Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 44 - Part 6

00:01 Speaker 1 Until now, the Alter Rebbe has explained two levels of love that belong to everyone, that we have inherited from our forefathers. They have both the quality of ahavah rabbah, a great love, and the quality of ahavas olam. What are these two levels of love? One is love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the sense of “My soul, I desire You at night”: a person reflects on and feels that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is his true life. His true life—“my soul.” And because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is “my soul,” therefore “I desire You”: I long for and yearn for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is especially awakened at night, as we discussed. Then there is another kind of love. The second love is the love of “For You are our Father.” A person also reflects on the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our true Father—“Do we not all have one Father?” So naturally, love follows: a father and mother contribute to the body, while one’s spiritual life comes from Him, may He be blessed. The whole point the Alter Rebbe writes about here is the bond between a son and his father. The Alter Rebbe said that, seemingly, when we come to the second love, it says that this is the level of Moshe Rabbeinu. It is a greater love than the first. This love is Moshe’s level. So the Alter Rebbe explained that this, too, shines within us through Moshe Rabbeinu, through the extension of Moshe in every generation. Moshe Rabbeinu instills in us, in every Jew, the feeling of “For You are our Father.” But what is needed? We have to awaken it through reflection. So the Alter Rebbe teaches something new: awakening it, too, is “not beyond you,” because “the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart.” A person can awaken this love. In other words, there are two things here: we have the love itself. We received it through Moshe Rabbeinu. And bringing it out is also easy for us, because a person

02:06 Speaker 1 can reflect on it and speak about it. “And he should hasten its revelation with words spoken aloud,” as we discussed: speaking about it and awakening it aloud arouses within him the love of “For You are our Father.” Because a father is a G-dly matter. In the fifth line, the Alter Rebbe continues and says: “And when he accustoms himself to this constantly, habit becomes nature.” The Alter Rebbe goes on to say that if a person constantly accustoms himself to thinking and speaking about this—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father, our father, and we are His children, “We are Your children and You are our Father”—then by reflecting on it and speaking about it, habit becomes nature for him. Becoming accustomed to it becomes his nature. Habit becomes nature. The Alter Rebbe writes this several times in Tanya. “Habit becomes nature.” We find it several times in Tanya: once here, and once earlier, in chapter... Who knows which chapter says “habit becomes nature”? Hmm?

03:28 Speaker 2 Here.

03:28 Speaker 1 Wait. Almost, [unclear]. Fourteen, very good. Yes, chapter 14. Yes, the Alter Rebbe writes it in chapter 14. The difference is that in chapter 14—I think the difference is in chapter 14. Maybe so. The difference is that in chapter 14—what a mix-up—the Alter Rebbe’s wording is: “For habit has power over everything and becomes second nature.” This is a serious point in Tanya, too: in chapter 14, the Alter Rebbe uses the words “habit becomes second nature,” while here the Alter Rebbe writes “habit becomes nature.” It doesn’t say “second nature.” That is certainly precise. But first, as to the general idea that habit becomes nature: this is advice the Alter Rebbe gives, very fundamental advice in serving Hashem. Incidentally, today this has become something widely recognized. Even in psychology, all the doctors or experts talk about it. Today it has become a fundamental idea in medicine, a whole field of knowledge that has emerged in recent years. But chassidim already knew it centuries ago through Tanya. The idea of habit becoming nature is that a person accustoms himself to something. A person has a certain tendency, some bad tendency, and by repeatedly accustoming himself to the opposite, habit becomes nature. Through repetition, a person can change his nature. Repetition means doing something many, many times, accustoming himself to thinking in a certain way. Let’s give an example from everyday life. All the experts talk about this today. Say a person is depressed, feels gloomy, has negative thoughts, all kinds of things like that. One of the suggestions people give today is precisely this: habit. A person can change

