Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 44 - Part 12

00:01 Speaker 1 The rabbi just explained, at the end, what we learned in the previous class. The Alter Rebbe explains here what is special about the love discussed in this chapter. In the last few chapters—41, 42, and 43—the Alter Rebbe spoke about several levels and kinds of love and fear. Yet here, in chapter 44, he explains that the love we are discussing is, on the one hand, a love that is equally accessible to every soul. It is a kind of love that anyone can develop and awaken within themselves. Why? Because we inherited it from Avraham Avinu. On the other hand, this love has a special quality. As the rabbi said at the beginning of the chapter, it includes all the virtues: it has both the virtue of a higher love and the virtue of ahavah rabbah, a great love. Now, at the end of what we learned in the previous class, the Alter Rebbe explained what distinguishes this love from the love every Jew inherits, which we learned about in chapter 19. There, too, we learned that every Jew has a love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu inherited from Avraham Avinu. It is the love described by “The soul of man is the lamp of Hashem”: just as a flame naturally wants to rise and become absorbed in its source, fire, even though it would then cease to exist, so a Jew naturally wants to become absorbed in G-dliness, to the point of mesirus nefesh. We inherited that from Avraham Avinu. And here in chapter 44, too, we are speaking about love inherited from Avraham Avinu. We also inherited the love of “My soul, I desire You” and the love of a child for his father. So these kinds of love all come to us as an inheritance. Nevertheless, the love discussed here has a special virtue. What is it? Since this love

02:09 Speaker 1 requires contemplation to awaken it and bring it into the feeling of the heart—the feeling of “My soul, I desire You,” and, through that, the feeling of a child toward his father—it requires contemplation and daas, the engagement of one’s thoughts and mind. So it has the virtue of intellect, the virtue of contemplation. What is the virtue of contemplation? It belongs to the world of Beriah. This is the advantage of intellectual love and fear over natural love and fear. The love a Jew has because he is a descendant of Avraham Avinu, a love that extends to mesirus nefesh—all of that is inherited from our forefather. That love reaches only the world of Yetzirah, because it is a natural love. It is a matter of middos, which belong to the world of Yetzirah, the world of middos. So it is like a living creature, as we discussed in the previous class. This love, by contrast, comes from contemplating an idea with binah, and binah belongs to the world of Beriah—just as the speaking human being is above the animal. So this is a different kind of love, much higher than the love we inherited, which we discussed in the earlier chapters. We spoke about this in the previous class. Before we continue, there is just one more point the Rebbe brings from one of the maamarim. The Rebbe brings it in this booklet; I don’t remember which 12 Tammuz maamar it is. Anyway, the Rebbe brings it in the booklet. There is a story about one of the chassidim, as he writes in the maamar. The exact source of the story isn’t given, but the Rebbe brings it in a 12 Tammuz maamar. What does he say? There was a chossid who said: Before he began learning Chassidus, what changed for me? Oh. As I said, the source for this story isn’t written here. Interesting. Yes. He writes here: “As is well known, the saying of the one whose Geulah and joy we celebrate, concerning a distinguished chossid: As long as he had not heard this teaching from the Rebbe”—what teaching? The teaching about

04:19 Speaker 1 the formation of middos. Middos must develop through intellect, through contemplation. So he said that until he heard this from the Rebbe, his middos were like those of an animal standing in a stable. The animal does not run wild—and it is true that it is standing in the stable—but it is still an animal, without intellect. Afterward, he realized that it was an animal, and nothing more. [unclear] this comes about through the mind. What is the Rebbe writing here? The Rebbe is making an extraordinary point. He is talking about a distinguished chossid, meaning a chossid who had attained high levels. He thought he had reached perfection in his middos, the very height of their development. He had good middos—both in his relationships with others, Ahavas Yisroel, kindness, all those good things, and in deeper matters, love and fear of Hashem. He had these middos; he thought they were fully developed. He thought he had reached the highest level in Chassidus. He had attained an understanding, but then came the matter of contemplation and intellect. And he realized that all the middos he had had until then were like an animal standing in a stable. What does that mean? You take an animal and put it in a stable. A stable is a stall—stable, how do we say it? You put the animal inside, and it cannot do foolish things. It has to behave within the confines of the stable. It cannot push its way around and do all sorts of things. The stable restricts it, so it cannot go wherever it wants. It cannot be what the Rebbe calls a wandering animal—an animal with no yoke, no owner, left to roam free.

