Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 42 - Part 16

00:02 On the subject of faith: after the Alter Rebbe explains here what a person needs to contemplate in order to establish yiras Shamayim in his soul, he concludes by saying that all this is also included in the term “faith.” What does “faith” mean? The Alter Rebbe explains that the word also implies habituation: “A person accustoms himself, like a craftsman who trains his hands,” and so on. What is the Alter Rebbe getting at? Why does he use the analogy of a craftsman training his hands? What does the analogy add to the explanation? What does any of it have to do with this discussion? We began explaining the Rebbe’s explanation of this passage, continuing from last week. The Rebbe spoke earlier about how yiras Shamayim is “a small matter” because every Jew has Moshe Rabbeinu within his soul. Moshe Rabbeinu instills daas. This is the life and G-dliness within the souls of the Jewish people, through which every Jew is able to connect to G-dliness. And the Alter Rebbe said on page 61b that “all Jews are believers, the children of believers.” It is already there. It does not require a great deal of wisdom or intellectual understanding. Every Jew has it through faith: believers, the children of believers. So every Jew has this awareness that Hakadosh Boruch Hu fills the whole earth with His glory, and that He sees and hears. And not merely sees and hears the way a human being does—far more than a person sees and hears. He senses within himself that this is his very self; there is nothing outside of Him. All these things are matters of simple faith for every Jew. So the Alter Rebbe comes here to explain that although we have said that, for yiras Shamayim to become established in a Jew’s soul, a person needs to see this—

02:24 for yiras Shamayim to be firmly established in his soul, he needs to experience it as something he sees. He needs to see it, by accustoming himself to look toward heaven, and so on. It is a matter of seeing. But that does not mean this is a different kind of avodah. It, too, is included in faith. It is not something separate; it, too, is faith. What, then, does faith mean? Faith also means habituation. And here the Alter Rebbe adds one more point—which is really a central point, because it gives us a new understanding of faith. Until now, it seemed that faith meant something transcendent: a person does not see it, does not understand it or grasp it, but believes in it. That is the plain meaning of “believers,” the straightforward meaning. I believe. “All Jews are believers, the children of believers.” On a simple level, that means a faith received from Mount Sinai: simple faith, without recognition, without work, without seeing or understanding. Here we are told something new: faith, on the contrary, means habituation. So the Alter Rebbe connects two ideas in a very interesting way, and this helps us understand why he uses the analogy of a craftsman. The Alter Rebbe says, in effect: when it comes to a craftsman, there are two parts. What does it mean for a person to be a craftsman? The Alter Rebbe speaks of “a craftsman who trains his hands.” Suppose you take someone off the street, someone with no artistic sense at all—not everyone has an artistic sense. An ordinary person may have no such sense; he may be rather coarse. And you tell him to train his hands, to start practicing, to do this and that with them. Will he become a craftsman? Not necessarily. To be a craftsman, you need two things. First, you need to have a feel for it. You need a feel for art, for drawing—

04:21 There is a feel for writing, a feel for building. People have different aptitudes. Some have a feel for one thing, and others for something else. A feel for music, for example. What does that mean? Not everyone has it. There are even people who know how to play music but do not have a feel for it. Chassidim say that someone can have a feel for music without knowing how to play. Who said that about himself? Chodosh Feigel[?], if I’m not mistaken. Reb Chodosh Feigel[?] said it about himself. He had a beautiful voice, so he would say that he didn’t have... Yes, yes, yes, a singer. Yes, he had a feel for music. He did not know how to play, but he had a feel for it. “I can sense something in a niggun.” It is an ability to sense whether a niggun is genuine and true to its intent, or whether it has been falsified. He had a special feel for it. He could sense which part of a niggun was authentic and which part was a false addition someone had put in. The same applies here. Faith itself is a faculty that a Jew possesses. Faith does not begin with a person saying “His glory fills the whole earth” a thousand times and thinking that faith will come from that. It is the other way around. A Jew already has this sense of “His glory fills the whole earth,” of yiras Shamayim, of “Behold, Hashem stands over him,” and all these things. He has an innate faculty. A Jew has an innate feel for faith, a feel for spirituality. Where does it come from? From the soul, which is a part of G-dliness. So a Jew has a feel for matters of faith, a feel for spirituality. This is—

