter Rebbe from chapter 35 onward. So that is the intention a person needs to have. What follows from this? The Alter Rebbe is now asking a person to do something more. At the beginning of chapter 41, the Alter Rebbe explained at length that one must have fear of Heaven: one must awaken the fear of rebelling against the King of kings that exists within every Jew. It needs to be brought out. Now the Alter Rebbe says that, in the same way, a person must also awaken his love. Every Jew naturally has both love and fear. What is the minimum? Love and fear. No, I’m not talking about what he does in practice. Every Jew naturally has love and fear. Love means that a Jew wants to be attached to G-dliness; fear means that a Jew does not want to rebel against G-dliness. So both of these feelings need to be awakened. One is the feeling of a son and the other of a servant, and both are needed together. If he has only one feeling and not the other—only fear of Heaven, the feeling of a servant, the feeling of fear—he will not have the feeling of attachment to G-dliness. Or

10:01 the reverse: he will have only the feeling of attachment and not the feeling of fear, as we said. That is like a bird with one wing: it cannot fly upward. It is specifically the combination of the two, son and servant, that is needed. And we find both in the service of davening. Davening has parts that awaken love and parts that awaken fear, particularly in the Shema. The Shema is the time to awaken love and fear. Although the Shema explicitly says, “And you shall love,” Chassidus explains the difference between its first and second paragraphs. In the first paragraph, the main avodah is love: awakening love for G-dliness. “And you shall love Hashem your G-d.” In the second paragraph, the main thing is to awaken fear. Although it too says, “And you shall love,” immediately afterward it says, “Take care lest your heart be enticed,” and so on. That is the matter of fear. And “you shall teach them to your children”—awakening the feeling of fear. It is specifically these two things together that enable a Jew to be connected to G-dliness and his Torah and mitzvos to ascend above. Chassidus explains in the maamarim that these two paragraphs relate to Reuven and Shimon, the first two sons of Yaakov Avinu. Reuven represents the level of love: “For now my husband will love me,” as it says in connection with Reuven, and “For Hashem has seen my affliction.” Reuven is connected with seeing. Seeing awakens love. Seeing means closeness, in the simple sense: you see something close to you, and closeness awakens attachment and love. So the avodah of Reuven is

12:04 the avodah of love. That is the first paragraph of the Shema. Shimon, on the other hand, is hearing something from afar, and distance is connected with fear. Shimon awakens the matter of fear. So these are the two paragraphs, corresponding to Reuven and Shimon among the names of the tribes—the avodah of Reuven and Shimon. After that come Levi and Yehudah, and all the tribes are discussed at length, each with its own theme. But as it relates to what we are discussing here, there are these two things, fear and love, together. One of the stories told about the Alter Rebbe concerns the time after he was released from prison. We are now in the days close to 19 Kislev. As is known, when the Alter Rebbe left prison, he was brought into the home of a misnaged along the way. He spent three hours there. The misnaged asked him all sorts of questions and troubled him in various ways. The Alter Rebbe said it caused him great distress. Afterward, the misnaged asked the Alter Rebbe to promise him something. The Alter Rebbe promised, and he kept his promise: he wanted him to go and visit three great Torah scholars. The misnaged thought that if the Alter Rebbe visited these great scholars, who were misnagdim, they would succeed in convincing him that he had made a mistake. So this Jew, that misnaged Netkin[?], asked the Alter Rebbe to undertake to visit three great Torah scholars who were misnagdim. The Alter Rebbe agreed. And indeed, later, after his release from prison, the Alter Rebbe traveled to visit three of the leading misnagdim. Their names are even recorded. There are very interesting stories about what happened at each visit. Not only did they fail to convince the Alter Rebbe,

14:14 but the reverse: the Alter Rebbe succeeded in convincing them and changing their hearts. They treated him with great respect. There are many stories about it, and some of them even became the ancestors of well-known chassidic families. One of those three great scholars was Reb Yehoshua Zeitlin, from whom the entire Zeitlin family, a Chabad chassidic family, descended. They were his grandchildren, and there were other chassidic families that descended from those three leading rabbis. In any case, one of the stories told in connection with this is that one of them—I don’t remember which—asked the Alter Rebbe where he got the statement in Tanya that “Torah without fear and love does not fly upward.” That means Torah learned without love and fear does not ascend above. What was the Alter Rebbe’s source for such a thing? If a person learns Torah without love and fear, it does not ascend above? The Alter Rebbe told him, “It is written in the Zohar.” But where is the source in the revealed teachings of Torah? The Alter Rebbe said it was an explicit Gemara. Where? He said it was in Pesachim. Perhaps you’ve already learned that Gemara; I don’t know. The man asked where it was. He was thoroughly versed in the Talmud, but he did not know, until the Alter Rebbe quoted the Gemara to him. The Gemara says: Rava raised a contradiction. In one place it says, “For Your kindness is great above the heavens.” Elsewhere it says, “For Your kindness is great up to the heavens.” It’s in Pesachim, right? Page 50? In one place it says “up to the heavens,” and in another it says “above the heavens.” One refers to someone who studies for its own sake, and the other to someone who studies not for its own sake. What does that mean? If you learn Torah not for its own sake, meaning without love and fear, the Torah reaches up to the heavens but does not ascend higher. When you learn Torah for its own sake,