06:20 Speaker 1 It has a stable, and the stable confines it. But it remains an animal; that does not make it a human being. Putting it within the confines of a stable leaves it an animal; it does not make it a human being. Similarly, a person may have love and fear, but if they are merely natural love and fear, the same applies to his middos in his relationships with others. He has Ahavas Yisroel and naturally good middos because he is naturally a good person, but they have not yet made him fully human. He is still considered like an animal. As we just said, middos belong to the level of the living creature, because they lack the virtue of intellect. When are middos elevated? When they are shaped by avodah, by contemplation. That is what the Rebbe explained here. Since the love of “My soul, I desire You,” and likewise the love of a child for his father, require us to contemplate them intellectually—to understand what this relationship to our Father means, how He is our Father, how He is our life, and so on—these middos are elevated to the level of intellect. They then rise to the world of Beriah, an entirely different level, with the virtue of intellect and spirituality. Now let us continue. The Alter Rebbe explains another point, an additional virtue of the loves discussed here in chapter 44: the love of “My soul, I desire You,” and that of “a child who strives after his father and mother.” More than that, “these forms of love include the level of ahavah rabbah and are greater and loftier than intellectual love and fear.” These particular loves have another virtue: they are even higher than intellectual love and fear. But look—there is more. Until now,

08:23 Speaker 1 we discussed the virtue of intellect, which elevates the middos to the world of Beriah. Now the Alter Rebbe goes further. There is another virtue to the love of “My soul, I desire You” and that of a child who strives after his father: it is higher even than intellectual love and fear. Why? The Alter Rebbe explains that intellectual love, love that comes from intellect, was called ahavas olam, “worldly love,” above. In chapter 43, the Alter Rebbe explained that love based on intellect, love that comes from contemplation, is called ahavas olam. The love we are discussing here, by contrast, is ahavah rabbah, which is incomparably higher than ahavas olam. What is the Alter Rebbe explaining here? He is building on what he explained in chapter 43. There, the Alter Rebbe described the difference between ahavas olam and ahavah rabbah. Ahavas olam is a love that comes from contemplating the world. A person contemplates G-dliness as it is clothed within the world; that is ahavas olam, a love that comes through the person’s own intellect and avodah. Ahavah rabbah is a love that comes from above. It is a great love beyond the limits of a person’s intellect and existence, and beyond the limits of the world. It comes as a gift from above.

10:01 Speaker 1 That is why the Alter Rebbe said in chapter 43 that ahavah rabbah, a great love, belongs to the world of Atzilus. Ahavas olam, the love that comes from intellectual contemplation of the world, can reach, at most, the world of Beriah—the world of intellect. [unclear] But ahavah rabbah is a great love received as a gift. Yet that is not [unclear], the Alter Rebbe says here. What is new about the love of “My soul longs for You,” the love of a son who strives after his father, is that this love comes to him from Above. As we said earlier, this is a love we inherit; it is something we receive from Above. Since it comes from Above, a person could never reach it entirely on his own. It requires a special gift from Above, from the level of Atzilus. So it also has the quality of the world of Atzilus. That is what the Alter Rebbe adds here at the end. Earlier, the Alter Rebbe explained the quality of “My soul longs for You”: the quality of intellect and contemplation, associated with the world of Beriah. Now the Alter Rebbe says even more: this love has another quality, too—it comes as a gift from Above. Therefore, it also has the quality of the world of Atzilus. And, of course, the world of Atzilus is incomparably higher than the world of Beriah. In other words, the Alter Rebbe is explaining that there are three levels here: the world of Yetzirah, the world of Beriah, and the world of Atzilus. The world of Yetzirah is the realm of the emotions, the place of natural love and fear. That is the world of Yetzirah, and it is associated with living creatures and animals. It is a matter of