05:51 Speaker 1 his thoughts. He accustoms himself to replacing a thought, even if right now he feels he doesn’t believe what he is thinking. But the very repetition—persistently thinking and saying positive things, again and again—will turn it into his nature. Gradually, that tendency will develop in him. He will begin to think positively. You can try it and see. There is a story about the Tzemach Tzedek. The Tzemach Tzedek once spoke to a chossid who asked him how he could get out of his gloom and lethargy and be joyful. It appears in the Tzemach Tzedek’s letters. It is a well-known story. One of the chassidim asked the Tzemach Tzedek how it was possible to be joyful. So the Tzemach Tzedek told him: “Force yourself to be joyful, speak words of joy, and you will be joyful.” Think joyful thoughts and speak joyful words, and then you will be joyful. What does that mean? It means that even though he doesn’t feel joy right now, getting into the habit of thinking joyful thoughts and speaking joyful words will itself change his nature. Habit becomes nature. That is a general principle in serving Hashem. Along these lines, the Alter Rebbe says here, too, that when a person accustoms himself to thinking about “For You are our Father” and speaking about it, this itself will awaken within him a natural feeling that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father. But why did the Alter Rebbe earlier use the words “second nature,” while here he simply says “nature”? That has to do with the subject under discussion. In chapter 14, the Alter Rebbe spoke about being a tzaddik. How can a person reach the level of a tzaddik? On the one hand, the Alter Rebbe says that the level of a tzaddik is not a level that belongs to

07:43 Speaker 1 everyone. A person may have been created in this world only to be a beinoni. That is how people were created, and this is the daily work of the beinoni. Being a tzaddik is something one receives as a gift. A person might work his entire life and not become a tzaddik. It is received as a gift. The Alter Rebbe says in chapter 14 that although the mitzvah, the command, is only to be a beinoni, a person should nevertheless strive to fulfill the oath “Be a tzaddik” and try to reach the level of a tzaddik. How? By repeatedly reflecting on the kelipos, the sitra achra, and how repulsive it all is. He should reflect on how all those desires end up as, uh, foul-smelling waste. And the Sages say about this that everything becomes—you know?—worthless, and so on and so forth. Through all this reflection, he will come to recognize that worldly desires are repulsive. Conversely, he should reflect on G-dliness, and in this way accustom himself to rejoicing in Hashem. Yes, and the Alter Rebbe says that “even if he does not attain this level in genuine truth, but only in his imagination, he should nevertheless do his part to fulfill the oath. Furthermore, habit has power over everything and becomes second nature.” Right? That is where the Alter Rebbe brings up the idea that habit becomes second nature. If he accustoms himself to finding evil repulsive, then that feeling will take hold to some extent in truth. If he accustoms himself to rejoicing in Hashem, then he will truly be joyful. So that is the difference. In other words, the difference between what was discussed in chapter 14 and what the Alter Rebbe discusses here in chapter 44 is that in chapter 14, the Alter Rebbe is talking about something that does not necessarily belong to me inherently—something that, at its core, may not be mine. I am a beinoni, not a tzaddik. It may be that Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t want me to be a tzaddik at all. I have no...

09:37 Speaker 1 A tzaddik. After all, that does not depend on one’s service of Hashem. So even if I train myself to loathe evil and to be happy and take delight in G-dliness, and it becomes natural to me, it will be like a second nature. “Second nature” means that it really is another nature, an additional nature. In other words, my first nature, my original nature, is that I do not loathe evil. Even now, in my essential being, I do not loathe evil, and delight in G-dliness is not my nature. That is my state, because I am on the level of a beinoni, not a tzaddik. But through repeatedly thinking that evil is loathsome, it becomes like something added on. It does become natural, but it feels like a second nature, a nature added to the original one. It is as though the thing is not inherently out of the question for me; the thing itself is not inherently loathsome. Right? It could have been otherwise, and in essence it was not loathsome to me. I trained myself to think that way, and kept thinking that way until it became part of me. So one senses that, in essence, one was not like this, and this is something additional. That is why it is called second nature. Here in chapter 44, by contrast, the Alter Rebbe is speaking about habituating oneself to the love of “like a son who strives.” For the Alter Rebbe says that this is a habit whose basis we already possess in our essential being. Habituating ourselves to “like a son who strives” is not something secondary. We already have it inherently—both because the love itself is an inheritance from our forefathers, and because of the habit of our forefathers, which we received from Moshe Rabbeinu. So, in essence, this love of “like a son who strives” is natural to a Jew. It is part of his essential nature. What, then, is the issue? It is concealed—deeply concealed, as the Alter Rebbe wrote earlier. So through

