Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 43 - Part 6

00:00 Speaker 1 We’re on page 62 here. In the shiur, we’ve been discussing ahavas olam. Yesterday we said that there are two levels of love: ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. As for ahavah rabbah, as we learned yesterday, the Rebbe explains that here it doesn’t mean just any great love, but ahavah rabbah b’taanugim—love with delight. This level is received as a gift from above, from the level of Atzilus that shines into the soul when a person prepares the vessels through the whole matter of awe, on the level of yirah ila’ah, higher awe. So ahavah rabbah comes as a gift from above. But that isn’t what the Tanya is setting out to explain here, because the Tanya primarily wants to explain love that comes through one’s own avodah. Love that comes as a gift isn’t a matter of avodah. As the Rebbe said at the end of chapter 40, love with delight is already a reward for a mitzvah. It belongs to the World to Come; that’s a different matter. That isn’t what the verse means when it says, “For the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” So here he begins to explain ahavas olam. Ahavas olam. What is ahavas olam? As we explained, how does the Rebbe describe it here? It comes from contemplating the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, Who fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and before Whom everything is considered as nothing. Ahavas olam is a love that comes through contemplation. In other words, he’s distinguishing here between ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam in two ways. The first distinction is that ahavah rabbah comes from above. What did we learn yesterday? That ahavah rabbah comes from above, from above. It isn’t that the person—

02:00 Speaker 1 the person doesn’t do the work to arouse the love. It’s given on its own, as a gift. This love, by contrast, comes through work: the work of contemplation. One has to put in work and effort and contemplate in order to reach love. And the second distinction is hinted at in the names themselves. Ahavah rabbah means a great love: a love that is beyond the limits of the vessels. Ahavah rabbah is beyond the limits of the vessels. Ahavas olam, by contrast, is a love drawn from the world. In other words, ahavas olam means that the love is connected with the world. We spoke about this a few shiurim ago: the words ahavas olam have two meanings. In the simple sense, ahavas olam means everlasting love. “With everlasting love You have loved us, Hashem our G-d,” as we say in davening. It means an eternal love—not a love of thirty years, or ten years, or a hundred years, or a love... “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you to Me with kindness.” That speaks of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s love for the Jewish people: an eternal, essential love, with no limit and no end. But there is also the meaning the Rebbe gives here in the Tanya: ahavas olam is a love drawn from the world. In other words, it’s a love connected with the world, with contemplating G-dliness as it relates to the world. So the Rebbe is saying here that there are two aspects to ahavas olam: reaching it requires contemplation, and the contemplation itself is of G-dliness not as it is in itself, but as it is invested in and revealed through the world. We also explained that this helps us understand the difference between what the Rebbe said—

03:54 Speaker 1 earlier about awe, yirah ila’ah, and what we’re now learning about ahavas olam. We’ll see that shortly. First, let’s read a little inside. So, again: “Ahavas olam comes from contemplating the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, Who fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and before Whom everything is considered as nothing.” These are three levels of G-dliness, right? In general, the three levels are these: the light that fills all worlds is the Divine light that is invested within the world in an internal way. The light that encompasses all worlds is above being invested within the world—it’s an encompassing light—but it still has a connection to the worlds. That’s why it’s called “encompassing all worlds.” In other words, it has some connection to the world, though only in an encompassing way. Then there is the level of “before Whom everything is considered as nothing,” which in Chassidus generally refers to the very Essence of the Ein Sof. It is said to be beyond any connection to the worlds. It’s not merely above being invested in the worlds; it’s altogether beyond any connection to them. You can’t even describe it as encompassing them. Yet even this level has a connection to the world, even this third level. The Rebbe brings all three levels together here. He includes contemplating the level of “before Whom everything is considered as nothing.” Because even when we speak of filling all worlds, encompassing all worlds, and everything being considered as nothing before Him—the last of which expresses the world’s nullification before the Essence of the Ein Sof, which is beyond any connection, so that its nullification is such that it is considered as nothing—even there we’re still speaking about the world. Even there, when you say “considered as nothing,” what does that mean? It means you’re speaking about one thing in relation to another. If there’s nothing there at all, how can you say it’s “considered as nothing”? The concept—

