Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 43 - Part 5

00:02 We’ll start again from the fifth line. That’s where a new subject begins. We had a break of a few days, so to begin a new subject, we’ll start from the fifth line on page 62. Here the Alter Rebbe begins to explain the subject of love. Until now, in the last few chapters—chapter 41, chapter 42, and the first half of chapter 43—the Alter Rebbe has spoken mainly about fear. He spoke a little about love as well, but mainly about fear. He discussed several kinds of contemplation needed to awaken fear, and several levels of fear. Broadly speaking, there are two levels: lower fear and higher fear. More specifically, within lower fear itself there are two levels: lower fear in a state of smallness and lower fear in a state of greatness. He discussed that in chapter 43. These are all different levels. Then there is higher fear. The difference is that lower fear comes as an introduction to avodah, before the avodah. It is the foundation—the beginning of avodah, its source and its root. Lower fear is the foundation of avodah, because for a Jew to serve Hashem, there has to be a foundation of fear. Without fear, one cannot enter into the service of Hashem at all. As the Mishnah says, “If there is no fear, there is no wisdom.” One cannot enter into the service of Hashem without fear first. Why? Because fear is bittul; it is kabbolas ol. It enables a person to build a foundation and become a vessel for G-dliness. Without it, he has no connection to any of these matters. Then there is the fear that comes after the avodah: after a person has attained completeness in his avodah of Torah and mitzvos, he is enabled to feel a higher fear—higher fear—and to attain it. Or, as the Alter Rebbe explained, higher fear comes from seeing, because it is associated with chochmah, with sight. He sees what is before him; he sees the G-dliness

02:09 in the world, and that brings about bittul bimetzius within him. This comes specifically through attaining completeness in the avodah of Torah and mitzvos. That was the point the Alter Rebbe discussed until now. From here, the Alter Rebbe begins to explain the subject of love—that there must be love. After all, we said there are two wings. Just as one cannot serve Hashem with love alone, without fear—fear is essential, as the Alter Rebbe has explained until now—the reverse is also true: one cannot serve Hashem with fear alone. There must also be love. And from here on, in the following chapters—43, 44, 45, 46, 47, all the way through chapter 50—the Alter Rebbe discusses many different aspects, contemplations, and levels of love for Hashem. Indeed, in Chassidus, love for Hashem is the main point: the matter of love. As the Rebbe Rashab explains at length in Kuntres HaAvodah, the whole purpose of the avodah of prayer is specifically the avodah of love. Fear is not part of the avodah of prayer itself. The Rebbe Rashab explains at length in Kuntres HaAvodah that lower fear must come before prayer, while higher fear comes after prayer, as its culmination. It is not the essence of prayer itself. Prayer is specifically about love. In the words of the Zohar, “There is no service like the service of love.” The avodah of love is the main avodah required. Why? As the Rebbe Rashab explains at length in Kuntres HaAvodah, the main purpose of avodah is to refine and purify the animal soul, so that it, too, is transformed toward G-dliness. That happens specifically through love. Fear does not refine and purify the animal soul. Fear is bittul; that is its defining character, a movement of self-nullification. So the animal soul is subdued by it, but it does not change. To bring about that change—that is why he brings proof there that you can see many people who have fear of Heaven,

