Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 44 - Part 4

00:01 We’re holding on page 63, in the middle of the page. In the previous class, we tried to get to this point, but there were a few things left to explain, which we said we would leave for this class. The Alter Rebbe is speaking here. He begins by saying that there is a certain kind of love of Hashem that includes both ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. It has the advantages of both: the advantage of ahavah rabbah and the advantage of ahavas olam. What’s more, he says it is equally accessible to every soul and is an inheritance from our forefathers. So he explains the idea. What kind of love are we talking about? The love of “My soul desires You,” in which a person loves Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It is a kind of love like the love a person has for his own soul—a love of life. Every person, simply by being human, has this love. There are no differences of spiritual level here. Every normal person loves to live; he loves life. And when we speak of a love of life, of course we don’t mean a love of flesh, a love of the body. We can see clearly that we mean a love of being alive—a love of the soul. How do we know that a person loves the soul and not the flesh? We see it in a number of ways. For one thing, a person is sometimes willing to do something that will cause his body pain in order to save his life. Sometimes, rachmana litzlan—may it never happen to anyone, to any Jew—a person has to take painful medicine in order to live. Sometimes he needs injections or other things that hurt the body. Or sometimes, rachmana litzlan, in severe situations, it is even necessary

02:32 to remove a part of the body to save his life. So a person is willing to give up parts of his body in order to live. That means the love is not for the body, for its flesh. The love is for life, for the soul—for the preciousness of life. Yes, this is a love that every person has by nature. He loves to live; he wants to live. But as we explained in the previous class, because a constant pleasure is not felt as pleasure, a person does not feel at every moment how much he enjoys and loves being alive. He doesn’t think about it or feel it, because it is a constant pleasure. But when there is a state of darkness, a state of illness, or at night before he goes to sleep—when there is something that contrasts with life—he begins to feel how much he truly wants to live. I once knew a chossid who was a very chassidic Jew, and so on. [unclear] He was truly a Jew of high spiritual standing. At farbrengens, he often spoke about life, about how chassidim are alive. Chassidim were not afraid to speak about death. I remember him speaking about this several times: chassidim were not afraid to discuss matters of death. Because for chassidim, dying means passing on. How did he put it? In the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who said: What does it mean to die? It means moving from one floor to another. Yes, there are several floors. You are in a lower world; then, when you finish there, you go up another floor. What happened? [unclear] It is a passage from one world to another. So, he would often say

04:31 that chassidim were not afraid to speak about death. But afterward, this chossid became ill, rachmana litzlan. He was ill for several years. I remember that once, when he was already ill, someone asked him whether he still thought the same way he had spoken before. He said, “No. Now I want to live.” Yes, they asked him—I was there when they asked him—“Do you regret what you said?” And he answered, “Yes, I regret it.” As a chossid, you know what it means, but when you reach a point where you actually feel the opposite of life, it is as the Alter Rebbe says here: when a person is weak and afflicted, then the desire to live, the preciousness of life, is felt by him even more strongly. That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying, quite simply. So a person has to come to the recognition that true life is G-dliness. When a person recognizes what life means—that real life is not merely the soul, but G-dliness: “Hashem Elokim is truth; He is the living G-d.” What does it mean to live? It means that “By the word of Hashem the heavens were made,” and “You give life to them all”—that the life-force is G-dly. That is the true meaning of life. Physicality on its own, by contrast, has no life of its own. It is death and evil, and [unclear]. So true life is G-dliness. When a person recognizes that G-dliness is true life, then certainly he will have this cry of “My soul desires You”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my life, He is true life, and therefore “I desire You.” I want Hakadosh Boruch Hu; I love Him and I want Him.

06:40 When does this happen? At night, as we said. What does “at night” mean? It is revealed specifically at times of night, specifically out of darkness and concealment, as explained in other maamarim. What does it mean that it is revealed out of darkness and concealment? We said that when a person is ill, or when he goes to sleep at night, it is a time when life is diminished. That awakens his desire to live. When does this happen within his soul with regard to G-dliness, at night? The Alter Rebbe writes here in Tanya that it happens when he wakes in the middle of the night. The Alter Rebbe gives the example of a person going to sleep and wanting to connect to the Source of life—“when I awaken from my sleep at night.” And the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize “when I awaken from my sleep at night.” One possible explanation is that when a person sleeps at night, he becomes distanced from G-dliness to some extent. While he is awake, he is engaged in Torah and mitzvos. After all, we are speaking here about a beinoni, whose thoughts, speech and actions are devoted entirely to Torah, mitzvos and G-dliness. While he is awake, he thinks about G-dliness, speaks about G-dliness and acts accordingly. He is constantly connected to Torah and mitzvos. When he goes to sleep, sleep involves a certain degree of distance. After all, while he is sleeping, a beinoni does not necessarily have only holy dreams. As the Alter Rebbe writes in chapter 29, a beinoni, too, sometimes has ordinary dreams, dreams that are not holy. So the night is a time of distance. That is why, spiritually too, he feels distant then. And that is why he has the desire and longing—and makes a sort of decision as he goes to sleep—that the moment he wakes, “when I awaken at night,” even if he wakes in the middle of the night, he will immediately reconnect to G-dliness. He