05:40 Speaker 1 of “considered as nothing” applies when you compare one thing to another. You say that this thing has no significance, no value. It has no significance at all. Say, for example, that you compare the number one to an unlimited number of numbers, or one small coin to unlimited wealth. It has no significance. That’s “considered as nothing”: it has no value or significance; it’s utterly incomparable. But in saying that, you’re still speaking about something to which the description applies. There has to be some reality that is considered as nothing in relation to another reality. If there’s no reality there to begin with, how could you even say it’s considered as nothing? If you’re speaking about something that exists in relation to something that doesn’t exist, how does “considered as nothing” apply? Something that doesn’t exist isn’t considered as nothing in relation to something that does exist. It doesn’t exist at all. There’s nothing there to negate. Or, to put it another way, as the Rebbe explains elsewhere: when you say “considered as nothing,” you take one thing and another thing, and say that the first has no significance in relation to the second. So by calling it “considered as nothing,” you’re still giving that thing some significance. That is, even as you say this thing is considered as nothing in relation to that thing, you’re saying that there is one reality and another reality. So even in “considered as nothing,” there is some relationship to the thing. Of course, there are many levels within this, and this isn’t the place to go into them at length. But the point is that even at this level—not only “fills all worlds” and not only “encompasses all worlds,” but even contemplation of “before Whom everything is considered as nothing”—we’re still speaking about the world. We’re still speaking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu in relation to the world.

07:22 Speaker 1 We’re speaking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu in relation to the world. So there is contemplation of G-dliness invested within the world in an internal way. That is “fills all worlds.” There is contemplation of G-dliness that is above the world but encompasses it. That is “encompasses all worlds.” And there is a level of G-dliness before which we say that everything is considered as nothing. But here, too, there is an “everything” that is considered as nothing. So this, too, has to do with the world’s relationship to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What kind of relationship does the world have to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? One in which it is considered as nothing. “And everything is considered as nothing before Him, like the nullification of a single utterance within the intellectual soul while it is still in its thought or desire, as explained above.” For this, he gives an analogy that the Rebbe already brought earlier, on the previous page. The Alter Rebbe presented it at length, and it’s explained in chapters 20 and 21 of Tanya: a single letter or a single utterance in relation to the soul in its entirety. Its nullification is complete—it is considered as nothing. So too here, all the worlds are nullified, for all the worlds are a single utterance of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As we say, “With one utterance all the worlds were created.” That single utterance, as it is included in the light of the Ein Sof before the tzimtzum, on the level we call the Ein Sof, is considered as nothing. It has no value or significance at all. Just as one word has no significance within the soul in its entirety, so too all the worlds have no significance in relation to the Ein Sof. So this is what a person contemplates in order to arouse love within himself. What kind of love? Ahavas olam. Now, at first glance, what is this? The Alter Rebbe brought this earlier in connection with awe. After all—

09:01 Speaker 1 At first glance, the Alter Rebbe brought up the same idea in connection with awe. There was a break here, so the bochurim have already forgotten what we learned on the previous page. But there, the Alter Rebbe was speaking about supernal awe. He explained what supernal awe is: a person contemplates the word of Hashem present in everything, and how the entire world is nullified to the word of Hashem and the breath of His mouth, considered as nothing—like the light of the sun is nullified within the sun itself. In fact, the Alter Rebbe spoke about this very point earlier on this page, just a few lines ago. In connection with what? With supernal awe. And here the Alter Rebbe brings the same contemplation in connection with awakening love. What level of love? Ahavas olam, a love of Hashem that comes through contemplation of the world. How can the same contemplation lead to two completely different things? Here it produces supernal awe, and here you say it produces ahavas olam. So that is the point we need to explain. The explanation is simple. Earlier, when the Alter Rebbe spoke about supernal awe, what was the emphasis? What does the person delve into and focus on, through which supernal awe arises? After all, the person sees the word of Hashem. In other words, the calculation, the underlying idea, is the same: we are talking about the nullification of created beings before the word of Hashem—the most complete nullification, in which created beings are utterly nullified, considered as nothing. But within that very idea, the difference is in what we are speaking about and where the emphasis lies. Here we are speaking primarily about the world: how the world has no existence of its own, how its entire existence is only G-dliness, and how everything before Him is considered as nothing in relation to G-dliness. So when you contemplate how