04:02 and nevertheless have a tendency toward desire, a tendency toward coarseness. There is no contradiction between having fear of Heaven and having a tendency toward coarseness. Fear of Heaven means submitting to something higher, but it does not bring about an inner change, an inner refinement of the person. Love, on the other hand, is different. You cannot love two things. You cannot love G-dliness and combine it with something else. Just as water and fire cannot dwell in one vessel, so love of Hashem and love of evil cannot dwell in one heart. So the moment love arrives, it makes a person into something different. Where does his love lie? That means: where does my very being lie? The question is not what I submit to and fear. With fear, I set my own being aside, but it remains what it was. If he is a coarse person, he remains coarse. He only sets that coarseness aside when he needs to, but he does not transform what he is. Love is what the person himself desires; through it, the person becomes what he ought to be. And if what he values is G-dliness, then G-dliness becomes his very essence. That is why the main avodah in refining the animal soul is specifically the avodah of love. From here on, then, the Alter Rebbe will explain at length many levels and many ways in which a person can awaken love, and the different kinds of love. So let’s read this passage inside again. Before we begin reading inside, just to connect it a little with current events, [unclear]—there was now a sicha [unclear], and the bochurim learned about the story of Balak and Pinchas, a sicha in which the Rebbe discusses the whole story of Balak and Bilaam. There is a very beautiful sicha of the Rebbe’s in one of the earlier volumes of Likkutei Sichos—volume 11, I don’t remember—where the Rebbe explains what is written in the Sifrei: that the letters of Bilaam and Amalek

05:42 can be interchanged. If you write “Bilaam” and beneath it write “Amalek,” you can read Bilaam and Amalek across the lines, and you can also read Bilaam and Amalek from top to bottom. I don’t have a board here, but I assume everyone can picture it. If you write the four letters of Bilaam on a page, and the four letters of Amalek directly underneath them, it works. You can read it both ways: Bilaam, Amalek—and also, by reading the letters vertically, Bilaam. In short, everyone can picture it. So Bilaam and Amalek work both from top to bottom and across each line. And the same is true of love and fear. If you write “yirah” on top, the word “yirah” runs across the line, and beneath it you write “ahavah,” you can read it the same way. You can read “yirah, ahavah,” and you can also read it from top to bottom. The yud and reish of “yirah” together with the alef and hei of “ahavah” make “yirah.” And the alef and hei of “yirah” together with the beis and hei of “ahavah” make “ahavah.” You can read them across each line and from top to bottom. That is how the Rebbe cites it in the name of the Megaleh Amukos, if I’m not mistaken, [unclear]. The Rebbe explains in terms of serving Hashem that, in order to nullify Bilaam and Amalek—what is the third side of Bilaam and Amalek? Bilaam and Amalek were both from the same, the same family. Both were descended from [unclear], from our forefathers; Yosef was descended from Avraham. Bilaam was a grandson of Lot, who was part of Avraham Avinu’s family, and Amalek, too, came from that same family. So they were connected to the Jewish people in some way. Bilaam was a cousin of... In short, they were family. They were [unclear]. So the whole point the Rebbe explains there in the sicha about Bilaam and Amalek is that both were forces of kelipah that came to fight

07:29 With the Jewish people from within, as if to say, “We’re close, after all; we have a family connection.” That was how they wanted to cool the Jewish people’s enthusiasm for Torah and mitzvos. Yes, [unclear]. So the battle against the kelipah of Bilaam and the kelipah of Amalek is through fear and love. And the point is that fear has to come before love. This relates to what we’re learning now. The Rebbe explains at length in that sicha that the order must be fear and then love. If you write “love” on top and “fear” below, it doesn’t work. When does it work? When you can read it both across in one line and from top to bottom. That only works if you write “fear” on the top line and “love” on the bottom line. In other words, first there must be fear, and then love. Because fear has an advantage over love, as we explained earlier in the preceding chapters. The self-nullification that is needed—fear and love must involve self-nullification. You can’t start with love, because love involves a sense of self. It’s a holy sense of self, but it is still a sense of self; it lacks self-nullification. As a result, it can go in the direction of the kelipos and so on, and it won’t endure. There must first of all be fear. Only when there is yiras Shamayim first, followed by love, can the kelipah of Bilaam be nullified. The Rebbe explains this there in the sicha. Incidentally, this is something connected to the time, to the period we’re in now. In any case, here the Alter Rebbe will begin to explain the subject of love at length. The Alter Rebbe now says: “And behold”—look inside, fifth line; this is point 62—“And behold, in love too there are two levels: ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam.” Love, too, has two levels. There is ahavah rabbah and there is ahavas olam. “Ahavah rabbah is a love of delights.” What is ahavah