07:54 It is something he has—the talent for it. But it comes without effort. So he is told that he needs to accustom himself to it. You see, the Alter Rebbe says here to accustom oneself through contemplation and thought. He trains himself, develops a habit, like a craftsman who trains his hands. In this way, he brings that innate faculty into practice. So it follows, absolutely, that we are not dealing with two separate things. Is the Alter Rebbe giving faith a new meaning, the opposite of its plain meaning? No. The Alter Rebbe explains that this meaning is the inner dimension of faith. What is faith at its core? It is that innate faculty. Deep within his soul, a Jew has a connection to G-dliness, faith in G-dliness by virtue of his soul. To bring it into practice, he must be like a craftsman who trains his hands. What does that mean in the context of faith? To think about it, contemplate it, and accustom himself—so that whenever he learns Chassidus and then goes out into the street, looks at things and sees the world, he trains himself to see G-dliness in the world. In this way, he takes his innate faculty and puts it into practice. And this is the innovation of Chabad Chassidus. Before the teachings of Chabad Chassidus, faith was discussed as something transcendent. A person believes in Hakadosh Boruch Hu in practice, too, but what is faith? Something abstract. So here in Tanya the Alter Rebbe introduces the idea that faith is like a craft. Having a feel for faith is a gift you received. The avodah of faith—the work of bringing it inward—is to accustom yourself to it, as we have been discussing, like a craftsman who trains his hands.

09:52 This point is one of the Alter Rebbe’s foundational ideas. He doesn’t bring it in just incidentally. On this very point, the Alter Rebbe also disagreed with his colleagues, the Maggid’s students. It wasn’t only an innovation of the Alter Rebbe’s in relation to the misnagdim, but also in relation to the approach of Chassidus in general. As is well known, there was a major disagreement between the Alter Rebbe and Reb Shlomo of Karlin, as well as several other students of the Maggid—Rachamim[?], and so on. Several of the Maggid’s great students followed the approach of “the righteous shall live by his faith.” They understood faith to mean simple faith, above reason and understanding: that is what a person needs, and it is enough. Faith in tzaddikim, faith in Hashem. They understood faith as something that remains above and beyond a person. “The righteous shall live by his faith”—faith itself, the essence of faith, is already there. In other words, a Jew has an instinct for faith, and simply awakening that instinct is itself significant. That was the whole idea for the other chassidim, classical Chassidus. They understood the purpose of the teachings of Chassidus to be awakening simple faith. But the Alter Rebbe argued that no, it has to involve work. Faith is not just a matter of awakening an instinct you received as a gift. What, then, is the point? Faith—emunah—is related to the word for habituation. This is one of the ways the Alter Rebbe emphasized the innovation of Chabad Chassidus: it wants faith not to remain merely an instinct for faith. We have to develop that instinct,

11:44 develop it through studying Chassidus, understanding the subject, and, as we said here, through habituation: training ourselves to think deeply about it, engage with it, and see it in everything in the world. Then it is called true faith. It is like a craftsman training his hands: he practices until it becomes his. It becomes something alive for him, part of his life. Let’s continue in the text. Perhaps just one more point before we go on. The Rebbe also uses this to explain chapter 33 of Tanya. There, too, the Alter Rebbe discusses this whole subject of faith. He explains that for a person to be joyful, to attain true joy of the soul, he must picture in his mind and understanding Hashem’s true unity. It is the same subject discussed here, but approached differently. Here the discussion is about fear of Heaven; there the Alter Rebbe discusses the joy that should be in our souls. So there, too, he uses the words “picture in his mind and understanding His true unity.” Later in the chapter, the Alter Rebbe writes: “And when he contemplates this, his heart will rejoice and his soul will exult, with joy and song, with all his heart, soul, and might, in this faith.” There, too, the Alter Rebbe says “in this faith.” So the Rebbe asks the same question there. The Alter Rebbe is talking about understanding the subject, about comprehension and deepening one’s thought and intellect. He explains the unity of Hashem rationally, using the analogy of sunlight and an analogy involving letters, and says that we must contemplate it. So why does he say “in this faith”? The matter of

13:59 faith. Based on this point, we can understand that the foundation is faith. That is the instinct. In other words, the reason the idea of Hashem’s unity registers with a Jew is faith. A Jew engages with the unity of Hashem, with G-dliness and matters of faith, because he has an instinct for faith. An instinct means it rings a bell—it resonates. That is the idea. Something concerning G-dliness registers with him; he grasps it. He has an instinct for it. But that idea must come into intellectual comprehension and understanding, and become habitual. So a person really has to make an effort to think it through explicitly. This also connects it to chapter 33. Now the Alter Rebbe continues here, at the end of the chapter, on page 61, four lines from the bottom. The Alter Rebbe says: “And one should also always remember the words of our Sages, ‘accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.’” Here the Alter Rebbe adds another point. Besides everything we have said until now—that to bring about fear of Heaven one needs contemplation, training oneself to see G-dliness in the world, and all of that—the Alter Rebbe gives another piece of advice, something a person must always keep in mind in order to have fear of Heaven. The advice is to always remember the words of our Sages, “accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Alter Rebbe gives very interesting, very practical advice here. At first glance, it doesn’t really seem like advice suited to Chabad. Nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe writes it here because it is practical advice in Tanya for bringing about fear of Heaven. What does the Alter Rebbe say a person should always keep in mind? The words