11:13 Speaker 1 the world has no value at all in relation to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, it awakens love within you. The love does not come from contemplating the world as something desirable. You come to recognize that the world has no value, no importance. And so, as the Alter Rebbe will say shortly, you want G-dliness, not the world. With awe, by contrast, the contemplation is not so much focused on the world; it is focused more on G-dliness. After all, what does the person see? He does not see the world; he sees what is hidden. He sees that the true reality is G-dliness. When G-dliness is before his eyes, it brings about a response of self-nullification. It brings about supernal awe, a state of utter self-nullification. That is the difference between them. When a person contemplates the world in relation to G-dliness, the more he recognizes that the world is not a reality in its own right, the less he wants the world. He wants G-dliness. Why would I want the world? It has no reality, no value, no importance. He wants only “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth,” as the Alter Rebbe discusses afterward. But when you contemplate the supernal light itself that is present in the world, that is where your focus lies. What are you contemplating? Do you see G-dliness before your eyes? No—the emphasis is the other way around. Here you are negating the world. Where is your focus? On G-dliness. So the more a person senses that G-dliness is here, the more it brings about a response of self-nullification in his soul, a sense of shame and supernal awe—utter self-nullification. That is the point. You see, even though we have explained that both passages are speaking about the same idea, the emphasis is completely different. Here the emphasis is on G-dliness; here the emphasis is on the world. So

12:54 Speaker 1 you will see as he continues: Through this contemplation—when a person contemplates how all the worlds are nullified to the word of Hashem and to the light of Ein Sof, to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—once he reaches this understanding, “the attribute of love in the soul will shed its garments.” This will cause the soul’s love to shed its garments, meaning that it will no longer be clothed in any source of physical pleasure or enjoyment. The moment a person recognizes that this entire world, all created beings and all the worlds have no value or importance in relation to Ein Sof, that they are all utterly nullified, his love will shed its garments. It will come out of them, detach itself from all of them. A person has an attribute of love; love is a quality of the soul. Now, naturally, where is our love found? It is clothed in worldly matters. A person loves the world—that is simply natural. He grows accustomed to it; it happens on its own. A person grows accustomed to loving the world. He loves living; he loves eating; he loves drinking. There are different levels to this. There is love for forbidden things, and there is also love for permitted things. There is even love for spiritual things, not forbidden things. He loves spiritual things too. He loves feeling connected; he loves intellectual pursuits. These are not necessarily, G-d forbid, serious problems; they can even be spiritual pursuits. A person may love reading books, love knowledge—good things, all of them. So his love is clothed in a particular way in worldly matters. The moment I come to recognize, to feel, to conclude—as we explained—that all worldly matters are considered as nothing, that they have no existence, value or importance of their own, that everything is G-dliness and everything before Him is considered as nothing, then

14:49 Speaker 1 the love that had been clothed in worldly matters has nowhere to rest: these things no longer matter to him. So it sheds those garments. It comes out of all worldly matters, and his love turns solely to G-dliness. What do we see in the text? “The attribute of love in the soul will shed its garments”—meaning that it will not be clothed in anything that offers physical or spiritual pleasure and enjoyment. His love will not be clothed in anything that affords any kind of physical or spiritual pleasure. Not even spiritual pleasures—the pleasure of melodies, the pleasure of feeling connected, any kind of pleasure associated with the world. Even in spiritual matters, he desires nothing for himself. Rather, he desires nothing at all besides Hashem alone. Through what we have just explained, a person will not want anything physical or spiritual. He will want only Hashem alone, only G-dliness—“the source of life of all pleasures.” G-dliness is the source of life; that is where all pleasures come from. “They are all nullified in their existence and have no substance before Him.” As we said earlier, since this entire world and all its pleasures are completely nullified, he no longer wants them. “There is no comparison or likeness between them at all, G-d forbid, just as absolute nothingness cannot be compared to eternal life.” The gulf between all pleasures, physical and spiritual, and Divine pleasure is so vast that he says it is like the gulf between absolute nothingness and eternal life. That is the greatest possible disparity. When we say two things cannot be compared, that can mean different things. Something small can be compared to something large, too. So the Alter Rebbe tells us what kind of disparity he means: the disparity between absolute nothingness and life

