Likkutei Amarim, Chapter 29 - Part 8

00:01 We’re discussing Tanya, chapter 29, on page 37. We’re up to the passage, “He should also thunder at it with a loud, angry voice.” Here the Alter Rebbe begins to give another way to break the coarseness that conceals the G-dly soul. Until now, there was one approach: contemplation and taking stock of oneself—the whole idea of always being lowly in one’s own eyes. That’s what we’ve had until now. Here the Alter Rebbe begins a different approach. He says: “He should also thunder at it with a loud, angry voice, to humble it.” This is another way to reveal the G-dly soul and break the coarseness of the body that conceals it. There’s also a way that doesn’t come through contemplation, but through shouting: “He should thunder at it with a loud, angry voice.” Simply shout angrily and forcefully to humble it—to break the animal soul by shouting. We see something similar in ordinary life. Sometimes a person goes into shock: something has happened, and he’s stunned. So you slap him; you give him a jolt. You don’t start saying, “Please, let’s try to explain things to him.” That won’t help. You have to give him some kind of jolt to bring him out of that state. Similarly, sometimes a person’s mind and heart are so blocked that it’s as though he’s in spiritual shock. He’s unresponsive; he doesn’t see what’s in front of him. Sometimes he needs a strong jolt to wake him up, so that he suddenly opens his eyes and notices that there is a truth. And that is the advice the Alter Rebbe now gives here, based on the words of our Sages: “He should thunder at it with a loud, angry voice, to humble it.” Because what do our Sages say? In a moment we’ll see how the Alter Rebbe says to do this. In Chabad Chassidus, everything has

02:36 its particular way of being done, and this doesn’t mean just shouting. He means something else here. “As our Sages said: A person should always incite his good inclination against his evil inclination, as it is said, ‘Tremble,’ and so on.” That’s in the Gemara in Berachos. The Gemara says that a person should incite the good inclination against the evil inclination, as it says, “Tremble.” The verse in Tehillim says, “Tremble, and do not sin.” What does the Gemara say “Tremble, and do not sin” means? That you have to deal with the evil inclination angrily—to shout at it in anger, to incite the good inclination against the evil inclination. What does “incite” mean? What is intended? So he explains: “That is, to rage at the animal soul, which is his evil inclination, with a loud, angry voice in his thoughts.” Here the Alter Rebbe emphasizes: when I say “shout,” I don’t mean shout aloud. I mean shout in your thoughts—an inner shout. It’s a kind of frustration, a kind of disgust, but in one’s thoughts. “That is, to rage at the animal soul, which is his evil inclination, with a loud, angry voice in his thoughts, saying to it: You are evil and wicked, loathsome and abominable and disgraceful, and so on—all the names our Sages truly called it. How long will you conceal from me the light of the blessed Ein Sof, which fills all worlds, for which past, present and future are equal—even in this very place where I am—just as the light of the blessed Ein Sof alone existed before the world was created, without any change? As it is written, ‘I, Hashem, have not changed,’ for He is above time,” and so on. All of this is part of what a person says to himself forcefully and angrily. So what is he saying? He calls his evil inclination derogatory names, as though it were someone outside himself. He speaks to it as to another person and shouts at it, calling it all these names. But what is his complaint? His complaint is: How long will you conceal

04:54 the truth? You won’t let me see the truth—the truth that there is nothing besides Him. “And you, disgraceful one, and so on, deny the truth that is plain to the eyes: that everything before Him is truly as nothing, as perceptible as something seen with the physical eye.” There is a truth, and that truth is plain to the eyes. In other words, it is utterly real; it can be seen as clearly as something perceived with the senses. The truth that there is nothing besides Him is the truth of reality, the truth of the world, and it is perceptible. The reason I don’t see it is that you, evil inclination, won’t let me see it. So this shout directed at the evil inclination has the power to break the coarseness and thereby bring a person to a G-dly desire, as the Alter Rebbe is about to explain later in the chapter. This isn’t such a usual approach in the ways of Chassidus. Generally, that isn’t the approach in Chassidus; the approach is through the teachings of Chabad. We’ve explained this elsewhere. But we see here that sometimes this approach is needed too: when a person sees that explanations and clarifications aren’t working, he needs a jolt. So the Alter Rebbe tells us that sometimes this is the way. There’s the well-known Midrash concerning the officers, as in the verse, “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates.” That’s the difference between judges and officers: judges give explanations; officers administer blows—they use a stick. The Midrash says that a dog, specifically, is struck with a stick. A dog doesn’t understand explanations. Sometimes you have to give it a blow so it will calm down and stop doing what it shouldn’t. The same is true of the evil inclination. Sometimes it behaves like a dog, in a way that you can’t persuade with explanations and clarifications. You have to give it a jolt to wake it up.

