Tanya Igeres Hateshuvah - Chapter 3 - Part 1

00:00 Yes, before we continue with chapter 3 of Igeres Hateshuvah, what have we learned so far? The Alter Rebbe spoke about fasts. He discussed several aspects of them. Broadly speaking, he discussed three kinds of fasts. In chapter 1, he spoke about a fast that a person undertakes because of sins, like a prayer—a request to annul a decree. A person asks so that he might be saved from suffering from Above, or [unclear] atone for himself, or because he wants to do teshuvah out of love. This is all part of asking for forgiveness for a sin. That was the first kind. The second kind, which he discussed in chapter 2, is a fast undertaken so that a person will be accepted and beloved as he was before the sin. This comes after teshuvah, after he has already done complete teshuvah, so that he will be accepted and beloved. That is the idea of atoning before Hashem, of regaining the King’s favor. This is a higher level. It is in this connection that we find the Tannaim and Amoraim in the Gemara undertaking many fasts. Similarly, the Arizal taught his students to do so. The Alter Rebbe emphasized, in discussing this second kind, that the Arizal taught his students about it according to the wisdom of truth. The Rebbe points out that the reason the Alter Rebbe goes into detail about the Arizal teaching this to his students is that he wants to answer why it is not mentioned in the halachic authorities. The Rambam does not bring this whole subject because fasting in order to be accepted and beloved as before is not a matter of halachah. It is something the Arizal taught his students, connected with the wisdom of truth. That is why this kind of fast is mentioned only in books based on the wisdom of truth, the wisdom of Kabbalah, and not in books of halachah. And at the end of chapter 2,

02:06 the Alter Rebbe adds another kind of fast, on an even higher level. He says it is a wondrous spiritual aid: a “day of favor to Hashem.” There is a special aspect of fasting that has nothing to do with sins and transgressions. The two kinds we have discussed so far are fasts connected with teshuvah; in one way or another, they are part of teshuvah. But at the end of the chapter he adds that a fast is a day of favor to Hashem. That has nothing to do with sins and transgressions. There is another special aspect of fasting: it brings about a wondrous effect. It has a remarkable power to bring about a day of favor, a sense of pleasure—something, as I said, that evokes favor and delight in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is a special aspect of fasting. The Rebbe discusses this in sichos from 5751. The Rebbe spoke about Tisha B’Av and the Seventeenth of Tammuz when they fall on Shabbos. When a fast falls on Shabbos, there is no fast; we do not fast on Shabbos. But its character as a day of favor remains even without the fast. The day has a special quality. It is connected with being a day of favor to Hashem. Although it falls on Shabbos and there is no fast, that aspect of a day of favor and delight remains. That is what the Rebbe discussed at that farbrengen. In any case, that is what we learned in chapter 2. Now we begin chapter 3. The Alter Rebbe continues in chapter 3 and says: “Now the later sages of mussar disagree concerning someone who committed one sin many times.” The Alter Rebbe says that the sages of mussar disagree about what happens if a person commits the same sin again and again. In the previous chapter, the Alter Rebbe cited the Arizal’s teaching that many fasts must be undertaken

04:11 for a single transgression. He gave the number of 151 fasts for tefillin, and 151 fasts for anger. So there is a disagreement about what happens if a person commits the same transgression more than once. Some say that he must fast the prescribed number of fasts for that sin as many times as he sinned. Some of the sages of mussar say that for every time he committed that sin, he must undertake the number of fasts associated with it. The Alter Rebbe gives an example: “For instance, one who emits semen in vain, for which the number of fasts specified in the Arizal’s Tikkunei Teshuvah is 84.” That is one example. According to the Arizal, the teshuvah, the rectification—the fasts required for this sin—is 84 fasts. “And if he sinned in this way ten or twenty times, for example, he must fast 84 fasts ten or twenty times.” The Alter Rebbe says: What if a person committed this sin ten times, or twenty times? Then he must undertake 84 fasts ten times, or 84 fasts twenty times, “and so on indefinitely.” The same principle continues. If he sinned more often, he will have to undertake more fasts. He will have to undertake the 84 fasts as many times as he sinned. “Just as with a sin offering, which he is obligated to bring for each and every instance.” Why do they maintain that he must undertake the fasts anew each time? The Alter Rebbe explains that it is analogous to a sin offering. With a sin offering, a separate offering must be brought for each sin. That is the halachah. So, too, regarding fasts, which come in place of an offering to atone before Hashem: “May the reduction of my fat and blood be considered as though I had offered a sacrifice,” as he discussed in the previous chapter. Fasts must therefore be undertaken for each sin. But wait—earlier we said that the fasts are connected with a burnt offering,