11:51 Speaker 1 an animal: natural love and fear alone. That is the lowest level of love. Love and fear are simply there, without any explanation, arising solely from an emotional stirring. That is natural love and fear, the lowest level. Then there is intellect. A person arouses the love from deep within his heart through contemplation, knowledge, and understanding. When he reflects on being like a son who strives after his father, and all of that, the love rises to the world of Beriah. It also has the quality of the world of Beriah, which is the world of intellect. It becomes intellectual love and fear—love and fear a person brings out through his own efforts. The reason for that is the intellect, so it rises to the world of Beriah. Now the Alter Rebbe adds something further: this love also has a quality of Atzilus, because “My soul longs for You” requires a gift from Above, and so does the love of a son who strives after his father. It requires a gift from Above. What does “a gift from Above” mean? This love comes from the world of Atzilus. The reason a Jew feels that he is a child of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is that He is our Father. What does “our Father” refer to? The world of Atzilus. Yes, this is the matter of the wisdom of Atzilus, as it says in Tanya, chapter 2: “You are children of Hashem your G-d.” Just as a child is drawn from his father’s mind, so, as it were, the souls of the Jewish people are drawn from the thought and wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—the wisdom of Atzilus. So the feeling of being like a son who strives after his father is drawn into every Jew from the wisdom of Atzilus. Likewise, the feeling of “My soul” is also drawn from the world of Atzilus. Or perhaps not from the wisdom of Atzilus—perhaps from the malchus of Atzilus—but that is where a Jew’s feeling comes from: the sense that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is our Father, and the sense that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is my soul. So this love also has the quality of

13:32 Speaker 1 the love of the world of Atzilus. Up to this point, the Alter Rebbe has explained all the details. The Alter Rebbe has explained the two forms of love he wanted to discuss in chapter 44: the love of “My soul longs for You” and the love of a son for his father, along with all the qualities these loves have. What is the point the Alter Rebbe wants to teach us through all this? It is the central point of the entire Tanya. That is what the Alter Rebbe comes to explain in Tanya; he wants to explain this point in order to establish its foundation. After all, we have been learning about this same subject for so long. We have already spent more than two months learning about these forms of love—“My soul longs for You” and the love of a son for his father. I am sure that by now the bachurim have thoroughly absorbed and been deeply permeated by “My soul longs for You” and the love of a son for his father, after spending so much time learning about them. But what really is the point? Why does the Alter Rebbe go on at such length, explaining all the details? It relates to the entire foundation of Tanya. The foundation of Tanya is what it says on the title page: “For this thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” Tanya’s foundation is to explain that every Jew, whoever he may be—even an ordinary person without a lofty soul—is capable of serving Hashem. What does “very close” mean? Not only in thought, speech, and action, but also “in your heart.” What does “in your heart” mean? Love and fear. Yet the Alter Rebbe raised a question in chapter 17: “In your heart” seems to contradict what we see. That was the fundamental question the Alter Rebbe asked in chapter 17 of Tanya. “In your heart” seems to contradict what we see. How can we say that every Jew must serve Hashem “in your heart”? In practice,

15:30 Speaker 1 we see that it is not close. It is not “very close.” It just is not that close. So the Alter Rebbe tries to explain, offering us various approaches and explanations of how it is very close. The Alter Rebbe began in the earlier chapters and discussed several ways of explaining it. Here, in chapter 44, the Alter Rebbe gives us a particular point. This is what the Alter Rebbe wants to give us in chapter 44: a kind of love that is accessible to everyone. There are levels of love that are not accessible to everyone. Certain levels of love, particularly ahavah rabbah and the like, require a very exceptional spiritual level. They belong to tzaddikim; they are a gift from Above, a love of delight. There are all kinds of levels of love that are not accessible to every single person. So in chapter 44, the Alter Rebbe comes and gives us an explanation. The Alter Rebbe is looking for a kind of love that, on the one hand, is accessible to everyone and easy to reach, and, at the same time, has all the qualities found in love on higher levels. That is what is special about this love: on the one hand, it is equally accessible to every person, and we inherit it from our forefathers. At the same time, it has the quality of intellect and the quality of contemplation, as well as the quality of ahavah rabbah and the quality of ahavah zuta, a lesser love. It has those qualities. Chassidim relate—the Rebbe also told this story several times—that some fellows asked the Alter Rebbe why he speaks about lofty levels that are not accessible to everyone. Chassidim do not speak only about what is close to us. Chassidus also discusses higher levels, a love of delight and ahavah rabbah. Yes, Chassidus discusses these things a great deal. Not here in Tanya; in Tanya, the Alter Rebbe tries to explain things that are more accessible to everyone. But even in Tanya, sometimes the Alter Rebbe