06:49 But we’ll soon see why that is, how it works, and why it works this way. We’ll see that shortly. Let’s mention what the Rebbe says here. There are several interesting points. For example, the Rebbe first offers an insight. He explains the meaning of “all the names our Sages truly called it.” First, the Rebbe focuses on what “all the names our Sages called it” means. On a straightforward reading, it sounds like the names we just mentioned—evil, wicked, loathsome, abominable—all those names. So “all the names” would mean that all the names mentioned here are names our Sages called the evil inclination. But the Rebbe says that’s a mistake. It isn’t correct, because our Sages give several names for the evil inclination in the Gemara at the end of tractate Sukkah. The Gemara lists several names, but it doesn’t list these names there—loathsome and abominable; well, not evil and wicked either. I don’t remember the exact words. Some are there, and some aren’t. So the Alter Rebbe couldn’t have meant that the five names he just mentioned are “all the names our Sages called it.” Rather, the Rebbe explains the passage this way: The Alter Rebbe says “evil and wicked, loathsome, abominable and disgraceful,” and then adds “and so on.” That means there are other names the Alter Rebbe didn’t mention. It’s about that “and so on” that the Alter Rebbe says, “all the names our Sages called it.” Look in the teachings of our Sages, and you’ll find other names besides the five he gives. That’s what he means by “all the names our Sages called it.” That’s one point. Then the Rebbe raises another question: What does “truly” mean? All

08:42 The names our Sages, of blessed memory, called it “in truth.” Here too, people have always mistakenly understood the plain meaning to be that our Sages really called it by these names—that the names they gave it are true names. The Rebbe asks: What does that tell us? Of course, if the Sages say it, it’s true. So what is the Alter Rebbe trying to tell us? The Rebbe therefore explains that “in truth” refers to what comes before. It’s as though the words “all the names our Sages, of blessed memory, called it” were in parentheses. “In truth” refers back to the five words the Alter Rebbe used earlier—as though it said: “You are truly evil, truly wicked, truly loathsome, truly abominable, truly vile.” What is the Alter Rebbe emphasizing with “in truth”? The Rebbe explains it this way. We learn in Tanya, as we discussed, that deep down the yetzer hara does not want a person to sin. At its innermost source, the yetzer hara does not want that. On the contrary, the king sends it to persuade the prince to sin so that the prince will overcome it, as a test for him. So at its source, inwardly, the yetzer hara’s intention is for the sake of Heaven. But when it descends here below, it becomes the yetzer hara, and here that is not what it wants. Here it wants to lead a person to sin. So one might make a mistake: since we learn in Chassidus that at its source, inwardly, the yetzer hara intends this for the good, perhaps it isn’t really evil, wicked, loathsome and abominable. But then it won’t bring about the broken heart, the breaking through the wall. You want to break the yetzer hara, and if you say, “But really, the yetzer hara is good too; it’s my sweet child,

10:46 it’s only pretending,” that takes all the force out of it. That is why we have to emphasize: when you shout at the yetzer hara, you must look at it as it is here below, not as it is at its source. At its source, that’s one thing. But as the yetzer hara exists here below, it truly is wicked, truly evil and truly loathsome. This is the reality that came about through the shattering of the vessels, when the yetzer hara became the yetzer hara here below. Here, the yetzer hara is not thinking about its inner purpose. Here it truly wants to lead a person to sin. Here it truly wants a person to fall into the lowest depths. So we are speaking about the yetzer hara as it actually is here: truly evil, truly wicked, truly loathsome, truly abominable and truly vile. That is the Rebbe’s explanation. Now let’s look at what Reb Levi Yitzchok says about this detail. We are now around 20 Menachem Av. Throughout the years, the Rebbe asked, urged and pleaded that on 20 Menachem Av people study the teachings of Reb Levi Yitzchok. The Rebbe spoke about this many times and wrote about it as well. There is a letter the Rebbe wrote in 5744, noting that 20 Menachem Av is the yahrzeit of the Rebbe’s father. And the Rebbe ... the wording is very interesting: he asks and proposes that on the days of the yahrzeit, people study his teachings. So there is an explanation by Reb Levi Yitzchok specifically on these words. As is well known, Reb Levi Yitzchok was a great man, an immense genius in every area of Torah. But what especially distinguished him—and this is uncommon—was his extraordinary feel for Kabbalah and gematria.