06:29 not with a sin offering. Here he connects it specifically with a burnt offering. So we can understand the reasoning behind this view: the person in question really ought to have brought a sin offering. That is, we are speaking here about a sin the person committed through an action. It is an actual sin, not merely the sort of thing for which a burnt offering is brought, such as a sinful thought or a violation of a positive commandment. So, in principle, he really ought to bring a sin offering. What, then, is the point? The Tanya says the fasts correspond not to the sin offering, but to the burnt offering. Yet this is a burnt offering connected with a sin offering. In other words, it is that kind of burnt offering—there are several kinds. Sometimes a person brings only a burnt offering, an offering in its own right, as the Alter Rebbe said earlier concerning a sinful thought or a positive commandment. But there was also a burnt offering brought after a sin offering. When a person committed a sin, he would bring a sin offering and then a burnt offering so that he would be accepted and beloved. These authorities, these Kabbalists, therefore argue that since this is a burnt offering brought after a sin offering, and a separate sin offering is brought for each sin, the fasts must likewise be undertaken for each sin. Their number must correspond to the number of times he sinned. That is why they maintain that if he committed this sin ten or twenty times, he must undertake the prescribed number of fasts ten or twenty times. That is one view. “Others compare this to a burnt offering brought for the violation of a positive commandment.” There is a second view that says no: we do not regard it as a burnt offering that follows sin offerings. Instead, we regard it—this is how the Rebbe explains it in a sicha.

08:23 The Rebbe says that this is the difference between the two views. We are not treating it as a burnt offering brought after sin offerings, where each sin offering requires a separate sacrifice and, consequently, the fasts must be undertaken each time according to the number prescribed for that sin. Rather, we treat it like an ordinary burnt offering, one brought for a violation of a positive commandment. With such an offering, we say that “even if he transgressed several positive commandments, one burnt offering atones for them all,” as it says in chapter 5 of Zevachim. For a burnt offering brought in connection with positive commandments, a person does not have to bring another offering each time he transgresses a positive commandment or has a sinful thought. He brings one burnt offering to atone for many such instances. Similarly, if he undertakes the 84 fasts once, that will atone for all the times he committed that sin, whether involving a positive or a negative commandment. Those are the two views, at opposite extremes. Let me give a little explanation of what we are learning here. First of all, what is this number 84? Why is 84 specifically the number associated with this sin? The Rebbe does not explain it here, but it is explained in a certain book, according to Kabbalah. Eighty-four is twice 42. The 42-letter Name is the Name associated with Ana B’koach. It is a Name connected with gevurah. That is the significance of the 42-letter Name. It is a holy Name connected with gevurah, with the ascent of gevurah. That is why there were 42 journeys in the wilderness: through them, they subdued the kelipos in the wilderness. So the 42-letter Name is a Name of gevurah connected with subduing the kelipos. And there are two aspects of the 42-letter Name: one by way of ascent and one by way of drawing down.

10:17 Two, two levels in the name of 42. So that gives us twice 42, making 84. Besides Ana Bekoach, whose initial letters form a 42-letter name, there is also one of the seven names of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the name Eloah. Eloah—alef, lamed, vav, hei—also has a numerical value of 42. That, too, is a name associated with gevurah. In any case, I’m just—this is Kabbalah. There are explanations for it, but the point is this number. In other words, this whole matter has its basis in Kabbalah. So what are we saying here? That there are two approaches: Do you need to observe the prescribed number of fasts for every time you commit the sin, or, however many times it happened, do you observe that one set of fasts for all of them? Now, in connection with this, the Rebbe says here in [unclear]—since we are approaching 20 Menachem Av, Reb Levik’s yahrzeit—there is a note here by Reb Levik. It raises a very, very simple question. There is what Reb Levik writes, and there is the way the Rebbe explains several points in this chapter based on Reb Levik’s note. In general, as is well known—I think we’ve spoken about this—there are the notes Reb Levik wrote on Tanya. And as the Rebbe always said, he wrote those notes on the Tanya itself, so he wrote them extremely briefly, as mere hints, and we have to draw out the full explanation from them. Whenever the Rebbe spoke about them, he would show how a single point in Reb Levik’s explanation, even if it looks like no more than some Kabbalistic hint, explains matters underlying the entire flow of the chapter. Based on

