Likkutei Amarim Tanya, Chapter 27 - Part 1

00:01 We’re returning to Tanya for our lesson on chapter 27. Chapter 27 continues chapter 26. In chapter 26, the Alter Rebbe began explaining a major principle in serving Hashem: to overcome the yetzer hara, a person must serve Hashem with energy. Only when a person acts with energy can he overcome the yetzer hara. It isn’t enough to have greater strength, for the G-dly soul to be stronger than the animal soul. A person also needs to act with energy. We see this in the physical world: when two people fight, even if one is stronger, he will lose if he is sluggish. To win, he needs energy. The same applies to serving Hashem. For the G-dly soul to overcome the animal soul, it needs energy, and for a person to act with energy, he needs joy, because energy comes from joy. Sluggishness comes from sadness and heaviness. So the Alter Rebbe says that for a person to serve Hashem with energy, he must be joyful and glad at heart, without worries about anything that might distract him. As soon as he has worries, he grows weaker, and when he grows weaker, he falters in serving Hashem and the yetzer hara overcomes him. The Alter Rebbe began explaining what worries people have that interfere with their service of Hashem, and how to rid themselves of those worries. After that, he began explaining how to attain joy as well. Those are the coming chapters that we’re going to study. In chapter 26, the Alter Rebbe spoke about two kinds of worries: material worries and worries about sins. Regarding material worries, the Alter Rebbe explained why a person need not worry

02:09 about material concerns, based on the whole explanation of “This too is for the good,” and “Everything the Merciful One does, He does for the good,” and the whole line of reasoning. The Alter Rebbe explained how a Jew should be joyful and not be shaken by material matters that distract him. Then we come to worries about sins. The Alter Rebbe explained that “this is not the appropriate time.” Even when the worries concern serious sins, these are indeed things that must be corrected through teshuvah, and teshuvah must involve a sense of bitterness. Nevertheless, this is not the appropriate time. Now is not the time. When worry about a sin comes to you now, it comes from the yetzer hara, trying to make you fall into sadness. You need to recognize it as a clever ploy, a trick, as they say: the yetzer hara is trying to distract a person and make him fall into sadness. That is what the Alter Rebbe explained in chapter 26. You need to set aside a special time for this; not now. That is how a person rids himself of worries about sins. In chapter 27, the Alter Rebbe introduces a different kind of worry. It does not stem from sins actually committed. It is a worry about spiritual matters, but not about actual sins—rather, about stray thoughts and improper thoughts. Here we need an introduction before we read the Tanya inside. After all, Tanya is a book for beinonim. The Alter Rebbe wrote it for a Jew whose level of serving Hashem still involves a struggle, who still has desires. It is a book for beinonim. We aren’t talking here about tzaddikim; we’re talking about beinonim. A beinoni is a person who has an animal soul and therefore has desires and wants. But what does he do? He overcomes them in thought, speech, and action. He overcomes all of that, but in his animal soul, those desires are still

04:04 in full force. So he may have improper thoughts and desires. But he overcomes them and does not allow them to find expression. As we learned in chapter 12, the Alter Rebbe explained that improper thoughts may arise in a beinoni’s mind. A beinoni may have such thoughts. But the moment he realizes that this is an improper thought, that it is something wrong, he pushes it away with both hands. He does not dwell on it willingly. That is what it means when we say that a beinoni is careful in thought, speech, and action. It doesn’t mean he never has a stray thought at all. It means he does not willingly dwell on a stray thought. But a thought can arise involuntarily, because he still has desires and his heart has not yet been refined. Since there is desire in his heart, thoughts naturally rise from the heart to the mind. Those thoughts reach his mind, and the moment he recognizes that they are wrong, forbidden, unwanted thoughts, he immediately pushes them away. So what happens? Here there is a kind of worry, a kind of sadness, that a person—the beinoni—feels simply because he has these thoughts. There is no sin here. This isn’t a sin. We aren’t talking about worries over sins, because if he willingly dwells on a stray thought, that is already a sin. The Alter Rebbe already explained in chapter 26 that this is certainly not good, but that a special time must be set aside to address it. Here, though, we are not talking about a sin, not even in thought. We are talking about the worry, the sadness. A person feels bad; he feels bad about himself. Not because of a sin—he isn’t actually committing any sin—but because of his own level, his own condition, because he finds himself in such a state

