Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 42 - Part 14

00:00 Okay, in our Tanya class we’re on page 61, first line. Good. What are we discussing here? What is the Alter Rebbe saying? In the middle of the previous page, the Alter Rebbe began saying that every Jew, every single person—whoever he may be, whatever lowly state he may be in—can set aside regular time to reflect on the things the Alter Rebbe described: how Hakadosh Boruch Hu stands over him, and so on; how Hakadosh Boruch Hu watches every single person, including his thoughts, speech, and actions—every step a Jew takes. Through this, a steady awareness of Hashem will come over him throughout the day. Not an overwhelming fear, and not a fear that he feels physically, but a simple fear, meaning a fundamental sense of awe. It’s like the awe a person has of his teacher: when his teacher is there and can see him, he naturally takes care to behave properly. Similarly, the awareness that the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is right here, watching him and examining his every step, will stay with a person throughout the day, even if he only returns to reflect on it when he has the opportunity. It will bring his conduct in thought, speech, and action into line, in practice: to turn from evil and do good. This is what the verse means by “a small thing”: “What does Hashem your G-d ask of you, except to fear Him?” We’re not talking here about fear accompanied by some great emotion. We’re talking about fear that leads to action, fear that leads a person to walk in all His ways. Fear that leads

02:00 to turning from evil and doing good—that kind of fear. Of this we say that it is “a small thing,” because Moshe Rabbeinu instilled within every soul the capacity to know and grasp G-dliness. Through the aspect of Moshe within each person, it is a small thing. Let’s add one point before continuing. The Rebbe explained this in 5752, in the last sichos we merited to hear from the Rebbe. It was in the very last week before the month of Adar, the week of Parshas Ki Sisa. The Rebbe spoke then about Moshe Rabbeinu as well. In general, the Rebbe gave sichos at that time whose meaning people only understood later. They were very powerful sichos. The Rebbe spoke then about the veil. The Rebbe also brought what is written in Parshas Ki Sisa: Moshe Rabbeinu had a veil with which he covered his face so people would not see him. The whole matter of seeing Moshe’s face. So the Rebbe spoke about Moshe Rabbeinu and his connection with the Jewish people. The Rebbe said that even though Moshe Rabbeinu has a veil, covering him so he cannot be seen, that covering is only over his exterior. Moshe’s inner being cannot be covered. It is present within every Jew in its entirety. The Rebbe then mentioned this idea of “a small thing.” The Rebbe referred to this passage in Tanya, that every Jew has the aspect of Moshe Rabbeinu within him. And then the Rebbe said something interesting—just as an addition to our understanding of the point we’ve reached in Tanya. Moshe Rabbeinu has many different aspects. There is the aspect of the rays of light, the rays that are, so to speak, above the head. There is the aspect of the head, the intellect; there is the aspect of

03:47 the emotional attributes; and there are the hands and feet. These are all levels within Moshe Rabbeinu, down to the lowest aspect. And when we say that Moshe Rabbeinu instilled something within us, that every single person has a spark of Moshe Rabbeinu, it means we have all these aspects of Moshe. Our intellect, our emotional attributes—all these aspects come to us from Moshe Rabbeinu. Yirah tata’ah, the lower level of awe, corresponds to the feet. It is the lowest thing, the foundation. As the Alter Rebbe says, it is “the beginning, the core, and the root of the service of G-d.” It is the foot, or the heel, so to speak, on which the entire service stands. So it is the very lowest level of Moshe Rabbeinu. Yirah tata’ah is, so to speak, the lowest level—the feet of Moshe, the heel of Moshe. Based on this, the Rebbe adds an explanation: this is the meaning of “for Moshe, it is a small thing.” “A small thing” means that this is the small thing, the lowest level—the aspect of the foot, the heel—relative to all the levels Moshe Rabbeinu possesses. You understand? And then the Rebbe also... The Rebbe explains that Moshe Rabbeinu is something that always remains. Even when there appears to be a veil—later, people understood that the Rebbe was referring to the concealment of 27 Adar, and so on—even with the veil, the concealment, the face of Moshe Rabbeinu always remains whole. Back to our subject. We’re continuing now on page 61. What is the Alter Rebbe coming to explain now? He has already explained everything. What’s next? On this last page of chapter 42, what is the Alter Rebbe adding? He begins, “And one should also remember”—another point a person needs to remember. What was lacking in what we’ve learned until now? On the straightforward level, we learn that the Alter Rebbe is adding another point to reflect on in order to

