Likkutei Amarim Tanya - Chapter 46 - Part 13

00:01 We had a bit of a break, but I assume everyone remembers what we learned. The Alter Rebbe explained here the idea of love that is “like water reflecting a face.” That is the point of chapter 46, and it continues through chapter 49. The Alter Rebbe explained the verse, “As water reflects a face to a face, so does the heart of one person reflect another’s.” When you look at your face in water, you see it reflected there. The same is true of one person’s heart toward another: when one person shows love to someone else, it awakens love in return. That is true even of two people who are equals. How much more so when they are not equals. The Alter Rebbe spoke of a great and mighty king and a lowly, despised man lying in a heap of refuse. When the great and mighty king shows him love—and not just love, but immense, boundless love—then, as water reflects a face, love for the king is awakened in him too. The Alter Rebbe explained that the same applies in the spiritual analogy, concerning Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people. He first explained who the great and mighty king is in the analogy: Hakadosh Boruch Hu, King of all worlds, who transcends all worlds and is Master of the universe. Everything is nullified before Him. That is the greatness of the king. On the other hand, he explained the lowly state of the Jewish people when they were in Egypt, “the nakedness of the land.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu descended there Himself, in His glory—not through any emissary or angel, but He Himself. He descended and brought us out of there. And He did not merely bring us out: He showed us the immense treasure through the giving of the

01:50 Torah. That was the time of betrothal and marriage, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu betrothed the Jewish people. The Alter Rebbe then went on to explain that this actually takes place with every mitzvah. At the giving of the Torah, we received the Torah and mitzvos. Since then, with every mitzvah a Jew performs, a wondrous union takes place between the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Alter Rebbe explained the wording of the verse—rather, of the blessing. We say, “Who has sanctified us with His mitzvos.” He gave two interpretations of “sanctified us with His mitzvos”: “sanctified” in the sense of betrothal, making her his bride, exclusively bound to him in her time; and “sanctified” in the sense of the supernal holiness. Through performing a mitzvah, a Jew is elevated to the level of supernal holiness, to the level that transcends all worlds. He becomes truly one with that which transcends all worlds, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. So much so that we use the expression “our G-d,” “your G-d,” just as we say of the Patriarchs, “the G-d of Avraham, the G-d of Yitzchak, the G-d of Yaakov.” The Patriarchs were one with G-dliness, truly united with Him. Similarly, when a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, he becomes truly united with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As we say in the Shema, “You shall perform all My mitzvos and be holy to your G-d.” By fulfilling a mitzvah, a Jew is elevated to the level of holiness, to the level that transcends all worlds, becoming one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, who is his strength and life. And at what level of Hakadosh Boruch Hu? As He is at the level that transcends all worlds. So what is the difference between the Patriarchs and an ordinary Jew who fulfills a mitzvah? Surely we cannot say they are the same. The first difference

03:48 is not written here in Tanya. It is what we discussed, based on what is written elsewhere, concerning time and extent: with the Patriarchs, this union encompassed all their limbs, all the time, twenty-four hours a day. That is why we say, “the G-d of Avraham, the G-d of Yitzchak, the G-d of Yaakov.” They were one with G-dliness, united with Hakadosh Boruch Hu constantly, without interruption. With any other Jew, by contrast, it is only while he is engaged in a mitzvah. The Alter Rebbe then began explaining another point: the difference between the Patriarchs and everyone else is due to the material nature of the body. For the Patriarchs, the union was revealed; they felt it. They tangibly sensed their unity with Hakadosh Boruch Hu through their service of Hashem. As it says, “As Hashem lives, before whom I stood.” They had a tangible awareness of G-dliness in their service of Hashem. An ordinary person, on the other hand—even a simple, unlearned person who observes Torah and mitzvos—does not feel it. But the reason he does not sense that revelation is that the material body conceals it. That does not change the reality: when I fulfill a mitzvah, when I learn a word of Torah, a wondrous union between the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu takes place at that moment, just as with the Patriarchs. That is why, according to halachah, one must stand before a Jew who is engaged in a mitzvah. Why? Because the Shechinah is present within him. That is what we learned in this chapter in the previous classes. Now we will continue. Near the end of the chapter, four lines from the bottom of page 63, we are up to: “And this is what Asaf said through ruach hakodesh.” Here, in the final part of the chapter, the Alter Rebbe will explain several verses, a teaching of our Sages, and a number of other matters on the basis of