09:10 rabbah? Ahavah rabbah is a form of love called “a love of delights.” It is a kind of love in which a person experiences delight. He takes delight in G-dliness. “It is a flame that rises of its own accord.” This level of ahavah rabbah is like a flame, like a fire that comes on its own. That is, you don’t have to—you don’t have to make it happen; it rises of its own accord. It’s as if it happens automatically, without effort, without toil. A person has a flame that rises of its own accord. There’s a kind of fire you have to light: you have to prepare it, you have to break the wood into pieces. You have to work to get it going. And there’s a kind of fire that rises of its own accord, as though you didn’t have to do anything. The fire rises by itself. The same is true of love of Hashem. When a person is on the level of ahavah rabbah, a love of delights, it is a kind of flame, a level of love that seems to arise of its own accord. The person takes no action; he makes no effort. At a deeper level, he is simply drawn to G-dliness as a matter of course, as we find with Nadav and Avihu, who had such a yearning for G-dliness that their souls were consumed with longing, as though it arose of its own accord. In a moment we’ll explain what that means in greater detail. Let’s read a little inside. “And it comes from above,” says the Alter Rebbe. This love, which comes on its own, is a love one receives as a gift from above. “And it comes from above”—it is given from above as a gift; one receives it in the manner of a gift. “To one who is complete in fear.” Who receives such a gift—such a lofty level of love that comes on its own, a love of delights? The Alter Rebbe says it comes to a person who is complete in fear. After a person attains the fullest measure of fear that he can reach through his own avodah, only then does this level of a love of delights come. “As is known from the statement of our Sages: It is the way of a

11:04 man to seek out a woman.” As our Sages say, a man seeks out a woman. That is, when it comes to shidduchim, the order is that the man looks for the woman, not that the woman looks for the man. That’s how it is with shidduchim, and from this we learn the spiritual meaning of these matters: man and woman, in spiritual terms, are love and fear. We spoke about this in the previous class. I’ll briefly repeat the point: man and woman correspond to love and fear. Man represents love; woman represents fear. The Alter Rebbe explains why. Love is called a man. Love is referred to as male, in the category of the masculine, as it says, “He remembered His kindness.” We already explained this in the previous class; I won’t go over it again now. Just one point: in “He remembered His kindness,” the word “remembered” is related to memory, but in Hebrew it is also related to the word “male.” Both have the same root in the Holy Tongue. Two words that share a root do so because they have the same spiritual root. The concept of memory is associated specifically with the male, for the reasons we explained in the previous class. In any case, in “He remembered His kindness,” that word is related to “male,” to the concept of man. It says, “He remembered His kindness.” That is, the male, the man, is on the side of chessed, the attribute of chessed. Chessed is love. It’s the same line, the right side. And “a woman who fears Hashem.” On the other hand, the concept of woman is yiras Shamayim. That, too, is the wording of a verse, just as “He remembered His kindness” is a verse. “A woman who fears Hashem” is also a verse: “Grace is false and beauty is vain; a woman who fears Hashem, she shall be praised.” So the expression “fear of Heaven” is used of a woman. It specifically says “a woman who fears Hashem”; it doesn’t say “a woman who loves Hashem.” In other words, yiras Shamayim is connected with the woman, because the level of woman is the level of fear, apparently. What is the explanation for this? Briefly, in any case.