17:42 Speaker 1 The Rebbe goes on to speak about lofty levels. But as we see in the maamarim outside Tanya—in Torah Or, Likkutei Torah, and the Rebbe’s maamarim—they speak about exceedingly lofty levels of love and awe, and states of the soul that seem completely beyond us. Even the Alter Rebbe’s chassidim argued that, in their view, the Alter Rebbe was speaking about levels they could never reach. So what was the point of discussing them? The Alter Rebbe answered them. The Rebbe also spoke about this once in a sicha—we’ll get to it shortly. Next week there’s a sicha of the Rebbe on [unclear]. The Rebbe cites this, if I’m not mistaken, in one of his early sichos, from one of the first years. He also cites what the Alter Rebbe said about the verse, “I will remove the heart of stone.” When Moshiach comes, he will remove our heart of stone. Why doesn’t it also say “brain of stone”? What about the brain of stone? The Alter Rebbe said that this shows that each person must remove the brain of stone on their own. We have to remove the brain of stone ourselves; Moshiach will remove the heart of stone. That is why Chassidus speaks about all sorts of levels of love and awe, even though they are beyond us. Through our intellect, through our minds, we can grasp these levels: we can study them, understand them, and discuss them. So even if I cannot bring this down into my heart—the heart is what we say Moshiach will take care of—Moshiach will complete the process and bring it into the heart as well. But each person has to do the work of the mind on their own. That is the point of studying Chassidus: we need to study all sorts of levels and aspects of love and awe, even though many of them are not within everyone’s reach. Of course, we also

19:38 Speaker 1 speak about the love and awe that are within everyone’s reach. That is what the Rebbe is discussing here: a love that everyone can have, loving Hakadosh Boruch Hu because He is our life, and similarly because He is our Father. We’re now in the period leading up to 19 Kislev, so this is the place to mention it. We’ve brought it up in earlier classes too. Over the time we’ve been studying this chapter, we’ve told stories that brought out this point. But now we’re in the month of 19 Kislev. We need to understand that when we speak about the month of 19 Kislev, it isn’t just a technical matter. Of course, action is what matters most. A bochur has to arrive at 19 Kislev with a suitcase, with luggage, with a—what do you call it? With, with a…

20:42 Speaker 2 Trunk.

20:43 Speaker 1 Yes, full of maamarim, understanding, and things he has done and learned during the month of 19 Kislev. But we also need to know that we must awaken something deeper, something more inward. The whole point of 19 Kislev, of Rosh Hashanah for Chassidus, is that an inner bond should awaken in our souls. We need to know that it doesn’t happen on its own. So everything said about drawing close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu—and in Tanya, about attaining the love of a wife—is also understood by the tzaddikim in terms of the love between a chossid and a Rebbe. The Rebbe cites in a sicha a saying from Likkutei Dibburim by Reb Zalman[unclear]. What did Reb Zalman[unclear] say? Come on, even without the classes: Reb Zalman[unclear] said that King Shlomo was not a chossid. What difference did that make? King Shlomo wanted to give an analogy for love of Hashem, so he used the love of a man and a woman. All of Shir Hashirim uses the relationship between a man and a woman as an analogy for love of Hashem. If he had been a chossid, he would have used the relationship between a Rebbe and a chossid. The love between a chossid and a Rebbe is the greatest love, and in one respect it even surpasses the love between a man and a woman. That is what Reb Zalman[unclear] said, as recorded in Likkutei Dibburim. The Rebbe once told this story at a farbrengen in 5717. When the Rebbe told it, it caused an uproar, and all the communities were talking about it. It caused quite a stir. How could one say such a thing—compare King Shlomo with [unclear] on the basis of this interpretation? Someone came in to the Rebbe and told him there was a fire raging: everyone was talking about it. It caused a tremendous uproar throughout Europe. How could one speak that way? The Rebbe began to laugh, and that was the end of it. He did not address it at all. Nevertheless, the Rebbe did not allow this saying to be printed in various places where people wanted to print it; it appears only in Likkutei Dibburim, where there are different stories about it.