05:59 where he has an improper desire, and improper thoughts and desires arise in his mind. That makes a person feel bad; it brings on a feeling of sadness. “I want to reach a point where I can have peace of mind and serve Hashem, without these desires, without all this turmoil.” The Alter Rebbe devotes chapter 27 and chapter 28, the next two chapters, to this. He explains how a person should think, what he should contemplate, what line of reasoning he should follow to overcome the sadness and worry that come simply from having improper thoughts and desires. In chapter 27, the Alter Rebbe will discuss how to deal with worries and thoughts that arise in the middle of the day—when a person is working, eating, or involved in material things. How should he relate to this? In chapter 28, the Alter Rebbe will discuss improper thoughts and desires that arise during davening or Torah study. Those are the two chapters, and in each chapter the Alter Rebbe gives a distinct approach, a distinct way of thinking about it. Anyone who studies Tanya knows that chapter 27 is one of the most fundamental chapters in serving Hashem. In a person’s struggle with the yetzer hara, it is one of the most important chapters, because it applies to each and every one of us. Certainly, the Alter Rebbe wrote Tanya for the beinoni, so he is addressing the beinoni here. But the lines of reasoning and the ideas the Alter Rebbe sets out in this chapter apply to everyone, even someone who is not yet a beinoni—indeed, all the more so. What we will learn in this chapter includes things that are very, very fundamental to the life of every one of us. So let’s read inside. The Alter Rebbe says: “And if the sadness does not stem from worry over sins, but from improper thoughts and desires that arise in his mind, then”

08:06 “If they occur to him when he is not engaged in his avodah.” The Alter Rebbe says: What happens if these thoughts occur to a person when he is not engaged in his avodah? Here the Alter Rebbe is speaking first of all about thoughts and desires that come to a person in the middle of the day—not in the middle of davening or learning, but while he is going about his business and everyday life. “While he is occupied with his business or everyday affairs.” “Everyday affairs” is a general term for all worldly matters. Eating and sleeping are included in everyday affairs, and so on. These are all the things the Rambam writes about in Hilchos De’os: the ways in which a wise person is recognizable—in his eating, his dress, his walking, his conduct, his business dealings, and so on. All of that is included in what the Alter Rebbe means. So a person feels upset about it. He feels he is on a low level, that he is such a coarse person, such a lowly person. How can such foreign thoughts, such bad thoughts, occur to him? The Alter Rebbe says: What should his thinking be here? On the contrary, it is not merely that the response we gave in the previous chapter does not apply here—that now is not the time, and he should make a reckoning of his soul later. No. Here the Alter Rebbe says that is not the answer. The answer here is the opposite: not only should you not be upset, either now or later, but you should actually be happy that thoughts and desires occur to you. On the contrary, you should feel joy. What is the joy? The Alter Rebbe says: “On the contrary, he should rejoice in his lot: although they occur to him in his thoughts, he turns his mind away from them, thereby fulfilling what is written, ‘Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes, after which you go astray.’” The Alter Rebbe is saying something remarkable here. A person should reflect that he has an opportunity. Hakadosh Boruch Hu

10:15 is giving me an opportunity right now to fulfill a mitzvah. Bad thoughts and desires are occurring to me, and now I am going to overcome them. The very fact that I fight my own wants, my desire, and decide, no, no, no—I will not continue, I will not dwell on something bad—means that at that moment I have the opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” We know that we say this verse, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” every day in Shema. As explained by our Sages and in halachah, it covers two matters. There is “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes” as the Rambam cites it in Hilchos De’os, referring to thoughts of idol worship. And there is the meaning suggested by the plain sense of the verse: thoughts of immorality, thoughts about things that attract the eyes. So when a person has thoughts like these and overcomes them, not allowing himself to think about these matters, he fulfills a mitzvah. He should be happy: Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given me an opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah. And the Alter Rebbe continues: “The verse is not speaking of tzaddikim.” A person might say: Fine, but who says I need desires and bad thoughts in order to fulfill the mitzvah? Can’t I be a tzaddik and fulfill the mitzvah? Must we specifically be— So the Alter Rebbe goes on to explain that this verse cannot, in its plain meaning, be understood as referring to tzaddikim. To fulfill this mitzvah, a person has to be on the level of a beinoni or a rasha in the plain sense. It does not apply to tzaddikim. As the Alter Rebbe says: “The verse is not speaking of tzaddikim, calling them people who go astray, G-d forbid.”