12:54 The brief explanation, in any case, is that the difference between man and woman can be explained in several ways, but in Kabbalah it is as follows. One explanation is that man and woman correspond to Ze’er Anpin and Malchus. Man and woman are Ze’er Anpin and Malchus, and in Kabbalah, with regard to their counterparts above, Ze’er Anpin is the giver and Malchus is the receiver. That is the concept of man and woman. And in Ze’er Anpin, the primary attribute among the middos is chessed. There are six middos, but we say that their main attribute is chessed: “The world is built through chessed.” Chessed is on the right side. In other words, the primary middah is chessed. All the other middos are particular expressions of chessed. So the essential character of the middos is giving, which is connected with chessed. That is why man corresponds to chessed, to love. Even gevurah, for example, is connected with love: if you don’t love someone, you won’t relate to him with gevurah either. If you love someone, you relate to him. You give him love; you show him gevurah. Gevurah, too, is an expression of chessed, of love. That is why the main emphasis among the middos is love, and why man represents love. Malchus, by contrast, is the feminine aspect, the receiver, the level of woman. And it is said that Malchus is built primarily from the gevurot. Malchus comes specifically from the gevurot, because Malchus entails tzimtzum, contraction. For Malchus to exist, there has to be a contraction, a contraction of what is given. So Malchus is built specifically from the gevurot, and that is why woman is associated with gevurot. That is apparently what he means here. Or we could put it another way: as is well known, “ish,” man, is “eish,” fire, with a yud, and “ishah,” woman, is “eish” with a hei. These correspond to Chochmah and Binah, which are likewise the right and left sides. The yud, Chochmah, is on the right side, the side of chessed, the side of love; and the hei, Binah, is on the left side

14:42 That is the line of gevurah. So somehow that explains it. But as for man and woman, man is associated with the attribute of chessed, and woman with the attribute of gevurah. This also relates to the basic nature of things. The difference between a giver and a receiver is that giving flows from above to below; that is the nature of love. Love flows from above to below. Giving. Love is giving, bestowing. A woman, by contrast, is a receiver. Receiving involves contraction, a movement from below to above, the receiver rising upward. So it is associated with gevurah. All of these are explanations for why we say that man represents love and woman represents fear. As the saying goes, “It is the way of a man to seek a woman.” What does that explain? That love follows fear. When there is fear, love comes. Without fear, love does not come. Fear must first be complete for love to be revealed. Without fear as an introduction, one cannot reach this great love. Without that introduction of fear, one cannot reach love that comes from above—particularly this great love in delights that we are discussing. Why must fear be complete in order to reach love? He also gives a reason for it. It is not just an arbitrary rule; it has a rational explanation. Why is this love in delights revealed only after we have fear? Because this love is of the level of Atzilus. The love we are discussing, great love in delights, is a level of love revealed from above. What level does it come from? The world of Atzilus? From the level of the world of Atzilus. And of Atzilus it is said, “There is no severance or separation there, G-d forbid.” The world of Atzilus is a world where severance and separation have no place. Atzilus is the world of unity. That is this love. It is associated with the world of Atzilus, the world of unity, where severance and separation have no place—the matter

16:30 of selfhood in Atzilus. So as long as a person has a sense of independent selfhood, he is not a vessel for this love. He must first do away with all severance and separation. This is the Alter Rebbe’s point. That is why it is necessary. This is the explanation the Alter Rebbe gives for why fear must precede this love, love in delights: first there must be bittul, self-nullification. After all, what did we say is the difference between love and fear? Fear is bittul. That is the virtue of fear: it has an element of bittul. As long as a person has not brought about that movement of bittul through fear within himself, he still has a sense of self. If he goes straight to love, then, it will be love marked by selfhood. If a person wants to serve Hashem by going straight to love—love itself, after all, contains an element of selfhood. I love because it is enjoyable, because it is good, because it is enjoyable. Love is connected with the person’s own sense of self. So if he begins with love, he will remain centered on himself. And if he remains that way, Atzilus will not be revealed within him. He will have love, but it will not be the love of Atzilus; it will not be love in delights. It will be levels of love that retain a sense of self: there is someone who loves, but it is not the attribute of love as it exists in Atzilus. The attribute of love in Atzilus, love in delights, is a love that can be revealed only after a person reaches complete bittul, because Atzilus is the world of unity. That is why fear and bittul must come first; then one can enter into love. Now, we asked a question earlier, so let us return to that point. If we had time—we did not—but briefly, I will take it up here in the text. We asked a question about fear, and many maamarim