12:42 He could explain everything through gematrios and show how it fit according to Kabbalah, and so on. One of the remarkable things we see with Reb Levi Yitzchok is the way he studied Tanya. It’s known that throughout his years in exile, he had almost no books. One of the few books he had was a Tanya. When Rebbetzin Chana came to visit him, traveling to join him in Chiili, the village where he was, she brought several books. One of them was a Tanya. Reb Levi Yitzchok wrote notes in that Tanya, and thanks to those notes... And there is the well-known story the Rebbe would often tell: Rebbetzin Chana made ink so that he could write. In fact, in photographs of Reb Levi Yitzchok’s Tanya, you can see different colors of ink, made from the colors of plants. In any case, he wrote notes on the Tanya itself. Later, that was the first book the Rebbe took up when those books arrived—the Tanya and the Zohar, the books Reb Levi Yitzchok had during his imprisonment and exile. When they came out of Russia in 5706, I think the Tanya arrived first. The rest of the Zohar arrived afterward. The Rebbe took up the Tanya first, and later the other books as well. The notes on Tanya, of course. There you can see how Reb Levi Yitzchok studied Tanya. When people say that Tanya is like Chumash, like the Written Torah, for Reb Levi Yitzchok that was quite literal. He analyzed its letters and words: every letter, every word, every detail is precise and remarkable. You can never get enough of it. There is such an abundance, and you can see how everything he says in his study of Tanya fits into a systematic order and the depths of Kabbalah. It’s remarkable to see. Sometimes you need

14:54 to know concepts that we haven’t discussed much in this series. In any case, here Reb Levi Yitzchok asks: What is the significance of these five words? Why does the Alter Rebbe use five terms: evil, wicked, loathsome, abominable and vile? He says that, in general, the yetzer hara comes from gevuros—the gevuros of kelipah. As is known, there are five gevuros, called in Chassidus the five letters mantzepach: mem, nun, tzadi, peh and chaf. Those are the five gevuros. They are letters that divide, letters associated with limitation and disturbance. So that is the concept of the five gevuros. That is why on Hoshana Rabbah we strike the aravos five times, and mention the five gevuros in the Yehi Ratzon recited there. The yetzer hara likewise has five names, corresponding to the five gevuros. That is the point. He says that “evil” and “wicked” relate to Netzach and Hod, while “loathsome,” “abominable” and “vile” relate to Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes—the order of the five gevuros. The five gevuros correspond to the five middos of Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferes, Netzach and Hod. These are the five principal middos, the principal sefiros. So Netzach and Hod correspond to “evil” and “wicked,” which are the essence of the yetzer hara. Then there are the Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes of the yetzer hara, corresponding to “loathsome,” “abominable” and “vile.” “Vile” corresponds to Tiferes. Each one represents a particular form of the kelipah of the yetzer hara. “Vile” is the opposite of beauty. In its plain meaning, vileness is the opposite of beauty; in the language of the Gemara, it conveys ugliness. That is the kelipah opposite Tiferes. So he says that this explains why, later on, at the bottom of the page, the Alter Rebbe

17:18 says, “And you are vile, etc., as all the names our Sages, of blessed memory, called it, in truth.” Of all five terms, he specifically uses “vile.” Why? Because vileness is the opposite of Tiferes, beauty, and truth is the attribute of Tiferes. It is called the attribute of truth. So when the Alter Rebbe says, “And you are vile, etc., as all the names our Sages, of blessed memory, called it, in truth,” “truth” is Tiferes, the middle line, while “vile,” which relates to Tiferes, is the kelipah opposite truth. That is why, of the five words, the Alter Rebbe chose “vile.” Earlier, though, the Alter Rebbe says, “With a voice of uproar and anger.” The five names are the five gevuros of the yetzer hara. But before that he says, “With a voice of uproar and anger.” What do the notes say about “uproar” and “anger”? They too are words connected with gevuros. Uproar is gevuros, and anger is gevuros—two expressions of gevuros. “Anger” has the same gematria as “gevurah.” In the plain sense too, anger is connected with gevurah: when a person is in a mode of gevurah, he is angry. But the words also share a gematria. And “uproar,” he says, has the gematria of mantzepach—the five letters mantzepach—but twice mantzepach. Why twice mantzepach? He doesn’t explain, but presumably there is a reason for that too. Why specifically twice? Twice mantzepach has a numerical value of 560. Add the ten letters, and together you get the numerical value of “uproar.” That is the allusion showing how “uproar” is connected with gevuros. These are Reb Levik’s notes here on Tanya. You can see how every detail is precise according to Kabbalah. Well, presumably there are more things there that need to be understood, but I just wanted to mention a note of Reb Levik’s, since we’re already discussing gevuros here. Reb Levik. And then there are the Reshimos, the Reshimos that Reb