11:20 Speaker 1 training myself to contemplate the idea of “like a son who strives” and to think about it, I bring it about that this will become not a second nature, but simply my nature. In other words, we do not need to create something new, something additional. This is not the level of a tzaddik, which would be something additional. Rather, this is something natural, something essential that I already have, only it is concealed. By getting into the habit of thinking about it, that nature, which was concealed within me, comes out of concealment into revelation. That is why it is not considered a second nature; it is considered simply nature. So you see how every word in Tanya is precise, and how we need to pay attention to every detail to understand it. In any case, this is what the Alter Rebbe writes here: we can reach this love of “like a son who strives,” and by habituating ourselves to it, it becomes natural. The Alter Rebbe continues: “And even if it seems to him, at first glance, that it is a product of imagination.” The Alter Rebbe does not stop there; he continues. After all this, a person might say that it seems to him that it is just imagination. He does not truly feel this idea of “like a son who strives.” It “seems to him, at first glance,” in the Alter Rebbe’s words. That is, in his avodah, it seems to the person that he does not truly feel this love. It is “brainwashing,” to use today’s blunt expression. It is not something essential. He has sort of put it into his own head, but in essence it is not so. His inner experience, his feeling, is that this is imagination: “I don’t really feel it. It hasn’t truly sunk in for me that Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves me. I am just imagining it.” The Alter Rebbe says: “And even if it seems to him”

13:09 Speaker 1 “at first glance that it is only imaginary, he need not be concerned.” The Alter Rebbe says we need not be afraid of this. What does that mean? What fear is he addressing here? The point is this: We know that one of the foundations of the Alter Rebbe’s teaching in Tanya is his demand for truthful avodah. We all know that this was the Alter Rebbe’s innovation in the service of Hashem through Chassidus, in comparison with his fellow students of the Maggid—or at least many of them. In general Chassidus, they were not so particular that a person’s avodah be inward and genuine. The Alter Rebbe, however, was very, very particular that it be truthful avodah. Avodah of truth. It is well known that in the approach of general Chassidus, avodah could involve a great deal of imagination, a great deal that remained external to the person, and many things that were not really so. Why? Because of the principle of “a tzaddik lives by his faith.” The well-known dispute between the Alter Rebbe and his fellow students of the Maggid, including the Karliner, was that they argued that avodah should consist of connecting to the tzaddik, and the tzaddik would then influence you. In other words, the person did not have to have genuinely reached the level of what he was doing. The tzaddik could raise him to levels higher than those he truly belonged to. Chabad Chassidus, by contrast, was different. The Alter Rebbe wanted avodah to be genuine, inward avodah. As is known from the letter the Alter Rebbe wrote, “Katonti.” The Rebbe cites Hayom Yom: after his release from imprisonment on 19 Kislev, the Alter Rebbe delivered the maamar “Katonti.” In that letter he writes about the attribute of “truth to Yaakov,” that one must conduct oneself with the attribute of truth to Yaakov. Hayom Yom relates that the Rebbe said—or the Alter Rebbe said; I do not

15:08 Speaker 1 remember exactly who said it—that if the Alter Rebbe had not written about “truth to Yaakov,” he would have had tens of thousands more students and chassidim, another fifty thousand chassidim. I don’t know; the text is here on the table. It was precisely because Chabad Chassidus demands truth that it had fewer chassidim. But the Alter Rebbe devoted himself with mesirus nefesh to truth and demanded genuine avodah from chassidim. So this is one of the foundations of the Alter Rebbe’s approach: avodah must be genuine and inward, not a matter of empty imaginings. There is also a story told about Rabbi Chaim Chaikel of Amdur, one of the Maggid’s students. His name was Rabbi Chaim Chaikel of Amdur, and he was a very great tzaddik. There was once a chossid who was close to Rabbi Chaim Chaikel of Amdur and was very devoted to serving Hashem. Later, for some reason, this chossid left Rabbi Chaim Chaikel of Amdur and became a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. Once he came to complain to the Alter Rebbe that since becoming his chossid, he had no vitality in his avodah of davening. “When I was with Rabbi Chaim Chaikel of Amdur, my davening flowed with vitality, fire and enthusiasm.” He was a chossid who had already reached a level at which he davened with great enthusiasm, with great fire and intensity. Now that he had become a chossid of the Alter Rebbe, he thought he had risen to the level of Chabad and all that, but suddenly he felt himself growing cold. His davening was not going well. So the Alter Rebbe became deeply troubled. The Alter Rebbe thought for a few minutes, as was his practice before saying something. Then the Alter Rebbe answered him in a singsong tone. The Alter Rebbe said to him: “When you were with Chaim”