05:39 awaken yiras Shamayim. The Alter Rebbe gives us a number of approaches, a number of subjects for reflection, to awaken yiras Shamayim. So here he adds another point to reflect on to awaken yiras Shamayim. But at the same time, the Alter Rebbe is answering a question that arises from what we’ve learned so far. When you study the Alter Rebbe’s explanation that a person needs yiras Shamayim, and that his yiras Shamayim should be such that he stands before the King, as we learned at the beginning of chapter 42—by reflecting that Hashem stands over him and all of that, a person comes to feel awe and to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu as though standing before the King. Yes, and there was also the analogy we brought: when a person sees someone else in the room, that person’s presence affects the way he behaves. But seemingly, the analogy and what it represents don’t quite match. Because when it comes to what is Above, in practice Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees us, but we don’t see Him. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is always present and watches us. What was the whole point? That “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” that He watches and examines a person—all these are things Hakadosh Boruch Hu does. But when I look at the world, I don’t see Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So why should the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is watching me inspire awe in me? Here the Alter Rebbe adds an explanation of this particular point. He explains that, in practice, part of the work of awakening yiras Shamayim is to train oneself to reflect not only on the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees him, but also that he sees Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Where do we see Hakadosh Boruch Hu?

07:19 That’s what the Alter Rebbe explains. Now let’s look inside. “And one should also”—let’s look inside—“And one should also remember.” There’s something else we need to remember. Interestingly, here the Alter Rebbe doesn’t use the word “reflect”; he says “remember.” That means this is something a person needs to... The emphasis here isn’t so much on reflection, on understanding the idea intellectually. What matters more is getting into the habit of remembering it—reminding oneself of it until it becomes familiar. We’ll soon see what he’s talking about, and then we’ll understand why the Alter Rebbe uses that word. “And one should also remember”—there’s something else we need to remember—“that just as with a mortal king, the main awe is of his inner being and vitality, not of his physical body.” When we speak of a king—the analogy we used earlier was a king, right? Standing before the king. So take a mortal king. I say I’m in awe of the king. What am I in awe of? My awe isn’t of the king’s physicality, of his flesh. That isn’t what inspires awe. The king has a body, but that isn’t what brings about the awe. What are we in awe of? The king’s vitality. We’re talking about the king’s soul, the king’s inner life. So the fear we feel, the awe we feel, the respectful and awestruck way we behave when standing before the king—that doesn’t come from the king’s exterior, but from his inner being. “For when he is asleep, there is no awe of him.” When the king is asleep, there is no awe of the king. In other words, if a person is near the king while the king is sleeping, he won’t feel the same awe he feels when the king is awake. I don’t know; I haven’t tried it. Maybe it’s just as well. I don’t know. You’re in a room with the king, and the king is asleep. You wouldn’t feel awe? That’s what it says.

09:13 That’s what the Rebbe says about this passage in Tanya. What’s the reasoning behind it? Interestingly, the Rebbe cites a verse in Shmuel, I think—in the Book of Shmuel. The Rebbe brings the story of King David. It says that King David was fleeing from Shaul. Among the stories of David and Shaul, there’s an account of a time when Shaul was asleep. David approached him while he was sleeping and took his water flask. It says there was a flask—a vessel placed beside King Shaul’s head—and David took it. Some say it was negel vasser; some say this is a hint in Tanach to keeping negel vasser beside the bed, which we learn from King Shaul. When he went to sleep, he put negel vasser there. In any case, it says there was a flask, some kind of vessel beside Shaul, and King David took it from there, so he wouldn’t be able to get up. That’s the story. The Rebbe brings it as a support, a hint from which we learn that when a king is asleep, you don’t feel fear of him. King David took advantage of the fact that King Shaul was asleep to pull off some kind of trick, whatever he wanted to do there. Or he also cut off part of his cloak—I don’t remember the details of the story. But the point is that we learn from there that when a king is asleep, the fear of him isn’t as strong. Why? Because his life-force isn’t as openly revealed then. By contrast, when he’s awake, you feel fear. Why? Because the fear comes from the revelation of his soul when he’s awake. “Now, his inner being and life-force are not visible to eyes of flesh.” When we think about this analogy of the king, we’re saying that the fear doesn’t come