22:58 Speaker 1 In any case, it is clear that when we speak about this bond of love, the analogy for it is the love between a chossid and a Rebbe. Now, in chapter 44 we learned about these two kinds of love: the love explained in terms of “our soul,” and the love explained in terms of “our Father.” Both are also present in the bond between a chossid and a Rebbe. In the relationship between a chossid and a Rebbe, there is the Rebbe himself. We’re speaking about a Rebbe. A Rebbe is bound up with “our soul”: the Rebbe is the soul of the chossid. This is the Alter Rebbe’s language in chapter 2 of Tanya. The Alter Rebbe writes about life—how does he put it?—that we receive life through cleaving to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, through our Rebbeim, the Nesi’im. In other words, the entire bond of a chossid with his Rebbe is a way for him to receive his life. It is a matter of the soul. Our source of sustenance, both physical and spiritual, comes through cleaving to the ways of Chassidus. Right there in chapter 2 of Tanya, the Alter Rebbe explains the whole concept of a Rebbe as something directly connected with life. Without a Rebbe, life is not life. We see the same thing in Igeres Hakodesh, chapter 27, where the Alter Rebbe cites the verse, “The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Hashem.” A Rebbe is “the breath of our nostrils”—he is the soul, the life, of a chossid. We saw this among chassidim in many ways. There are stories of chassidim for whom their bond with the Rebbe was quite literally a matter of life. They pleaded for it with mesirus nefesh, and so on. For them, the Rebbe was

24:56 Speaker 1 a matter of life, and without a Rebbe, life was not life. There is a story of a chossid who threw out everything he had in his house, all his money and gold. He said, “If there is a Rebbe, I don’t need anything else, and if there is no Rebbe, nothing is worth anything.” Life itself was not worth anything. That was his feeling: without a Rebbe, life is not life. This is the aspect of “our soul.” The Rebbe explains in Tanya why this is so, in chapter 2. On the other hand, there is also the aspect of “our Father.” Chassidim have this aspect too. It is well known and clear that a Rebbe is a father—our true father. Chassidim were conscious of this; they lived with it, spoke about it, and were moved by it. So who is the true father? As it says, one who teaches another is considered as though he gave birth to him, as the Rebbe cites. There is a source for this idea. It isn’t only a figure of speech: “These are the descendants of Aharon and Moshe”—Nadav and Avihu are counted as Moshe’s descendants. Why? Because he taught them. It is considered as though he gave birth to them. All the more so with a Rebbe and a chossid: this isn’t just an ordinary teacher teaching a student. By teaching Chassidus, the Rebbe does more than teach us a subject. He makes us into who we are and gives birth to us. He gives us new life, with everything that entails. That is why a chossid’s feeling toward his Rebbe was like that of a son toward his father. It wasn’t just a philosophy. It was a deeply felt need. Chassidim felt that a chossid truly needed to feel connected to the Rebbe as a son is to his father. There are many stories of chassidim about this and about everything it meant to them.

26:38 Speaker 1 This is one story; there are thousands of stories. One story people tell took place during the time of the persecutions in Russia. There was a period when it was truly forbidden—an actual danger to life—for a Jew to walk in the street or travel by train. There were hooligans then, people in Russia who carried out pogroms. They would look for Jews and simply kill them. This was during the Russian Revolution, in 5678, 5679, 5680—those years. The Rebbe Rashab was already living in Rostov, and the chassidim wanted to get to Lubavitch, which was—getting to Lubavitch was a danger to life. Not Lubavitch, Rostov, where the Rebbe Rashab was. It was simply a danger to life to get to the Rebbe Rashab. They would travel by train, and if those non-Jews came in and found Jews, they would throw them out the window while the train was moving. Without, without, without any—without any mercy. So there is a story about several Temimim who traveled to the Rebbe around 5678. In the middle of the journey, those non-Jews came and threw them out, and one escaped. After a long while, he managed to reach Rostov. When he arrived, he told the Rebbe Rashab that he did not know whether his friend was still alive. The Rebbe Rashab had complete trust the whole time. He kept going out to see whether the young man had arrived yet or not. He was alone, and the Rebbe Rashab had great trust then. In the end, after several hours, that young man arrived too, and the Rebbe Rashab was very happy. He went inside. Someone in the family remarked that you could see how deeply the young men affected him, how much it meant to him. It was clear that they touched his life like—like children, like sons and grandsons. And the Rebbe Rashab answered: “Perhaps even more than that. It’s impossible to say, in any case.” So—

28:42 Speaker 1 The point is that, as you are talking about this now in the month of Shvat, it is not enough to study the maamarim and the sichos. You also need to reflect on this, learn about it, read stories about it. You need to think about it—to reflect on how the Rebbe is our very soul. It is a matter of our lives, and we need to awaken within ourselves a chossid’s love for the Rebbe, like the love of life or a son’s love for his father.