16:43 Speaker 1 Chaim Chaikel of Amdur—so it wasn’t you who davened. It was Chaim Chaikel of Amdur who davened through you. It wasn’t you who learned; it was Chaim Chaikel of Amdur who learned through you. In other words, it wasn’t your own avodah. It was Chaim Chaikel of Amdur’s avodah acting upon you. Chaim Chaikel of Amdur was a holy man, and because of your connection to him, his holiness affected your davening. So you weren’t the one davening. It was Chaim Chaikel of Amdur davening through you. But it wasn’t your own avodah. Chabad Chassidus demands that a person work on himself, that the avodah be his own. This is one of the approaches of Chassidus. In Chassidus, they were very particular that the avodah be genuine—genuinely true—and not a matter of fantasies and false imaginings. As the Alter Rebbe also emphasizes in chapter 3 of Tanya. The Alter Rebbe writes there at length that there must be daas. And he explains what daas is: attachment and connection, a firm and strong bond, without letting one’s mind wander from it. The Alter Rebbe writes that if a person lacks daas, then even if love and awe awaken within him, they will not be genuine love and awe. They will be false imaginings. Therefore, daas is what sustains the emotions and gives them life. In other words, without daas, even if you have chochmah and binah but lack that genuine connection, a strong and true connection, it is called false imaginings. Love and awe awaken, but they are not genuine love and awe. It’s imagination. He’s imagining it. And this is one of the approaches of Chassidus: they could not tolerate imaginings. They wanted a person, whatever he does and wherever he is in his avodah, wherever he actually stands, to be fully there—not in some false imagining.

18:29 Speaker 3 Everything that’s here.

18:31 Speaker 1 Hm? In any case. In any case, what is the avodah in Tanya? This is what the Alter Rebbe asks. The feeling of “For You are our Father”—in simple terms, this is how it sounds. It sounds as though it doesn’t fit with Chabad Chassidus. Say it three times, three hundred times: “Father, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my Father, Father.” Then you’ll feel that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is your Father. But the truth is, I don’t feel that. So seemingly, it’s imaginary. That is what the Alter Rebbe is discussing here. A person might say to himself: Moshe Rabbeinu felt “For You are our Father” in his mind. He truly felt that way; for him it was genuinely true. But I don’t actually feel that way. Rather, by saying it, speaking about it, and thinking about it, I come to feel it—but as something imagined, not as genuine truth. To truly feel that I am a son and Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my Father—that would seem to be a level belonging to tzaddikim, to people on the level of Moshe Rabbeinu. So seemingly, it’s imagination. How does that fit with Tanya? How does it fit with Chabad Chassidus? Yes. That is the Alter Rebbe’s question here, what he is examining. So the Alter Rebbe explains: “Although it may seem to him, at first glance, to be an imaginary power,” nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe says, “he need not be concerned.” Why not? Because, the Alter Rebbe says, “in truth, it is genuinely true in itself.” At its core, this is something real, coming from the hidden love. Yes. The truth is, as we said earlier, it comes from the hidden love. The love expressed by “For You are our Father” is something real in a Jew’s soul. It isn’t, as we said earlier, something that belongs only to tzaddikim and isn’t relevant to everyone. The feeling of “For You are our Father,” “You are children to Hashem your G-d,” is found