11:09 from the king’s flesh, but from the king’s soul. You don’t see the king’s soul. A person can’t see a soul. This fear comes only through the eyes of the mind. We know that he’s a king. So our perception of the king, our awareness that this is the king, isn’t physical sight; it’s intellectual perception. But what kind of perception is it? It’s perception by the eyes of the mind that comes through sight. It isn’t the flesh of his body or his clothing. It’s an intellectual perception that comes through physical sight. In other words, there are three kinds of seeing. There are three ways sight can work. One kind is physical sight: this is a table. It’s a table because it’s physically a table. It has the form of a table, so that’s actual physical sight. That’s seeing with your eyes of flesh. At the other extreme is what’s called seeing with the eyes of the mind. That’s a spiritual kind of seeing: I understand. You don’t actually see the thing, but you understand it. That kind of seeing is connected with the intellect. Say, for example, I say this person is wise, or this person is foolish. That isn’t physical sight. I know it from evidence of various kinds, because I know the person and I’ve spoken with him. Whatever it may be, I have evidence that this person is wise. That’s intellectual perception. Or another example of intellectual perception is what Chassidus says about the necessity of a Creator’s existence. That’s intellectual perception. You contemplate it with your mind and come to recognize that there must be a Creator, and so on. That’s intellectual perception, not physical sight. But there’s a third kind of seeing, and that’s what the Alter Rebbe is discussing here in Tanya: seeing with the eyes of the mind through seeing with the eyes of flesh. In other words, you see—

13:04 you don’t see the thing itself, but you look at the flesh, and through the flesh you see the soul. For example, we know that we have a soul. We don’t see the soul itself, but we have no doubt that we have one. Why? Because I see the body. There’s a difference between a living body and a dead body. A living body is an entirely different body. So by seeing the flesh, the flesh shows you what’s happening within it. You see the soul through the flesh. That perception is with the eyes of the mind. But through what do I perceive it with the eyes of the mind? Through seeing with the eyes of flesh. That’s the point. This is the kind of perception the Alter Rebbe is discussing here. That’s the kind of fear you have of a king. I see the king, but my fear doesn’t come from his flesh; it comes from his soul. It’s the soul of a king. How do I see the king’s soul? Through intellectual perception. How do I know that he’s a king rather than someone else? Through intellectual perception. But where is that intellectual perception clothed? In something physical, in the king’s body. Through the king’s body, I see that there’s a king’s soul here. So the body is like an outer layer that reveals something inner. One of the examples brought for this in Chassidus appears in a letter to a Rebbe. There’s a letter written by Reb Pinchas of Altshteuk[?], one of the chassidim of the Tzemach Tzedek. He gives a very interesting analogy. He gives an analogy from... a very interesting analogy about stones. He says: You see stones. What’s the difference between an ordinary stone and gold? You have an ordinary stone, and you have a piece of gold. The difference between an ordinary stone and gold is that... an ordinary stone

14:56 is worth nothing, or almost nothing. By contrast, a piece of gold can be worth millions. Gold is very valuable. Now, what’s the difference between an animal and a person? An animal walks down the street and sees a stone, kicks it, and keeps going. To the animal, it makes no difference whether it’s this kind of stone or that kind. The animal sees no difference between a piece of gold and an ordinary stone. To the animal, they’re both stones, and both are worth the same. It’ll kick them aside so it can keep walking. A person sees the stone and says, “No. That’s an ordinary stone, and that’s gold. I’ve found a piece like that—I’ll be rich! My children, my grandchildren, we’ll all benefit from it.” He’s already building grand plans around it. It’s gold. He immediately sees the difference. Now, how does he see it? In terms of physical sight, they both saw the same thing. The animal saw two stones, and the person saw two stones. But how does a person know how to distinguish the gold from the ordinary stone? It isn’t automatic. A person has to think, to perceive it with the eyes of the mind, make a diagnosis, and reach the conclusion that this piece is so valuable. As soon as he sees these two stones with his physical eyes, he notices that one is ordinary and the other is gold. In other words, this is seeing with the eyes of the mind through seeing with the eyes of flesh. It’s an intellectual assessment you can make when you look at something. You see a stone here and a stone there. An animal, which doesn’t have the eyes of the mind but only eyes of flesh, sees stones. A person has the eyes of the mind, and those eyes of the mind are clothed in his eyes of flesh. So

16:43 the moment he looks, he sees it—he can tell by looking that it’s something entirely different. One is a stone, and the other is gold. That’s this kind of seeing. The Alter Rebbe is speaking about that here too. The fact that I recognize this person as a king isn’t so simple. I see a person, and he looks like a person, like anyone else. So I say, “That’s a person. Wait, let me think about it,” and then reach the conclusion, “No, he’s a king.” No. The moment you look at the king, you see through his clothing that this is the king. He’s someone altogether different. That’s what the Alter Rebbe is explaining here when he brings the analogy of the king: it’s seeing with the eyes of the mind through seeing with the eyes of flesh, in his body and clothing, knowing that the king’s life-force and spirit are clothed within them. You know that this is a king, not just an ordinary person, and that brings about fear. So if that’s how it is in the analogy, when you see the king—even though your eyes of flesh see only flesh—what are you afraid of? Not the flesh, but what’s inside: the soul, the king. And you perceive that with the eyes of the mind. If so, it’s exactly the same here: one should fear Hashem through seeing with the eyes of flesh the heavens and earth and all their hosts, in which the light of Ein Sof, blessed be He, is clothed. Isn’t that so? The same applies, Tanya says, to what the analogy represents. What are all these things? They’re garments of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What is this whole world? It’s like the body, like the garment, in which Hakadosh Boruch Hu clothes Himself. There’s a life-force within it, a Divine life-force. Where is the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Where is He? Within the entire world, and “the whole earth is full of His glory.” So it’s as though the world