16:14 In other words, when you study Torah with love and awe, it rises above the heavens. The Torah itself rises upward. There was an explicit Gemara, and that is how the Alter Rebbe proved his point in the debate from an explicit Gemara. Along these lines, there is a story connected with this subject, the matter of drawing sustenance. I heard it from some fellows at the yeshiva in [unclear]. They told me at the time that they had heard it from Rabbi [unclear], who related something that had happened. One of the Maggid of Mezritch’s students was involved. His name was Reb Aharon of Karlin. No, sorry, I made a mistake. It wasn’t Reb Aharon of Karlin. It was Rabbi Elimelech. Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk. He was one of the Maggid’s greatest students. This is how he told it. I’ve told it in the name of others, but this is how I heard it from Rabbi [unclear]: Rabbi Elimelech once came to a town of misnagdim—Shklov, or [unclear], or somewhere else—and went up to the bimah. It was the middle of the day, the place was full of people, and many Jews were sitting and studying Torah. He went up to the bimah, banged on it, and said: “The Mishnah says, ‘Whoever engages in Torah study for its own sake merits many things.’ Many things. What are these ‘many things’? They include ruach hakodesh. So the question is: do the scholars of Shklov have ruach hakodesh? Why don’t the Torah scholars here have ruach hakodesh? It says, ‘Whoever engages in Torah study for its own sake merits many things,’ and those ‘many things’ include ruach hakodesh. Why don’t the scholars of Shklov have ruach hakodesh? If you want to say they don’t study Torah for its own sake, then oy, oy, oy, oy. And if you want to say the Tanna isn’t right, then oy, oy, oy, oy.” Then he jumped off the bimah and ran out of shul. That

18:22 was his entire sermon. Of course, he said it with full force and then fled. They chased after him and wanted to kill him, but by then he had disappeared from town, and they couldn’t find him. Later, quite a few people from that shul became chassidim; that vort brought them close to Chassidus. But in any case, what was he saying, in other words? That it has to have an effect. Torah study for its own sake is something you can attain only through Chassidus. If you want to awaken love and awe, you can accomplish that only through the teachings of Chassidus. Only then can serving Hashem be done with love and awe. So that is the story the rabbi told. Now, although throughout these chapters, and especially over the last few weeks, we have been learning about the emphasis he places on awe, and only now is he beginning to warn us that awe is not enough and there must also be love, nevertheless, it is well known that the main innovation of Chassidus was specifically in the matter of love. The principal strength of Chassidus, what Chassidus came to introduce, was specifically love. For awe, you don’t need Chassidus to quite the same extent. Awe existed even before the teachings of Chassidus—at least fear of Heaven and fear of sin. Studying mussar can also awaken awe. The innovation of Chassidus as a whole, and of Chabad Chassidus in particular, was not just in awe. On the contrary, its main innovation was specifically in love. [unclear] Because what is Chassidus? What

20:16 does Chassidus seek to awaken? Chassidus seeks to awaken a person to work on and refine the body, the soul, and one’s character traits, and to make a dwelling for Hashem in the lower realms. This refinement of the body, soul, and character traits can be accomplished specifically through love, not through awe. As we explained in previous classes, the work of awe is the work of bittul, self-nullification. With awe, a person puts himself aside and submits, but he does not refine himself. We see many people today who have fear of Heaven. There are many people with fear of Heaven, thank G-d—may we all have it. They have fear of Heaven. They are afraid to commit transgressions; they don’t violate the Shulchan Aruch. Nevertheless, it makes no change in their character traits. Their traits can remain as strong as ever. As far as they’re concerned, they can eat [unclear]. Not just Shabbos and Yom Tov kugel; they can enjoy this world all week long, while still observing everything out of awe. Yes, a person can fear Heaven, while in terms of his character he is turned up to twelve when it comes to materialism and physicality. This is not incidental. Why? Because awe does not change a person’s essential nature. As long as one’s service is only along the path of awe, awe is a movement of restraint and submission: he won’t do things that are forbidden, and he will do what Hashem wants. But that will not change and refine him. Love is different. Love is an expansion of the person himself. Love involves who he is, and two loves cannot occupy the same place. If you love Hashem—as the well-known

21:52 passage in Chovos Halevavos says, just as fire and water cannot occupy the same vessel, love of the world and love of Hashem cannot occupy the same heart. You cannot love this world and love Hakadosh Boruch Hu. You have to decide: do you love this world, or do you love Hakadosh Boruch Hu? So when a person awakens love within himself, it brings about a change. It brings about inner refinement within the person as well. That is why the Alter Rebbe says here that serving Hashem out of awe is not enough; there must also be love, the path of love. This is one of the central points we see in the teachings of Chassidus: they explain it and emphasize it strongly. There must also be love.