12:16 The wording of the verse is: “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes, after which you go astray.” Now, at first glance, a tzaddik also fulfills the mitzvah. In simple terms, without looking closely at the verse, a tzaddik who has no actual desires also does not stray. He does not do or think things that are not good, so he too fulfills “Do not stray.” But no: when you look at the verse, you see that it says, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes, after which you go astray.” The verse is explicitly talking about someone whose nature does draw him after those things—someone who feels an attraction, a desire, a want. An ordinary person, not a tzaddik. In general, we know one of the basic principles of the Torah, of the Written Torah: the Torah speaks of the majority. The Torah was not written for tzaddikim. It was written for ordinary people. In simple terms, ordinary people means beinonim—and, of course, resha’im who seek to become beinonim. That is primarily whom the Torah was written for. This is one of the verses that makes it tangible. The Torah is speaking to ordinary people: “after which you go astray.” A person naturally has an animal soul and a yetzer hara, and he has desires. To him the Torah says, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes, after which you go astray.” Although you feel an attraction, a want, a longing for undesirable things, the Torah commands you not to stray. And when I guard myself against thinking foreign thoughts and make sure to push the thought away, I have the opportunity to fulfill the Torah mitzvah of “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” Yes, what did you want to ask? Those who— So the Alter Rebbe says: The verse is not speaking of tzaddikim, calling them people who go astray, G-d forbid,

14:15 but of a beinoni like him. What is meant by “a beinoni like him”? In the plain sense, “a beinoni like him” means like the person who is thinking about this. That is the simple meaning of the words. The Alter Rebbe is addressing this person. He is speaking here to a beinoni, and the beinoni feels downhearted because he has desires. So the Alter Rebbe says to the beinoni: The Torah wrote what it wrote for a beinoni like you. So when you have an opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah, you should be happy. Happy with your lot, that you have an opportunity to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu by guarding yourself and fulfilling “Do not stray after your hearts.” The commentaries offer another explanation of “a beinoni like him.” It is an interesting nuance: why say “a beinoni like him”? They explain that, as we learned in chapter 13, there are several levels among beinonim. Some beinonim have struggles, and some do not. There is the beinoni who davens all day, when the yetzer hara is as though asleep; or a beinoni like Rabbah, who said that he learned Torah day and night. Since he is constantly learning Torah, he does not have— These people are beinonim, yet they do not have bad thoughts or bad desires. That, the Alter Rebbe means by the wording “a beinoni like him”: a beinoni who does have a yetzer hara and does feel desire, but is nevertheless a beinoni. In practice, he does not allow the evil to enter his will. That is the point of “a beinoni like him.” He is one of those beinonim to whom thoughts do occur, but who in practice overcome them. So he has the opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah, and for that he should be happy with his lot. Interestingly, in the first edition of the Tanya, the wording

16:14 In the first edition, the Alter Rebbe’s wording there is “beinonim and the like”—there’s a vav, an “and.” The precision of the wording here is very interesting. In the first edition, the Alter Rebbe writes “beinonim and the like.” According to that, the explanation is entirely different: “and the like” would include a rasha as well. It is as though the Alter Rebbe is saying that the Torah is speaking to a beinoni and to others like him. In this particular respect, a person who has desires is like the beinoni, and even a rasha fulfills the mitzvah. Even someone who is not a beinoni—an ordinary person who is a rasha and sometimes stumbles—fulfills the mitzvah of “Do not stray” at the moment when he guards himself, does not let an alien thought take hold of him, and overcomes it. But here in Tanya it is written without the vav, so the explanation is as we said earlier: “thoughts of impropriety arise in his mind.” An ordinary person, a beinoni like him, has such thoughts; thoughts of impropriety arise in his mind, whether concerning something permitted, and so on. The Alter Rebbe adds “thoughts of impropriety,” meaning thoughts connected with matters of sexual immorality. That is called “thoughts of impropriety”—“Do not commit adultery.” It is one of the Ten Commandments, right? But there can be thoughts of impropriety concerning something permitted. “Permitted” here plainly means that we are talking about a married person and about things that are permitted. Nevertheless, there can be thoughts of impropriety even concerning something permitted. In other words, when it is not for the sake of Heaven but comes from that desire, it can involve something permitted and still be called thoughts of impropriety. Since the Alter Rebbe is speaking here about a beinoni, he gives an example of thoughts at a very subtle level: thoughts of impropriety concerning something permitted. Of course, when we speak about people at a simpler level, then it