18:28 It is the king’s garment or body. So when you come before the king, you look at the king’s garment, with the king inside it. That gives you awe. You see the king through his garment, through his body, and you feel awe. Why? Because you know the king’s soul is there. Your awe is not of the garment, but of what is inside it—the soul. And the soul of the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is present in everything, within the world. So when you look at the world, don’t look at it like an animal, seeing only the world’s flesh. Look at the world and see that it has a soul. That soul is the One Above. It is none other than Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the King of kings. So it turns out that you, too, see Hakadosh Boruch Hu; it isn’t only that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees you. This is what the Alter Rebbe said. It is something we need to remember. Because, as we’ll say shortly, we don’t actually see it. We don’t see it tangibly. Ultimately, the physical world conceals it, so we need to remember it. But when a person constantly reminds himself that the world is only a garment and a body for the soul within it—the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu—then what is it that I fear? Is it the soul inside it, Hakadosh Boruch Hu within the world? That’s the point. So with this, the Alter Rebbe explains a foundation of the whole idea of yiras Shamayim: a person needs to keep before his eyes, all the time, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here. And to train himself to recognize that everything here, the entire world, is only an outer garment. Within the garment

20:55 is the soul; Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here. A person thereby trains himself to see not the world’s exterior but its inner reality—to see Hakadosh Boruch Hu within the world. That will help him awaken yiras Shamayim, to have the awe of the tzaddikim. This principle helps us understand several things. One of the main ones has to do with the way of seeing that chassidim speak about. There are two stories about a chossid and a Rebbe that speak about this same idea: the garment and the soul. The first is about the chossid Reb Alter Simchovitch. In 5689, he was in Jerusalem when the Frierdiker Rebbe came there, and he was with the Frierdiker Rebbe the whole time. He accompanied him; he was simply with him constantly. During that period, he couldn’t serve as a mashpia or daven. He stayed at home. He couldn’t do his work in the yeshiva while the Rebbe was there. Even after the Frierdiker Rebbe left, it took him several weeks to recover and begin guiding the students again, teaching Chassidus and so on. At the first class, after he had decided that he had to return to work, he began teaching the maamar. Then he suddenly stopped and said to the students, “Boys, you don’t understand. Did you see a face? You saw eyes? You saw G-dliness! You saw a nose? You saw G-dliness! You saw hands? You saw G-dliness!” Again he was overcome with a longing of the soul, closed the book, and couldn’t teach any more. At the next

23:13 class, he was already able to bring it down into a form he could teach. In other words, he saw the inner reality within the garment. That’s one point. Another comes to mind, and it is especially relevant in our time. There is a story about the Rebbe Rashab. As the well-known story goes, the Rebbe Rashab would go to the Ohel from time to time, and each time he would notify the attendant a day beforehand so that he could prepare the water. That was customary with the Rebbe, too: he would give notice the day before, right? Then they knew he was going to the Ohel and could prepare everything. Once, the Rebbe Rashab arrived unexpectedly. He hadn’t given notice, and when he went to the Ohel, the door was locked. There was a door separating the shul from the Ohel. So the Rebbe stood behind the door and davened there. Suddenly, the attendant learned that the Rebbe was there. He ran over, utterly beside himself, and began to cry and apologize for not knowing the Rebbe had arrived. He was terribly shaken: how could he have left the door locked? The Rebbe Rashab told him, “Why are you worried? If a bit of earth—the earth over the resting place—doesn’t separate us, then a thin door won’t separate us either.” As he put it in Yiddish: “If that little bit of earth doesn’t conceal, then this thin little door can’t conceal either.” In other words, if all you see is earth, then you aren’t really with the Rebbe at all. But if you live with the awareness that the Rebbe is here, what difference does it make whether you are behind the door or inside? So this, too,

25:23 is connected to what we’re discussing here: we need to train ourselves. It often happens that the students travel to the Rebbe and go to the Ohel. The point the Alter Rebbe teaches us here in Tanya must always be before our eyes. We need to know that all the things we see—even flesh—are only flesh, only the exterior. But within the flesh is the inner reality, and that is what must affect us. Our awe must come from the inner reality present here, from Hakadosh Boruch Hu within the garments. Through this, a person will have yiras Shamayim, awe of G-d, a deeper inner awe. All right.