12:22 that, we can understand a number of profound matters. As for the notes on Igeres Hateshuvah, there are about seventeen of them, something like that, and the Rebbe explained all seventeen. During the period when the Rebbe was teaching Igeres Hateshuvah, he first spent roughly two years teaching the whole of it from beginning to end. For each chapter, the Rebbe would give an explanation of Igeres Hateshuvah. That was in 5729 and 5730, through the middle of 5731. Then, when the Rebbe finished teaching the whole of Igeres Hateshuvah, he began explaining his father’s notes on it, explaining one note for each chapter. This went on for about a year, perhaps a little more—something like that. For each chapter, the Rebbe would discuss one of Reb Levik’s notes on Igeres Hateshuvah. Those explanations were later prepared as sichos and printed at the end of Likkutei Sichos, volume 39. Some also appear in Yiddish in volume 19, but afterward they were translated again into Hebrew and printed at the end of Likkutei Sichos, volume 39. There are wonderful sichos there, and Reb Levik’s first note on Igeres Hateshuvah concerns these words. So it’s interesting: What does Reb Levik say? He says something small, seemingly incidental, but the Rebbe shows that it contains a fundamental point in the avodah of teshuvah. Reb Levik says this: Why, when he mentions the sin he is discussing here, the matter of emitting seed in vain, does he say that it requires 84 fasts and then add, “if he sinned ten or twenty times”? Why does it matter? Why do we need to know the numbers ten or twenty? Why does he have to say that? He could have given any other number. Why give examples at all? Everyone understands. It could be ten

14:28 or twenty or fifty or three times or twice. Why give examples? And if he does give examples, why specifically ten or twenty? Why those examples? Reb Levik says they relate to the nature of the sin. He says that according to Kabbalah—and we’ll see this later in Tanya as well—the Alter Rebbe goes on to say in Igeres Hateshuvah that this sin, the well-known sin called the blemish of the covenant, affects the mind and causes a blemish in the mind and in the divine soul, in the faculty of chochmah. So he says that the blemish caused by this sin is in the letter yud of Hashem’s name. Chochmah—the soul’s faculty of chochmah. The Alter Rebbe says in the following chapter of Igeres Hateshuvah that the soul’s chochmah corresponds to the letter yud of Hashem’s name. So it follows that this relates to yud. Now, there is the yud itself, whose numerical value is ten, and there is the full spelling of yud, whose numerical value is twenty. When you spell out yud in full—yud, vav, daled—its numerical value is twenty. Reb Levik says that because the blemish is in the letter yud, a blemish in chochmah, the Alter Rebbe says “if he sinned ten times,” corresponding to yud, or “twenty times,” corresponding to the full spelling of yud—yud, vav, daled. That is what Reb Levik says. Fine. A gematria, a hint. But what is the deeper point here? Why does the Alter Rebbe bring up emitting seed in vain in the first place? Why specifically this sin? And why does he give these numbers? What has Reb Levik answered by connecting it to the number ten, to yud, and to yud-vav-daled? What is the point? And then there is the continuation, where he says, “and so on.” So he gives a third case:

16:35 He says ten, he says twenty, and then he says, “and so on”—meaning more than twenty as well. What is all this about? First, before the Rebbe gives the explanation, he introduces a point that is very relevant: This sin is, on the one hand, more severe than other sins, because, as the Alter Rebbe said earlier, it carries the penalty of death at the hands of Heaven. In fact, the Rebbe spoke several times, when teaching Igeres Hateshuvah, about how the Alter Rebbe mentions this sin repeatedly in Igeres Hateshuvah. He mentions it in chapter 1, here in chapter 3, again in chapter 4, then again in chapter 7 and again in chapter 9. In other words, the Alter Rebbe returns to this sin several times in Igeres Hateshuvah. The Rebbe said that, in essence, the main reason for Igeres Hateshuvah is this sin. That is what the Rebbe said. In other words, although the Alter Rebbe wrote Igeres Hateshuvah as guidance in teshuvah generally, he had a particular purpose: to guide people on how to do teshuvah for this sin, because it is more common than other sins. It is harder to—how do you say it?—control. It is harder for a person to maintain control in this area. On the one hand, there is the severity of the sin. We know how severe it is, as stated in the Gemara and the Zohar. On the other hand, it is easy to fall into and hard to guard against. And it is written in the teachings of the Arizal that this sin is connected to the length of the exile: it creates a great proliferation of impurity, a great many sparks that fall into the kelipos, and the lengthy exile is needed to refine this.