18:13 applies to thoughts of impropriety concerning something forbidden as well. The Alter Rebbe alludes to that, but plainly his point is that an ordinary person has thoughts and needs to overcome them. When he turns his mind away from them, he fulfills this prohibition. The moment you turn your mind away, you fulfill the prohibition. So then you come and complain. What are you complaining about? Why are you feeling down? What is bothering you? What is going on? Why are you depressed? “Why do I have alien thoughts? Why do I have desires? I wish I were already free of all desires.” The Alter Rebbe says: Why? On the contrary, you should be happy that you have an opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah. By turning your mind away, you fulfill the mitzvah of “Do not stray.” More generally, when we speak about the mitzvah of “Do not stray,” we know that it is one of the six mitzvos. As is well known, Sefer HaChinuch lists six mitzvos that are constant. What are the six constant mitzvos? They are the six cities of refuge: twenty-four hours a day, a Jew has the opportunity to fulfill these mitzvos without any limit of time. The six mitzvos are belief in Hashem, the oneness of Hashem, the rejection of idolatry, love of Hashem, fear of Hashem, and “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” Yes, that is what the Chinuch writes. These are the six constant mitzvos that a person can fulfill twenty-four hours a day. This is what is meant by the six cities of refuge: these six mitzvos protect a person so that there is no moment when he is without a mitzvah. They are six mitzvos that one fulfills all the time. That is why the Rebbe says that the only way to fulfill these six mitzvos is through studying Chassidus. Chassidus explains to us

19:58 belief in Hashem, love of Hashem, fear of Hashem, the oneness of Hashem, and the rejection of idolatry. All these are matters that, so to speak, one can fulfill through Chassidus. And so a Jew should be happy that he has the opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah. The Alter Rebbe adds: “Our Sages said, ‘One who sits and does not commit a transgression is given a reward as though he had performed a mitzvah.’” This strengthens the point about joy even further. The Alter Rebbe is speaking about someone who is not a tzaddik, but a beinoni who has desires and must overcome them. This is precisely how he fulfills the mitzvah of “Do not stray.” And this is what our Sages say: “One who sits and does not commit a transgression is given a reward as though he had performed a mitzvah.” What do our Sages mean? As the commentators there explain, a person encounters a situation in which he could stumble into a transgression. There is some non-kosher food, or something forbidden to look at, or some other undesirable matter, and he sits and does not transgress. That is exactly what “sits and does not transgress” means: he restrains himself. He controls his yetzer hara and does not transgress, so he is given a reward as though he had performed a mitzvah. That is considered fulfilling this mitzvah. So this applies specifically to a beinoni. A tzaddik has no desire for it to begin with; the whole issue does not arise for him. But when we are speaking about a beinoni, who needs iskafya, who needs self-control—and all the more so a rasha, and so on—it is about him that they say, “One who sits and does not transgress is given a reward as though he had performed a mitzvah.” Therefore there should be