08:45 He’ll take a sefer and learn. It is well known among chassidim, and it is also brought from the Zohar, that the Zohar says a person should get up in the middle of the night to learn. On the simple level, this refers to Tikkun Chatzos: throughout the generations, Jews would get up in the middle of the night, or toward morning, before daybreak. As the Alter Rebbe also brings in Shulchan Aruch, they would get up while it was still night to learn Torah—not only to weep over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, but to stay up afterward and learn Torah. That is the idea of getting up at midnight. But among chassidim there is also a broader idea. A person wakes up in the middle of the night—often because he needs to attend to a bodily need. Among chassidim, it was customary that when they woke up in the middle of the night, they would also look into and learn something in Torah, rather than go straight back to sleep. Even if they had got up just to go to the bathroom, afterward they would take a little time, pick up a sefer, and learn some vort, some point in Torah. One of the great chassidim said about this—I don’t remember whether they attribute it to Reb Shlomo of [unclear]—that when the soul descends into this world... He would put it this way: It is written that when a person goes to sleep, the soul ascends on high to receive life, to connect with life. The soul ascends on high, and every night there is a judgment. What happens to the soul? Sometimes they judge the soul there and give it another chance, another opportunity. They send it back down into the world to give it another opportunity to do something, to put right what isn’t right. So they wake him

10:42 in the middle of the night so that he can do another mitzvah, learn a vort, do something good. He thinks he got up to go to the bathroom. He doesn’t realize it’s something else entirely. Did the soul come back down into the world just to go to the bathroom? The soul came back down so that you would have another opportunity. So when you get up in the middle of the night, take a sefer, have a look, read a few words—some halachah, a paragraph, a sicha, a vort. In any case, that is a vort chassidim say. But according to the explanation in Tanya here, it is not merely a vort. There is something much deeper to it. What the vort expresses is that a person knows what life means; he recognizes that life means G-dliness. G-dliness. And as the Alter Rebbe said earlier, one cannot connect to G-dliness without Torah and mitzvos. So when he wakes up in the middle of the night, what is the first thought that comes into his head? G-dliness—connecting to G-dliness. If, for a person, life means the material and the physical, if he sees life as physical life, life from the perspective of the animal soul, then when he gets up at night, what does he think about? Physical, material things. He wants to go to the bathroom or drink a glass of water; there is something his body wants. But if “With my soul I have yearned for You” is deeply rooted in him—this is my very soul—then what is the first thing that comes to mind when he wakes up in the middle of the night? Some point in Torah. The Rebbe spoke about this many times as well in the last year, in 5752. When the Rebbe delivered the sicha to the Temimim, the sicha at the yechidus for the bochurim

12:32 in Tishrei 5752—the last yechidus for the bochurim—what did the Rebbe say? The Rebbe said that a bochur should be so absorbed in learning Torah that if he wakes up in the middle of the night, what does he think about? He thinks about the question he fell asleep with—some question, some point in Chassidus, or in Tehillim, or in Nigleh. He falls asleep with it and wakes up with it. The moment he is awakened, his first thought goes to the point in Torah he was learning. The Rebbe demanded of bochurim, for example, that this should be their life. How does one reach that point? One reaches it through [unclear], through this idea of “With my soul I have yearned for You.” And here you see another point. The Alter Rebbe adds a point here and says, “I desire and yearn for the light of Ein Sof, the Life of true life.” The Alter Rebbe does not simply use the word “life”; he says “the Life of true life.” What is the significance of that wording, the repeated expression “the Life of true life”? The repetition here, too, is precise. Why does the Alter Rebbe write “the Life of life,” rather than simply “life”? There is an explanation for this. [unclear] The Rebbe Rashab explains that when a Jew considers the subject of life, he comes to a fundamental understanding of what life is. There are two levels to it. Looking at the world in general, at first glance a person sees the world’s physicality as a reality. But through contemplation, he comes to recognize that physicality in itself is death. Physicality in itself has no lasting existence. The proof is that a physical thing decays and breaks down, rots and turns into nothing. Everything that comes into being passes away. Whatever physical thing you consider, it does not endure. The world’s entire continued existence