05:56 this point—on the basis of what the Alter Rebbe has just explained. On the one hand, he has explained something wondrous: every Jew becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu while fulfilling a mitzvah. On the other hand, we do not feel it. But our not feeling it does not change the reality. As in the story we told in the previous class, when we discussed this chapter of Tanya: the fact that the horse is thinking about hay does not make wisdom any less wisdom. It does not negate the reality of the wisdom. The Alter Rebbe is saying the same thing here: the fact that we are like horses, that we have a “donkey”—the material nature of the body and animal soul—which does not feel the union, does not change the reality. The union brought about when we engage in mitzvos is a wondrous union, the deepest possible unity. So let’s look inside the Tanya as we continue. “And this is what Asaf said through ruach hakodesh on behalf of the entire Jewish people in exile.” In light of this, we can understand what Asaf said. Asaf was a descendant of Korach, one of the sons of Korach mentioned in Tehillim. Quite a few chapters of Tehillim are attributed to Asaf, who was among Korach’s descendants. It is written that they were swallowed up, repented, and came out of the pit, and afterward the family continued. So it says that Asaf spoke through ruach hakodesh. Asaf lived during the time of the First Beis Hamikdash. He was one of the singers in the Beis Hamikdash: “For the conductor, of Asaf.” So Asaf spoke through ruach hakodesh on behalf of the entire Jewish people in exile. He himself was not in exile; he lived while the Beis Hamikdash stood. But Tehillim is not written only about that time. Many chapters of Tehillim speak about things connected with later times. So in this chapter too—this is a chapter, these are the verses the Alter Rebbe

07:53 The Alter Rebbe is going to bring verses here from chapter 74 of Tehillim. Yes, that is a psalm of Asaph, chapter 74. This is in the Book of Tehillim, after the prayers of David and the chapters associated with the sons of Korach. And in that chapter Asaph says what the Alter Rebbe is about to discuss. This is what Asaph said through ruach hakodesh on behalf of the entire Jewish people in exile. The Rebbe is precise about the wording here. The Rebbe points out that it says “through ruach hakodesh,” because the Gemara says that Asaph was not a prophet; he was not among the prophets. That is why the Alter Rebbe specifies ruach hakodesh. There is prophecy, and there is ruach hakodesh. Asaph’s level was ruach hakodesh. It is not quite prophecy, but through ruach hakodesh a person can still see things that will happen in the future. “And I was foolish”—what did Asaph say? He said this for the time of exile: “And I was foolish and did not know; I was like a beast with You, yet I am always with You,” says Asaph. I am foolish; I do not understand and I do not know. I have no feeling, no awareness. “I was like a beast with You”—I am like an animal when I am with You—“yet I am always with You.” I am always with You. What does he mean? What is Asaph saying here? What is the point of this verse? The Alter Rebbe explains it here. In other words, the meaning of the verse is as follows, and it relates to what we discussed earlier: Although I am like an animal when I am with You—although, says Asaph, I am like an animal when I am with You. What does it mean that I am like an animal? “I do not know or feel this union within my soul.” In what sense am I like an animal? An animal feels nothing. I