21:48 joy. “Therefore, one should rejoice in fulfilling a prohibition just as in actually fulfilling a positive mitzvah.” A person should be very happy. The Alter Rebbe is speaking to the beinoni and telling him: Just as you understand that when you fulfill a positive mitzvah, you should do it with joy, as we learned in the previous chapter—“Serve Hashem your G-d with joy and gladness of heart”—when a person serves Hashem, his service of Hashem should be with joy. So too when fulfilling a prohibition. That is service of Hashem. What difference does it make whether your service of Hashem takes the form of a positive commandment or a prohibition? It is service of Hashem, and service of Hashem should be done with joy. Therefore you should rejoice. The Alter Rebbe is saying that here we do not need to resort to the reasoning of the previous chapter. In the previous chapter, we were speaking about actual sins, about a person who had stumbled into transgressions. Joy is not appropriate there. What should he be happy about? He actually committed a transgression. He needs to do teshuvah. There, one has to look for ways to advise him: set aside time for it later, not in the middle of the day, and so on. But here, says the Alter Rebbe, we do not need that advice. On the contrary, you should be happy that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives you opportunities to serve Him. There are opportunities to serve Hashem by fulfilling positive commandments, and here is an opportunity to serve Hashem by refraining from something, by fulfilling a prohibition. But it is service of Hashem, and service of Hashem should be done with joy. Regarding what the Alter Rebbe says here—that one should rejoice in fulfilling a prohibition just as in actually fulfilling a positive mitzvah—there is a well-known story people tell. I think it is told about the holy brothers, Reb Elimelech

23:49 of Lizhensk and Reb Zusha of Anipoli. Yes, it is a famous story. Last year, when there was the whole situation with coronavirus and there were no minyanim, this story became very widely known. People used it a lot. They were in some place while traveling in exile. As is known, the brothers Reb Elimelech and Reb Zusha wandered in exile. Someone had them imprisoned, wanting to cause them distress, and they were put in a place where they could not daven because there was urine in the room. You know what was there—[unclear]. They were very, very upset about it. Then Reb Zusha simply began to rejoice and dance. He said, “Why can’t we daven now? Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu said so. It says in Shulchan Aruch that in a situation like this, it is forbidden. So we are serving Hashem, and we should rejoice.” That is how he brought out the point. In short, something like that happened there. I do not remember all the details, but it is a very famous story. You see, we should rejoice over the “no” just as much as over the “yes.” Sometimes Hakadosh Boruch Hu puts you in such a situation, and a Jew should be happy. In this connection, there is a verse written about King David. King David was joyful. How does it go? “But if He says, ‘I do not desire you,’ here I am.” If Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells me, “I want what you are doing,” I will be happy. If Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “I do not want it,” I will be happy then too, because that too is service of Hashem. “I do not desire you”—then “here I am.” For me, that too is part of serving Hashem. Chassidim also tell a story about this. There is a story Chassidim tell about the chossid Reb Avraham Pariz, the grandfather, right?

25:43 Reb Avraham Pariz. Chassidim tell a story about Reb Avraham Pariz. This was in the early years. He was deeply attached to the Rebbe, and he came to the conclusion that the message of Moshiach—and that the Rebbe is Moshiach—had to be publicized throughout the world. So he went and put out advertisements all over Eretz Yisroel saying that the Rebbe is Moshiach, and so on. In short, they had to write to the Rebbe about it. Reb Avraham wanted to make something big of it, and he did. Afterward, he received a very strongly worded letter from Reb Chodakov, on the Rebbe’s behalf, instructing him to immediately collect all the leaflets he had distributed, and so on. So he went around all of Tel Aviv, looking for every leaflet he had put out and picking them up. There is a letter he wrote to another chossid, [unclear], in which he says: People think I’m upset, that I’m hurting—that I wanted to do something for the Rebbe and got, how do you say it, a slap in return. But people don’t understand. For me, being able to fulfill the Rebbe’s wishes by collecting those leaflets was the greatest joy, just as joyful as it had been to publicize them. When I publicized them, I felt that this was what the Rebbe wanted and that it had to be done. When I understood that the Rebbe wanted otherwise, I was happy that I could refrain from publicizing them. The Rebbe’s wishes were what mattered. That was Reb Avraham Pariz. He was that kind of Yid: for him, mesirus nefesh meant doing what the Rebbe wanted. So when the Rebbe said not to do it, his joy was in not doing it. That is avodas Hashem—doing what the Rebbe wants. The Alter Rebbe says this here in a different way. When a person has desires and thoughts but manages to overcome them, he should be happy about the very fact that he can do so. That’s the first point the Alter Rebbe explains here in chapter

27:43 27. In any case.