14:29 comes from the life within it, the life that gives it vitality at every moment. That is the point of “See, I have set before you life and good, and death and evil... and you shall choose life.” Physicality in itself is death and evil. Spirituality is life and good, and a person should want the life and spirituality in the world, not its physicality. In the words of the Baal Shem Tov, “Turn away from evil and do good.” A person must flee the world’s evil and seek the good, seek the G-dliness within the world. That is life in the ordinary sense, in one’s approach to the world as a whole. But there is something more when it comes to the Jewish soul. Here, the Alter Rebbe is speaking about a Jew’s approach. He is speaking about what a Jew has inherited from our forefathers. So what did we inherit from our forefathers? Not only an understanding of the life of the world, but also an approach to the life of the soul. And the soul is higher than the world. The life of the entire world comes from the name Elokim, while the life of the soul comes from the level of Havayah, which is above Elokim. It is something more inward. This is called the Life of life. The world as a whole relates to the level of life, generally speaking the light of memalei kol almin. The life of the soul, by contrast, is the sovev within the memalei—the name Havayah above Elokim—and this is called the Life of life. That is why the Alter Rebbe emphasizes this wording and says that a Jew should have a craving, a longing, a desire and a love for the light of Ein Sof, the Life of life. Not merely life, which relates to the world as a whole. Because he is a Jew, what he seeks is the level of the Life of life, the level of the name Havayah that is above heaven and earth.

16:19 What remains for us to explain here, it would seem, is why the Alter Rebbe says that this love has both qualities—both ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. Look at how he begins: “And this love comprises two aspects: ahavas olam and ahavah rabbah.” Where do we find both ahavas olam and ahavah rabbah in this love? Why do we say it includes both? The explanation would seem simple. What are the two elements here? On the one hand, we say this love is ahavah rabbah. What did we say was the definition of ahavah rabbah? It is a love that comes from Above. That is present here, because this love is an inheritance from our forefathers. As you see, the Alter Rebbe began by saying that this love of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—because He is our life, because He is our very soul—is something we received as an inheritance from our forefathers. Since we received it as an inheritance from our forefathers, it is a form of ahavah rabbah. One of the differences between ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam is that ahavas olam comes through a person’s own efforts, through the realm of the world, whereas ahavah rabbah comes as a gift. Every Jew has this love in the nature of his soul, as a gift from our forefathers. For the forefathers, it was self-evident that life means G-dliness. That was a simple, settled truth for our forefathers, and they bequeathed it as a gift to every Jew. Every Jew feels in his soul what life means: life means G-dliness, and without G-dliness it is not life. On the other hand, because this love is an intellectual love—because, in essence, it is a love based on reason and understanding, something a person can contemplate and understand intellectually.

18:07 A person contemplates the world and sees how physicality drags him down, while true reality, real life, is spiritual. Life is G-dliness. A person arrives at this recognition of “My soul desires You” through a rational understanding of these things. And so the Alter Rebbe says that this love has two advantages because we inherited it from our forefathers. It is like ahavah rabbah, a great love: it is a gift from Above, without limit. On the other hand, a person also arrives at this recognition through a basic fact of life: a person loves to live. That is simple to understand. He only needs to understand that true life is G-dliness. So this is also considered ahavas olam, a love that comes through the bounds of the intellect. It therefore has both advantages, those of ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. The point the Alter Rebbe explains here is the love expressed in “My soul desires You at night,” and that is the whole foundation. The Alter Rebbe writes [unclear] that “night” also refers to the time of exile. Night—the time of exile. During exile in particular, this feeling is awakened by the distance, because, as we said, it is precisely distance that awakens it. When there is a time of weakness, that is when the love is aroused. So “night” means the time of exile: it is precisely during exile that a Jew’s desire for G-dliness awakens, the feeling that G-dliness is true life. And within exile itself, he explains, “night” in a spiritual sense refers to the animal soul. That is the night within a person. The G-dly soul belongs to the category of day; the animal soul is called night. So that is the meaning of “My soul desires You at night.” The Alter Rebbe says plainly that the animal soul, too, can understand this love