16:38 Speaker 1 Eternal. That is not what it means. It is not simply the immeasurable difference between a short life and eternal life. There is an immeasurable difference between a limited life and eternal life too. But a limited life is still life. You have the choice of a limited life or eternal life. Of course eternal life is incomparably greater than a limited life, but ultimately, a limited life is also life. Here, though, in what we are explaining, a person comes to recognize, to feel deeply, that the difference between the worlds and the Ein Sof is like the difference between absolute nothingness and eternal life. The worlds are absolute nothingness; they are nothing, no reality at all. And here we are talking about life—not just life, but eternal life. So the difference is absolute, and consequently he has no pleasure, no vitality, no interest in the world—only in G-dliness alone. “As it is written: ‘Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart fail; G-d is the rock of my heart and my portion forever.’” This is what the verse says. It is the well-known verse that would bring the Alter Rebbe to a state of the soul’s yearning to leave the body every time. The Alter Rebbe brings it here in Tanya. And in the passage “In You, Hashem, I have taken refuge,” this was one of the lofty expressions the Alter Rebbe would say: he wanted nothing else. That was based on this verse: “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart fail; G-d is the rock of my heart and my portion forever.” The meaning of the words here is straightforward. What does the verse mean when it says, “Whom have I in heaven?” Heaven means spirituality. He says, “Whom have I in heaven?” I want nothing to do with heaven; I do not want spirituality. “And besides You I desire nothing on earth.” I do not want physical things. “I desire nothing on earth”—I do not want material things either, even though they are “besides You,” even though they, too, are Yours. But they are not You Yourself. “My flesh and my heart fail.” The whole matter

18:24 Speaker 1 of the soul’s yearning to leave the body: “my flesh” refers to the body, and “my heart” refers to the heart, to the soul. “My flesh and my heart fail”—both his body and his soul are in a state of longing and delight. “The rock of my heart”: because G-dliness is what matters most; it is the rock. In other words, this is my heart, this is my life. So consequently, nothing else had any significance for him. And there is this here as well. So what is the point the Alter Rebbe is explaining here? He is explaining the nature of ahavas olam. All of this is ahavas olam. We are not talking here about experience and delight. We are talking about ahavas olam. What is ahavas olam about? It is about how G-dliness relates to the world—but not simply contemplating how G-dliness is within the world, as memalei kol almin. The Alter Rebbe says no. That is, it is about the world’s relationship to G-dliness, the world’s relationship to G-dliness. There are several levels to this. First, he contemplates memalei kol almin. Then he comes to a deeper understanding of the entire world. Then he comes to a deeper understanding of G-dliness as a whole. Through all of this, he reaches a point where the entire reality of the world is of no consequence. So the love he had invested in worldly things—now that the world is of no consequence to him, there is no world in which to invest his love. There is only G-dliness; everything else is like nothing. Look at how all the worlds are utterly incomparable to the Ein Sof, and consequently he wants only G-dliness. Nothing else. He finds no pleasure in physical or spiritual delights. One could ask: How can we connect this with the Alter Rebbe’s saying, “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing on earth”? After all,