19:43 Reb Levik wrote about himself. He wrote an account of his life that was printed in the books. At the beginning of Likkutei Levi Yitzchak, there’s an account he wrote: “I am Levi Yitzchak, son of Zelda Rachel.” There he briefly describes what happened to him: the day he was arrested, how long he was imprisoned, and how many times he was imprisoned. Then he tells how they sent him from there to Chiili, and how he went on from there to— In short, he recounts all the details of his life, and then explains how every detail is connected with gevurah. He says that his whole life is gevurah. The name Levi signifies gevurah—kohanim are chessed, and Levi is gevurah. Yitzchak is also gevurah. Levi Yitzchak together has the same numerical value as neder, “vow,” and vows are also an expression of gevurah: a person sets a boundary for himself. Then he says that “Levi Yitzchak, son of Zelda Rachel” has the same numerical value as Esther, which also signifies gevurah, concealment and hiddenness. It also has the same numerical value as shoshanah, “rose,” which likewise signifies gevurah—a rose is red. Everything fits together there. Then he says that he was imprisoned five times, corresponding to the five gevuros. And on what day did they tell him his imprisonment was ending? Hoshana Rabbah, which is also associated with the sweetening of the gevuros. There are the five gevuros of [unclear]. So they told him his imprisonment was over and he was being sent into exile, and they sent him to Chiili. He says that the root letters of Chiili are tzel, “shadow,” which also signifies gevurah. This shadow refers to the suffering the Alter Rebbe writes about in Tanya, chapter 26: tzel velo nehora, “shadow and not light”—the gevuros one must go through in order to rectify the... Then he finishes with a few more details. I don’t remember them; I’m just speaking from memory. And—

22:00 He explains a few more things there, and then concludes that he hopes that after all of this, after all this sweetening of the gevuros, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will forgive him for all his sins, transgressions, and misdeeds, and send him a good day, when he will merit to meet his children and sons. It’s very moving—short, but very powerful. The Rebbe spoke about it many times—well, not many times; two or three times over the years, the Rebbe referred to this account. One point the Rebbe made was that Reb Levik was in a place without books, yet he cited sources for things that required sheer memory and knowledge of detail after detail. You can see his genius from that alone. Beyond that, the Rebbe drew attention to the way Reb Levik saw G-dliness in every detail of his life, even in the hardest things and in his suffering. He saw it all in terms of sefiros, worlds, and spiritual concepts. And regarding gevurah, the Rebbe also spoke about its application in serving Hashem: we need gevurah, the strength to overcome the yetzer in our struggle against it. Reb Levik’s gevurah was one of mesirus nefesh. It was through that strength that he was able to maintain his mesirus nefesh through all those difficult periods. There’s another story there about a coupon[?]. Speaking of this aspect of Reb Levik, I heard a story. Rebbetzin Chana writes it in her book that came out recently—another part of her diary was published, one they found. She tells a remarkable story there. Reb Levik lived through a very difficult period under the Communists. Once, they wanted to extract information. There was a man who was an informer, rachmana litzlan. He worked for the government, and he—

24:06 was a religious Jew, a chossid with a long beard. But rachmana litzlan, he had become a servant of that regime, and they used him. So he disguised himself so thoroughly that an ordinary person wouldn’t have recognized him. He put on all sorts of colors and so on. In short, he disguised himself and came to Reb Levik’s home to find out something—to get information the government wanted. He came to Reb Levik looking like an innocent young man, pretending to be someone else, and started talking. But Reb Levik had a keen sense for these things. He noticed; he saw through him. The man thought he could fool him, but Reb Levik looked him in the eyes and shouted out his name. Reb Levik cried out at him: “How can you do such a thing?” He began shouting forcefully, “How can you sell your soul to the devil?” He shouted, and the man broke down and began to cry. Reb Levik sat with him, even though this was actually dangerous. He knew the man worked for the government and could go and report everything. Reb Levik spoke to him so sternly that the man broke down and wept terribly. Afterward, he fled. The story continues with how Reb Levik brought him to teshuvah. That approach of speaking loudly and with anger can sometimes be precisely what’s needed to break through the kelipah. Sometimes a person is so entrenched that this is the way to reach him: speaking loudly and with anger. In any case, [unclear].