20:00 . It is a love that even the animal soul can receive. That is another advantage of this love. There are levels of love that only the G-dly soul can understand. You can speak to the G-dly soul about lofty matters that the animal soul cannot grasp. But the love of “My soul desires You at night” is a love that even the night within the soul, even its darkness, even the animal soul, can come to understand: G-dliness is true life. And that gives rise to a desire for G-dliness. There are two things that illustrate this: one is a story and one is a parable. The story is the well-known story the Rebbe tells in the sicha “On the Essence of Chassidus.” Everyone knows the account of Reb Yekusiel Liepler, and the Rebbe told it with the full explanation. Reb Yekusiel Liepler was with the Alter Rebbe, and the Alter Rebbe wanted to bless him to be a wealthy man. Reb Yekusiel Liepler said he did not want wealth, because it would distract him from Torah study and avodah. So the Alter Rebbe wanted to bless him with long life. Reb Yekusiel Liepler said, “Long life—but not peasant years.” He did not want the life of a peasant: “They have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear.” They do not see G-dliness or hear G-dliness. So the Rebbe asked: At first glance, the Rebbe wants to give you a blessing. A blessing is a gift. How can you set conditions? “I want it this way; I don’t want it that way.” He is making all sorts of conditions. What does that mean? The Rebbe gives you a blessing—say amen! What do you mean, “I don’t want it”? How can you be so brazen? The Rebbe explains in the sicha that this is not what happened. The point is that, for Reb

21:47 Yekusiel Liepler, it was simply obvious that such a life was not life. What does it mean to live? To live means being able to study Chassidus, to see G-dliness and hear G-dliness. To live without Chassidus, without G-dliness—that is not life. Suppose you think that a person who does not study or daven is nevertheless alive: he eats and sleeps and enjoys himself, so he is living too. A religious person, a chossid, may have more life, but that is an enhancement. If you see it that way, then he can live without it, and when the Rebbe gives you life, you should not set conditions. But Reb Yekusiel Liepler understood something else, and that is what he wanted to explain to the Rebbe: “For me, life means real life—a life in which I can study Chassidus and understand Chassidus. A life of G-dliness. Life without G-dliness does not fall into the category of life at all. It is not called life.” And that is the recognition of “My soul desires You at night”: what is the definition of life? Life means a life of G-dliness. That is the story. The parable is brought by the Mitteler Rebbe in Derech Chaim. He brings a very fundamental parable that helps us understand the point the Alter Rebbe is explaining here. Many people ask, “I don’t feel that my life is G-dliness. I feel that I’m alive, but I don’t feel that this is G-dliness.” So there is a story that the Mitteler Rebbe brings in a maamar in Derech Chaim. He even gives the parable’s source, Reb Nachman of Kosov. Once there was a family whom the king put in prison. The prison was a pit underground, and they spent

23:39 their whole lives in that pit. Later another family committed an offense, and they too were put into the pit. So there were two families living there, without seeing the light. They stayed there, married among themselves and had children. Many years passed. Every day, food was lowered to them from above through an opening. They knew only one thing: they lived there in the pit, and food came in through the opening. The first generation still knew it was a punishment. But the second generation, born inside the pit, no longer thought it was a punishment. They thought that was life. They did not know there was a world outside. They thought the whole world consisted of those two families in that pit, with food falling through the opening. They knew nothing else. Generation after generation lived that way, until one day a prince came. He saw how they lived without knowing what was going on, and he began explaining to them that there was a vast world, with a sun, trees, people and all sorts of other things. They thought he was crazy. They started laughing at him, looking at him as a fool and saying all sorts of things about him. They thought he had lost his mind. But he understood how unfortunate they were: they did not know, and they were living under a misconception. He took out his violin and began to play, happy that at least he knew the truth. The Mitteler Rebbe uses this as a parable: the soul is the prince. The soul knows the truth. It knows that this world is a pit, not the whole of reality. But when a person spends time in this world, he gets used to it, like an animal, like the nations around him, and begins to think that this pit is the world, that it is all there is, that physicality is reality and there is nothing beyond it. But that is because

25:18 he is living under a misconception. So the soul, the G-dly soul, comes and tries to explain the truth to us: this is not true reality. True reality is G-dliness, and that is true life. This is also a thought the Rebbe shared in the name of his father, Rabbi Levi. Rabbi Levi had an insight about the words we say in prayer, “For life and not for death.” What does “for life and not for death” mean? He explained it this way: The Alter Rebbe writes in Shulchan Aruch that on Rosh Hashanah, when we say “Remember us for life,” we must pronounce the word l’chaim, with a sheva, rather than la’chaim. Why not say la’chaim? Because it could sound, G-d forbid, as though you were saying “not for life.” So we take care to say l’chaim precisely. Rabbi Levi asked: If so, why do we say “for life and not for death” here? The meaning, he explained, is “for life—and not merely not dying.” It is not enough that you are not dead. Some people’s entire definition of life is that they are not dead. What does it mean that he is alive? He is not dead: he walks around, eats and sits. You cannot say he is dead, but he is not really living either. The point of the blessing is that we should have life, not merely an absence of death—not only that we should not be dead, but that we should truly experience revelation. And that is the point the Alter Rebbe makes here about “My soul”: through this recognition of G-dliness as one’s life, a person comes to have desire, longing and life specifically in G-dliness.