18:05 always explain that fear is higher than love. Yes, according to the order explained—and Tanya also discussed this at length earlier, in chapter 30—in chapter 40, chapter 40—the order is fear, love, love, fear. The four letters of Hashem’s name: the lower hei is lower fear; the vav is lesser love; the upper hei is great love; and the yud of Hashem’s name is higher fear. So what is the highest level? Higher fear. That is higher than great love. Yet here the Alter Rebbe says that great love is higher than higher fear. The point of the explanation is that these are two different levels. There is great love, and there is great love in delights. They are two different things. Great love is one level, below higher fear; but the great love in delights discussed here is a level higher even than higher fear. What is the difference? Briefly, the point is that it is the difference between chayah and yechidah, between will and delight. Just to put it in the terminology of Chassidus. In general, Tanya does not discuss yechidah, chayah and yechidah, but to understand it in simple terms, it is the difference between the levels of chayah and yechidah. In terms of the soul’s faculties, the difference between great love on its own and great love in delights is the difference between the faculty of will and the faculty of delight. Great love is will. Great love is beyond reason. “Great” means that a person reaches a desire, a love, a desire that goes beyond the intellect. It is beyond reason. That is great love. But it is not yet delight; it is a level of will. He wants. So there is great love with fiery flames. Yes. What does “fiery flames” mean? Flames mean that it burns. He flees, he runs; he wants to escape his own state of being. He senses

20:23 the greatness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He senses G-dliness. He feels that it is the truth, and all of that. So his heart races. He wants to escape the whole reality of the world and connect with G-dliness. It is such a strong desire that it transcends reason. But it is something outside himself. Fiery flames—what are fiery flames? Arousal. There is a commotion, a shturem. It is like a person who is far away from something and wants to reach it. So he runs toward it, with all his strength, because he senses its greatness and wonder. He runs with full force, but it is a race in which one thing runs toward another. With great love in delights, by contrast, the person is no longer running. Delight means that a person is not running anywhere; he is already there. It is a level at which the soul unites with G-dliness—not as two things, but as one. So it is no longer a matter of running. On the contrary, there the person takes delight in G-dliness. Delight means delight. It is not a movement. That is the difference between will and delight. Will involves a shturem and arousal. Delight is a movement of the soul, a movement of calmness—but not calmness because he does not care. On the contrary, it is calm because there are not two things here at all. There is nowhere to run. He and that higher thing have become truly one. That is the nature of delight. That is the perception of G-dliness. Of course, this can be understood in light of the maamar we learned: the difference between the two kinds of faith, faith that comes from seeing and faith that comes from the soul’s essence. It is the same point in other words. On one level, there is something above you, and so you run toward it—fiery flames. But there is a higher level

22:23 where you do not run. That is it: the soul and G-dliness become one. That is love in delights, and it connects with what the Alter Rebbe says about love from the level of Atzilus. What is Atzilus? Atzilus is the world of holiness. It does not mean a world where one runs toward G-dliness; rather, it is itself G-dliness. Atzilus is a world that is [unclear]. In the world of Atzilus, there is a sense that no separate existence exists; it is itself G-dliness. That is its reality. It is not that there is something here one needs to run toward. In the world of Beriah—even though Beriah is a very high level—one runs toward G-dliness. One senses and feels that there is something there and wants to connect with it. There is still an entity that wants to connect. In the world of Atzilus, it has already become his own reality. That is the difference between fear and love in delights. Fear—the Alter Rebbe says that fear must first be complete, and then one can reach love. Why? Because fear, even complete fear at its very highest level—what defines fear? Fear is bittul. [unclear] He nullifies himself. Love means that it becomes his own reality. In other words, as a movement of the soul, fear is a movement in which he nullifies himself to G-dliness. That still involves something outside the person: he nullifies himself to it. Love in delights, by contrast, is not like that; his own being is G-dliness. It is like the superiority of yechidah over chayah. Chayah is bittul, a movement of self-nullification. Yechidah, by contrast, is not bittul. Yechidah means that his own being is G-dliness. It is not defined as nullifying oneself to G-dliness. Yechidah means that G-dliness is his very essence, as the Rebbe explains. And of course, all of this [unclear]—it is already late.