20:00 Speaker 1 this is always explained as the highest level of love. As the Rebbe brings in Hayom Yom for 19 Kislev, the final Hayom Yom entry, regarding “In You, Hashem, I have taken refuge.” The grandson of the Tzemach Tzedek writes that this level of love—I do not remember the exact wording—is the highest level of love. This is what was heard from the Alter Rebbe, heard from him as he spoke in a state of intense attachment: “I don’t want Your Gan Eden; I don’t want Your World to Come.” He would say this about the verse, “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing on earth.” Yet here the Alter Rebbe says that this is the level of ahavas olam. So the answer is simple. Here the Alter Rebbe is not speaking of such a lofty level. Although he brings the same verse, he is not speaking about it here in such an elevated sense. The Alter Rebbe is not speaking here of rejecting the World to Come and Gan Eden—no, not exactly. Even though the wording is similar, the Alter Rebbe is speaking here about lower levels. Here he speaks of physical and spiritual pleasures, of much more ordinary things. A person has pleasures in material things, or he has pleasures in spiritual things. Not necessarily the spirituality of the World to Come, or the spiritual revelation of the Ein Sof in G-dliness. That is not what we are talking about, but rather spiritual pursuits. As we said: intellectual pursuits, melodies, a play. Some people’s love is a desire for the world; others love things that are more elevated, more spiritual. By contemplating that all of this, even within holiness, is considered as nothing compared with the Ein Sof, he divests his love of all these things. He wants Hashem alone. But “Hashem alone” here means G-dliness. It does not necessarily mean that the Alter Rebbe is speaking here

21:47 Speaker 1 about the level referred to when describing what the Alter Rebbe would say in a state of intense attachment. That is something entirely different. There, we are speaking about how the Alter Rebbe would reach such a state of attachment that he wanted nothing else. He did not want the World to Come, he did not want Gan Eden; he wanted only G-d’s very Essence. That is the highest level of love, rejecting all other things, all the revelations. It is a very lofty level. Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking about lower levels. He is speaking simply of physical and spiritual pleasures connected with the world. Because you contemplate that “all is considered as nothing before Him,” you consequently do not want the world; you want only G-dliness. That is why we can connect the point the Alter Rebbe explains here with the well-known story the Rebbe relates about Reb Yekusiel Liepler. It is the same idea, the same level as Reb Yekusiel Liepler. The Rebbe wanted to bless him with wealth, and he said he did not want wealth, because then he would not be able to learn. Likewise, the Rebbe wanted to bless him with long life, and he said: long life, but on condition that they not be “peasant years,” years like [unclear], like a peasant’s. “They have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear.” The Rebbe explains in that sicha what the story of Reb Yekusiel Liepler means. After all, the Rebbe was offering you a blessing! What are you doing setting conditions—“I don’t want it this way, I don’t want it that way”—all those conditions he made? So how does the Rebbe explain it? The Rebbe explains that for Reb Yekusiel Liepler, life without Chassidus... There is ordinary life, and there is spiritual life, a higher life. There are several levels of life. Yes, there are.

23:33 Speaker 1 A person has life, but he lacks possessions, he lacks this or that. Still, at least—at least he’s alive. More than that, he’s alive and can observe Torah and mitzvos. Beyond that, he can live without it, too—but that’s already a hiddur, the highest level of hiddur. For Reb Yekusiel Liepler, it was clear that without Chassidus, it wasn’t life at all. It’s not that Chassidus was a condition; it was, it was, it was the foundation. It’s a hiddur to ask that the gift be given in a way... For him, the point was this: If I have life, but in that life I can’t study Chassidus, I can’t be connected to G-dliness, then that life isn’t life at all. And this is what the Rebbe says here: through contemplating bittul before G-dliness, as we learned here, a person comes to recognize that the whole reality of the world—physical pleasures and spiritual pleasures—it’s not that they, too, are something real, only there are higher things. Rather, they are absolute nothingness compared to eternal life. G-dliness is eternal life. The matter of G-dliness—that is eternal life. And compared to G-dliness, all other pleasures, all other kinds of life, aren’t life at all. They are absolute nothingness. They aren’t life at all. And there’s the well-known story they tell about, about, about... They tell of Rabbi Yehuda Feinstein[?], who said that if pleasure-seekers... There’s a story about Reb Hillel of Paritch, who said that if pleasure-seekers knew what a delight there is in davening at length and studying Chassidus, they would leave all their pleasures behind and study only Chassidus; they would daven. Why is that? Because once a person truly comes to recognize the real pleasure—and the real pleasure is the recognition of G-dliness, that compared to G-dliness there is no

25:22 Speaker 1 reality at all—then he feels that anything he might have apart from G-dliness isn’t something real for which there’s merely a better alternative. Rather, it too is absolute nothingness. It has no reality at all.

25:33 Speaker 2 Absolutely.