20:17 Speaker 1 in the soul of every Jew, and therefore it is genuinely true in itself. It is within me by virtue of the very essence of a Jew. He has this within him, so it isn’t imaginary. What, then, might seem imaginary? Its revelation. Regarding its revelation, the Alter Rebbe explains: “The sole benefit of bringing it out into revelation is to bring it into action—that is, his engagement in the Torah he studies and the mitzvah he fulfills through it—in order to give Him pleasure, blessed be He, like a son who serves his father.” The main point here is to bring it down into practice. Yes, the goal of all this is not the feeling of “For You are our Father” as a feeling in itself, because you see that this is about a beinoni. What matters most is that it lead to action. So if, within your soul, you really do have the feeling of “For You are our Father,” because every Jew has it, then fine. And in practice, it affects what you actually do: you perform the mitzvah you are performing, you learn Torah, and you actually serve Hashem like a son serving his father. So even if you don’t feel the love of a son for his father so openly in your heart, as Moshe Rabbeinu felt it, that is not a problem, because you have it in the essence of your soul. And it is coming out from concealment into revelation: in practice, it affects your thought, speech, and action. For the beinoni, that is enough. Even if it isn’t felt so openly in his heart, that too is enough. We need to explain this at greater length. With Hashem’s help, we’ll explain it in the next class. We only have two minutes left. I’ll tell a story, since the audience is tired of hearing all these deep ideas. Today you’ve had

21:55 Speaker 1 many nights of farbrengens and so on. On the other hand, we are also in Kislev, and this is connected with the Mitteler Rebbe’s day. The whole month of Kislev is a good time to awaken to all kinds of good things, to reflect and to consider the ways of Chassidus. So I’ll tell a story connected with what the Alter Rebbe is discussing here about “For You are our Father.” There’s a story about Reb Chunya Morozov. Maybe I’ve told it in these classes. I don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. You can tell a story twice, too. There was a chossid named Reb Chunya Morozov. He was the secretary of the Rebbe Rashab and of the Frierdiker Rebbe. He was one of the great chassidim. He was the Rebbe’s study partner, a great chossid, and it is known that the Rebbe Rashab said of him that he was a man of inner depth. Reb Chunya Morozov was an inwardly focused person. They called him “Adam,” because those letters were the initials of his name, Nachum David Morozov. The Rebbe Rashab said of him that he was an inwardly focused man. In any case, there are many stories about his mesiras nefesh, his dedication, and so on. Chassidim relate that after the passing of the Rebbe Rashab, even though he was older than the Frierdiker Rebbe and so on, he nevertheless became attached to the Frierdiker Rebbe. But they would say that his connection to the Frierdiker Rebbe did not have quite the same emphasis as his connection to the Rebbe Rashab, although he was completely connected to him. And there are many stories. But briefly, there is one story they tell: In 5683, the Frierdiker Rebbe delivered a very powerful maamar about avodah. I think it was Likkutei Moharan or Tzeis Haaretz; I don’t remember. In 5683—well, sorry. There was a maamar in the series of maamarim from 5683 in which the Frierdiker

23:44 Speaker 1 Rebbe spoke about “For You are our Father.” He spoke about the love expressed by “For You are our Father,” explaining at length that a chossid, a Jew, has this feeling of “For You are our Father.” Reb Chunya would write down the maamarim, so he was writing this maamar down, and in the middle of writing it, he fainted. It affected him so deeply that he fainted. He couldn’t finish the maamar. Later they asked him why he had fainted in the middle of writing it, and he said that when he began writing about “For You are our Father,” he began thinking about the Rebbe, and it caused him to faint. That point of “For You are our Father” affected him so deeply that he fainted. And you can see it afterward. I myself saw it at the home of Rabbi Shlomo Morozov, his grandson, who had inherited that book. He had the manuscript at home. I think he later gave it to the Rebbe’s library, but I once saw it at a farbrengen. He took it out and showed it to the bochurim, and you could actually see that in the middle of the maamar, the handwriting changes. The account says that he wrote up to that point, and then, because he couldn’t finish the maamar, Dovdele, Reb Chunya’s son, finished writing it. He simply couldn’t go on writing. What affected him so much? The maamar spoke about “For You are our Father,” and he felt it so deeply that it caused him to faint. So the chassidim said: This is the chossid who supposedly wasn’t connected! They used to say he wasn’t connected—and the “unconnected” one fainted from “For You are our Father.” The ones with a greater connection, no, of course not. Yes.