09:53 perform mitzvos, and I do not feel it. I perform a mitzvah, and something happens, but I do not feel the union or feel that anything happens when I perform it. So I am like an animal. Imagine bringing an animal into a shul in the middle of Simchas Torah, while everyone is dancing. You know what? They are jumping. The animal will remain the same animal. Maybe it will start jumping too because it sees people jumping, and that will stir some reaction in it, but it will not feel what is happening here. Simchas Torah, joy—it has no connection to any of that. In the same way, I feel like an animal when I perform a mitzvah. I feel nothing of what happens in my soul when I perform it. “I do not know or feel this union within my soul.” I do not know or feel. In other words, “do not feel” explains “do not know.” The Alter Rebbe is explaining the verse, “And I was foolish and did not know.” What does “did not know” mean? The Alter Rebbe explains that it means “did not feel.” It does not mean a lack of intellectual knowledge. On the plain level, you might read “And I was foolish and did not know” as saying that I have no knowledge at all. But that is not the problem here, because I may have knowledge. A person may know that when he performs a mitzvah, he becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He knows it because it is written in Tanya, in the Gemara, and in Chassidus. He learned it, and he knows it. My problem is that I am like an animal: I do not feel it. Daas means feeling, as the Alter Rebbe will soon explain. So “I do not know” means “I do not feel.” I have no feeling for the union that takes place through a mitzvah. If I did know and feel what happens through performing a mitzvah, what effect would that have

11:28 on a person’s soul? First of all, it would bring about awe and fear. The first response in the soul to a revelation of Hakadosh Boruch Hu should be awe—dread and fear—and afterward, love of delights. The second stage it should bring about in the soul is love. What kind of love? Love of delights, in which a tremendous delight in the union awakens within him. Or “like flames of fire”—another kind of love. Not love of delights, but love like flames of fire. These are two kinds of love that we learned about earlier in Tanya, in the previous chapters: love of delights and love like flames of fire, as experienced by tzaddikim whose physical nature has been refined. This is what happens to a tzaddik. What kind of tzaddik? One whose physical nature has been refined, who has a refined body. So when the tzaddik performs a mitzvah, a wondrous union takes place for him. As he performs it, he becomes wondrously united with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and he feels that union. What effect does it have on him? First, it brings him awe and fear, and then love arises within him: love of delights or love like flames of fire. “And as is known, daas...” Here the Alter Rebbe returns to what he said earlier about the verse “And I was foolish and did not know.” Does “did not know” mean “did not feel”? Yes, it means that I have no feeling for this. The Alter Rebbe now explains: “And as is known, daas denotes a feeling in the soul.” The word daas means feeling in the soul, that a person feels the matter. Daas is not merely intellectual knowledge. It means connection and feeling: a person develops a feeling for the matter. The Alter Rebbe has written this several times before, including this idea

13:26 in chapter 3, and when we reached chapter 42 and discussed daas. Here the Alter Rebbe adds a stronger expression that he did not use before. We will discuss that in a moment: “Daas denotes a feeling in the soul, and it encompasses chessed and gevurah.” Daas encompasses chessed and gevurah because it denotes feeling. So daas contains chessed and gevurah, the two middos of love and fear. Therefore, if a person were like a tzaddik and felt the union brought about by performing a mitzvah, it would stir within him chessed and gevurah, love and fear. But that does not happen to me, because I am like an animal. So I do not feel any of these things. “Yet I am always with You.” The Alter Rebbe says that this is what Asaph means: “And I was foolish and did not know”—I did not feel it. “I was like a beast with You.” A beast is a lowly creature. I feel like an animal. Nevertheless, he says, “Yet I am always with You.” What does “I am always with You” mean? “For physical matter does not prevent the soul’s union with the blessed Infinite Light that fills all worlds.” As it is written, “Even darkness does not obscure anything from You.” The fact that there is a physical body, that physical matter conceals, and all of that, does not change the reality that when a person performs a mitzvah, his soul becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, with the Infinite Light that fills all worlds. That is what the verse means: “Even darkness does not obscure anything from You.” From You. From the perspective of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the darkness does not conceal. The darkness is on my side, so I do not feel it. But in truth, the connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu is complete. So what is the Alter