16:09 “accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.” You know what that means? Today, when someone wants to correct a problem he has—a bad trait or an undesirable habit—there is an approach people teach. Have you heard of it? They present it as an innovation of modern psychology: you put stickers, reminders about that issue, everywhere. That way, wherever you look, you see it. It reminds you until it becomes a habit. Today, for example, people put lots of notes on their refrigerators with all sorts of phrases about being happy, having bitachon and faith, and so on. Or reminders about how to respond on the phone [unclear]. All sorts of things like that, when a person wants to change his way of thinking. One of the biggest problems people have, as has been discovered today—and we chassidim have known this since time immemorial—is a faulty pattern of thought. In other words, a person has accustomed his mind to incorrect thoughts, builds an entire outlook on them, and simply lives with it. That leads to all sorts of fears, problems, feeling down, and so on. It is all in his head. So by training himself to change his thinking in a positive direction—which is essentially the Tzemach Tzedek’s approach, known to us for several hundred years: “Tracht gut vet zain gut,” think good and it will be good—today this has become an entire school of philosophy and psychology. People even make money from it. Yes, but it is written about the Tzemach Tzedek. The Tzemach Tzedek said it in millions of teachings: “Tracht gut”

18:06 “It will be good.” What does “Think good, and it will be good” mean? When a person trains himself to think positive thoughts, that changes reality too. This is a fundamental idea. Of course, in Chassidus it goes much deeper, because of the power within the soul and so on—excuse me—and so on. What the Rebbe explains in the sicha is not the point right now. I’m giving this as an example, because here the Rebbe says something very similar. The Rebbe says that to attain an elevated fear of G-d, there is another piece of advice: have the words “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven” engraved in your mind. Those very words, “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven,” like a phrase, a sentence. A person trains himself to keep those words in his head, in his mind, in his thoughts. Of course, he knows what the words mean. Then, whenever he remembers them—walking down the street, here or there—the words “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven” are before his eyes, and that itself guards him in matters of what is permitted and forbidden, what to do and what not to do. Let’s look inside. “And also, one should always keep in mind the words of our Sages, ‘accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven,’ which is along the lines of ‘You shall surely appoint a king over yourself,’ and so on.” This, the Rebbe says, is the mitzvah of “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself.” The moment a person accepts the kingdom of Heaven upon himself, he is fulfilling “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself.” He takes Hakadosh Boruch Hu and places Him above himself. The Rebbe adds that this is why it says here that one should keep these particular words in mind. Not just “the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven,” but “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven.” Seemingly, “the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven” would be enough. Just think about those words. Why specifically “accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven”? It has to do with

19:56 “You shall surely appoint.” I am accepting it. Right now, at 17:00, when I think the words “Accept upon yourself the kingdom of Heaven,” I am taking an action: I am accepting Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King right now. And through that, I fulfill “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself.” This is the mitzvah in serving Hashem that the Rebbe spoke about earlier, the matter of accepting Hashem. So the Rebbe explains what the Alter Rebbe intends. Why does the Alter Rebbe introduce this advice here? Why wasn’t the advice he gave earlier enough? The Alter Rebbe has already given plenty of explanations, ideas, and other things. So the Rebbe explains it simply: what we discussed earlier was about fear of Heaven and how to bring it to its fullest expression. Of course, that comes through contemplating how He—the King of kings of kings—stands right over a person and watches him. All those details of contemplation bring a person to fear of Heaven. But there are times when a person isn’t capable of that. There are periods like that; it isn’t always the case. For all sorts of reasons, there are times when a person can’t arouse that feeling within himself. He can’t engage in the lengthy contemplation about fear of Heaven and everything we discussed earlier. So the Alter Rebbe says that, at the very least, he can return to what was said at the beginning of the chapter: even if he cannot arouse fear of Heaven, accepting Hashem is itself something he can do. That, too, is a matter in its own right. By simply thinking about Hashem in this way, he accepts the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven upon himself. That, too, is a fundamental part of serving Hashem. Hakadosh Boruch Hu sets aside the upper and lower worlds and makes His kingship rest specifically upon us, and we accept it, and so on. That is the whole idea

21:36 we’re talking about here.