18:28 That is why the Alter Rebbe wrote Igeres Hateshuvah. The Rebbe said several times that studying Igeres Hateshuvah is itself a form of rectification. That is a remarkable idea, but the Rebbe said it several times: When you study Igeres Hateshuvah, and study it again, that itself is a rectification for that sin. So that is the straightforward reason the Alter Rebbe brings up this subject. He brings it up several times because one of the main purposes of Igeres Hateshuvah is to help and guide chassidim in how to overcome this, how to rectify it, and how to do teshuvah for this sin. That is one important point about the subject as a whole. But what is Reb Levik’s point? And what does the Rebbe draw out of Reb Levik’s Kabbalistic hints here? The point the Rebbe makes is that whenever a person commits a sin, whenever a person transgresses, three things happen. First, there is the casting off of the yoke—the act of rebellion. That is the essence of sin, and it is the same in every sin. The moment you commit a transgression, you have cast off the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. Through the transgression, you separate and distance yourself from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the essence of sin, and it is present in every sin and transgression. That is one point. And for that, teshuvah is needed, as we learned at the beginning of Tanya: teshuvah means accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and abandoning the sin. That rectifies this fundamental aspect. Then there is the effect the sin has on the limb with which you committed it. The sin does not

20:28 A sin affects a point, but it also has an effect in a particular form, in its outward expression, in the specific place and limb with which a person sins. Some sins involve the hands, some involve the feet, and so on. Every sin has its particular aspect, and one must also repair the specific damage—the stain, the blemish it caused there. Then there is a third aspect: the sin affects not only that particular limb but all the limbs. Every limb is connected to all the others. Blood circulates through the body, and all the limbs are connected. So ultimately the damage reaches all the limbs, and that too must be repaired. These, then, are three aspects of every sin. In other words, the Rebbe says, there is the sin itself, the sin as it affects the person, and the sin as it affects the world. That is a broader perspective: when a person commits a transgression, it is not only the person who becomes stained; he also brings a stain into the world. These are different ways of looking at it. In any case, the Rebbe says that these three aspects correspond to the three approaches the Alter Rebbe comes to explain here in Igeres Hateshuvah. We have three approaches: one says that a person needs to do teshuvah once for all the times he committed a transgression; another says he must do teshuvah for each and every time; and there is a middle approach, which we have not yet learned, that says he must do it three times. The Rebbe explains that these three approaches relate to the three aspects of sin. We will leave that for the lesson.

22:24 I will explain in more detail in a later lesson how those three approaches connect with the three aspects. I just want to finish the point from Reb Levik about learning from the Torah. The Rebbe says that the three expressions Reb Levik focuses on here—“ten,” “twenty,” and “and so on indefinitely”—also relate to this idea. Ten is yud: a point, the letter yud without any expansion. That is the point of the sin. Twenty is the yud written out in full, yud-vav-daled. That already represents expansion: the sin is not just a point, but takes on a fuller expression and affects the person. Then it says, “and so on indefinitely.” That is the third level: the sin’s effect extends into the world, far beyond that limb or that place. It has an effect outside the person as well, far beyond him. Why did he bring this up specifically in connection with the sin of wasting seed? The Rebbe says that, as the Rambam writes, this is a distinctive sin involving the entire body, the very substance of the body. It is an especially severe sin through which a person loses the powers of his soul. Seed is connected with the soul, with the essence of the soul, and this causes the body to waste away and be lost. In Hilchos De’os, the Rambam writes in very severe terms about what happens through this sin, more than through other sins. So these three aspects are present in this particular sin with much greater force than in other sins: the sin itself involves a drop, like a point; it spreads through the body; and it affects the world, producing a great deal of impurity, as he says. So—

24:27 That is why this particular case especially emphasizes what the Alter Rebbe is discussing here, and the fasting needed to repair it all. In any case, there are more details in the sicha, but this is just one point from it. We see that even when the Alter Rebbe brings things into Tanya that might seem like mere hints or side points, they contain great depth.