15:11 Rebbe telling us here? It follows that the entire difference between a tzaddik and an ordinary Jew who performs a mitzvah lies only in what the soul feels—whether he feels the union or not. But what is the truth? In the truest sense, when a Jew performs a mitzvah, he becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that union takes place. That is the meaning of “yet I am always with You”: the union of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So much for translating the words of Tanya. What was I explaining here a little more deeply about what the Alter Rebbe says? Let us put it this way. The Alter Rebbe is discussing how things should be and how they are in practice—that is, how they are for tzaddikim. He says that a tzaddik has daas, and daas means feeling. The Alter Rebbe brings that out here. In fact, the Alter Rebbe has already spoken about daas several times in Tanya. He discussed it in chapter 3 as well. There he said that daas denotes attachment and connection. Here he adds a word—“feeling”—which relates more closely to the middos, to emotion. When we speak about attaining daas, we find a number of expressions for it in Chassidus. There is even a maamar of the Frierdiker Rebbe from 5704, and in several places the Frierdiker Rebbe lists nine words, nine expressions for daas. Apparently, each expression conveys something different. He writes there that daas is attachment, connection, influence, closeness, and feeling.

17:07 They bring nine expressions, all kinds of terms for different levels and aspects of daas. What all these names have in common is one point: daas. As Chassidus explains, daas is not just another level of understanding. It is not merely that you can understand the subject better. Rather, daas is an inner connection that a person develops with the subject he is contemplating. Here the Alter Rebbe emphasizes the point of feeling. Feeling means that you do not just understand the idea; you feel it. You live it. You have a feeling for it. Very often, a person can understand something completely. He understands it well and can even explain it, but it does not matter to him. It does not touch him. He does not feel it. One of the examples given in Chassidus is brought by the Rebbe Rashab in Kuntres Hatefillah, if I am not mistaken. He gives the example of a child before bar mitzvah—not a very young child, but an older child who is beginning to understand money. From a certain age, a child may already understand what money is and what you do with it. If there is a deal involving money, he will even take part in it. He wants to earn money. He is already beginning to grasp the value of money and all that goes with it. Nevertheless, the Rebbe Rashab says, this child does not have a feeling for money. How is that lack of feeling

18:52 for money expressed? If the child loses money, he will not feel so distressed about it. When an adult loses money, he feels distress. He feels the loss. But a child—and everyone is a child up to some age; what age, I do not know, bar mitzvah perhaps. Maybe some remain children even after that. In any case, the point is that he does not feel distress when he lacks it or loses it, and that shows that he does not yet have a feeling for money. He understands it intellectually, but he does not have a feeling for it. And when do you see that? When it is taken away from him, when he loses it, when he... In any case, the Rebbe Rashab gives this as an example in Kuntres Hatefillah. Here, then, when speaking about daas, the Alter Rebbe emphasizes feeling. And why does he bring up feeling specifically here? Because feeling already belongs to the realm of emotions. It is the thing closest to middos. An emotion, in the simple sense, is when you develop a feeling about something. That feeling can be love for something or revulsion toward it. That is what is written here: daas includes chesed and gevurah. The Alter Rebbe also brings this in chapter 41, regarding the tefillin shel rosh and its four compartments: daas includes chesed and gevurah. Since daas is feeling, feeling must have two expressions, two kinds of feeling. There is a feeling of drawing close and a feeling of drawing away. When you feel something, when you develop some kind of connection to it, that connection

20:32 can move in two directions: it can cause you to pull back and distance yourself—that is the direction of gevurah—or, conversely, it can move in the direction of chesed, of love, of drawing closer. Those are the two movements. Here the Alter Rebbe brings them both together. As he says here, first awe and fear fall upon a person, and afterward love comes upon him. What does that mean? We can actually see this in real life. When a person stands before a king, or before a great tzaddik, before someone exceptionally holy, and encounters such an important, remarkable person, there are two movements in sequence. First, when you become aware of someone so lofty, so exalted, the initial feeling is awe and fear. The first response in the soul is a sense of distance: Who am I? Who is he? How insignificant am I beside him? The first response is to shrink back and feel ashamed. That is why the Alter Rebbe says here that awe and fear come upon him first. But as you keep thinking, you say, “Wait—that is only the first response. In truth, he loves me. I love him; I am connected to him.” You begin to think about the other side, and from awe you arrive at the second response, which is... We also saw this at the beginning of Tanya. In chapter 3, too, the Alter Rebbe uses this sequence. When speaking there about

22:22 contemplation, the Alter Rebbe says that when a person contemplates the greatness of Hashem, awe and fear first awaken within him, and afterward “his heart will blaze with a fierce love, like flames of fire, with longing and desire.” So there, too, we see it: the first movement is awe, and the second is love. Within love itself, the Alter Rebbe brings two levels here: love of delights, and love like flames of fire. What is the difference between them? Love of delights is a kind of love that... that brings about complete integration. It is a love in which a person takes delight. Delight means that the thing becomes truly one with you. Delight is the soul’s becoming one with the thing in which it delights. That is what delight means: the person and the thing become truly one. Flames of fire are the opposite. Flames of fire are a burning, a movement of thirst, a movement of running toward something. Flames of fire mean that you feel you are not yet one with it. You run, you search, you thirst; you want to connect with it. So love of delights is a higher level than love like flames of fire. Love of delights is when the feeling has become so much a part of a person’s soul that it is his delight. It has become part of who he is. By contrast, love like flames of fire is when he still feels distant from that feeling and seeks it. So here the Alter Rebbe is not listing them in the order in which they come. On the contrary, he first brings love of delights, the higher level, and then love like flames of fire. In any case,

24:09 even if you do not reach love of delights, love like flames of fire can still awaken in you. That is a somewhat lower level than love of delights. Either way, all this depends on there being feeling in the soul. When there is feeling in the soul, a response of awe and fear, or a response of love of delights, can awaken within you. But a person who lacks daas is like an animal. He does not feel. That is why no feeling of love or awe awakens in him when he performs a mitzvah. Yet you do need to know what you are seeing. Granted, the true reality is that when I perform a mitzvah, I become one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that should awaken something in me. So that is the basic point. In a moment we will see what follows from it. We discussed this point in several places earlier. In any case, with this in mind we can understand many stories people tell about tzaddikim. There are the well-known stories about—what is his name?—Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev: how he could not sleep all night, waiting for morning so he could perform the mitzvah of the esrog. There is the famous story that he was so excited about the esrog that he broke the glass, cut himself and was bleeding, but did not notice. He wanted to get to the esrog. He was so removed from the world and so full of excitement. He had waited all night for that moment, and in the morning he reached for the—there was glass there, and he broke it and injured his hand. He was bleeding, but he was so absorbed in the mitzvah that he did not feel any of it. And I know how many stories there are about

26:05 Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev—people tell of the tremendous enthusiasm and eagerness he had when performing a mitzvah. Similar stories are told about various tzaddikim. Some are described as having a manner of awe, others a manner of love. They also tell of the difference between Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev and Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin. They didn’t live in quite the same period, but the story goes that Reb Levi Yitzchak’s lulav had to be replaced several times in the middle of the shaking. He would shake it with such intensity that the lulav became invalid, and they had to replace it. By contrast, they say that when Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin stood during Hallel, he stood like a log. He didn’t move; the lulav was there, making small movements. It looked as though he was barely moving it at all. So people would say that the difference was that one more visibly expressed awe, while the other more visibly expressed love. With Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, love was more apparent in his service of Hashem. As is well known, all his service was like flames of fire, full of enthusiasm, and so it expressed itself in dancing, jumping, and so on. With Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin, by contrast, awe was more apparent. That’s why he stood still: awe is a feeling of self-nullification. He stood like a log and didn’t move, because his service leaned more toward awe. Some say that the difference was within love itself: love of delight versus love like flames of fire. Love like flames of fire comes with emotional arousal, so the Berditchever showed a great deal of outward emotion, unlike the Ruzhiner. Along these lines, they also tell

27:57 the story about the Mitteler Rebbe. We’ve spoken about this before, if I’m not mistaken. The difference between the Mitteler Rebbe and the Berditchever was also along these lines: one had a manner of love of delight. Or no—the Mitteler Rebbe and the Alter Rebbe, sorry. With the Alter Rebbe, there was the matter of love of delight, love like flames of fire. So when the Alter Rebbe would deliver Torah teachings—and with the Mitteler Rebbe, there was love of delight, so he would stand in one place and not move. There are several stories about this. In any case, the point is that even if you don’t feel these things, you need to know that this is the truth and the reality: when we perform a mitzvah, the soul becomes united with Hashem.