Likkutei Amarim Chapter 31 - Part 2

00:01 We’ve begun discussing chapter 31, where the Alter Rebbe addresses the sadness that can come from the contemplation we discussed in the previous chapters. It can bring a person to great sadness, but the Alter Rebbe says, “He should not be concerned.” We need not be afraid of sadness. But the Alter Rebbe explains the problem: sadness comes from kelipah. As he says, sadness comes from kelipas nogah, not from holiness, for regarding holiness it says, “Strength and joy are in His place.” And as our Sages say, “The Divine Presence rests only amidst joy.” Sadness, then, is kelipah. Now, there is sadness over material matters, which is the evil in kelipah. And there is sadness over spiritual matters, which is what we’re discussing here in Tanya, chapters 29 and 30. That sadness is called the good in nogah. Nevertheless, it too is undesirable; ultimately, it is kelipah. What does that mean? Let’s try to clarify the explanation here. Why does joy come from holiness, while sadness comes from kelipah? The explanation is as the Rebbe explains at the beginning of Tanya. This is one of the foundations that appears in several places in Tanya: the primary, overarching difference between holiness and kelipah. As the Alter Rebbe already says in chapter 6 of Tanya, holiness is bittul, self-nullification. That is the definition of holiness. Holiness means anything that is nullified to Hashem; anything that is not nullified to Hashem is called “the other side,” the side that is not holiness. The side of holiness is nothing other than a manifestation and extension of the holiness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu rests only upon something that is nullified to Him. This is a foundation of Tanya that the Alter Rebbe explains in a number of places. And it is really the point of Tanya: holiness is bittul; the vessel for holiness is bittul. Why? Because G-dliness—

02:14 Holiness is the oneness of Havayah, and the oneness of Havayah means “there is nothing else besides Him.” So if “there is nothing else besides Him” shines within you, then G-dliness is present within you. The moment you feel yourself to be an independent entity, you lack that bittul, and G-dliness is not present there. G-dliness does not shine in something that is not nullified. Hakadosh Boruch Hu rests only upon something that is nullified to Him. That is the meaning of sitra achra: the other side, which is not the side of holiness because it lacks bittul. This, then, is the basis for the distinction between joy and sadness. Why do we say that joy is holiness and sadness is kelipah? Because at the heart of joy and sadness lie bittul and a sense of self. Joy, in its essence, is bittul. This is discussed in maamarim. Many of the bochurim have learned maamarim on Chayei Sarah—yes, “Vayihyu Chayei Sarah,” from various years. I talk about this there. This is the idea of “The humble will increase their joy in Hashem.” The verse says that it is specifically the humble who have joy. A person with bittul is happy. The Rebbe explains this in several ways, and it is very tangible. A person with a strong sense of self needs things; he needs more things, and he is always lacking something. Whatever he is given, he feels he deserves—and he even deserves more. If he does not get what he wants, he broods and complains. By contrast, a person with bittul needs nothing, and whatever he is given, he accepts happily. On the contrary, everything is a gift. “I don’t actually deserve anything.” And if he is not given something, he does not become sad either. That is the point: from the outset, he feels he deserves nothing, so he accepts everything with joy. That is the whole point in those maamarim: humility is the vessel for joy. When there is bittul, it makes room for joy. A—

04:13 person with bittul sees everything as a gift, so he accepts everything. As the Rebbe brings from Tanya—we’ll learn this in the coming chapters—when is a person happy? When he receives something he did not deserve. Whatever you deserve is fine; it’s yours. Joy comes from something unexpected, a surprise. When I receive something more than I expected, that is where joy comes in. The Rebbe explains later in these chapters that when a person receives “a vast fortune for which he did not toil”—he unexpectedly receives something—then there is joy. “Joy breaks through barriers.” Joy comes from something out of the ordinary, something beyond what one expected. So it is specifically a person with bittul who feels that he does not deserve anything Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives him, and therefore he is always joyful. The point is that humility, bittul, is the vessel for joy. Joy means that my sense of “I” is not at the center. Sadness is the opposite. What is the essence of sadness? Its underlying point is a sense of self. Why does a person become sad? A person becomes sad when he thinks he deserves something, or thinks things should have been a certain way, and they do not turn out as he wanted or expected. The basis of sadness is a sense of self: “I’m not happy; I’m not satisfied. I wanted to be this or that, and it isn’t working out. I thought I would reach some particular level.” It can take all kinds of forms. When things are not as I want them, I become sad. I think I deserve something, and I did not get it. We know what sadness is. It is one of the hardest things in the world today. And sometimes people think, “If I had that, I wouldn’t be sad.”

06:13 People sometimes mistakenly think, “I’m sad because I’m missing this, I’m missing that. But if I had it, I wouldn’t be sad; I’d be happy.” Reality shows otherwise. Today we see people with lots of money, lots of houses and lots of cars. They have everything they want in this world, yet they go to psychologists and doctors, they suffer, they are sad and upset—they have, what’s it called, depression, melancholy, all the names for it. So what is the underlying issue? It is not whether you have things or do not have them. It is what lies at your core. If “I” is the center of your life—“I want, I like, I need”—you will never be happy. That is where sadness comes from. You will always find a reason: “That hurt my honor; that slighted me; look how he treated me; he isn’t showing me respect. I should have been able to go, I deserve it, if only I had this, I’m missing that.” So the problem with sadness is a sense of self. Even in matters of holiness, sadness is fundamentally a sense of self. Even when we speak of sadness over spiritual matters, the Alter Rebbe says here that it too is kelipah; it too is nogah. Nogah involves a sense of self—not the kind found in the three impure kelipos. The Alter Rebbe says that nogah contains good and evil. Chassidus describes nogah as being in the middle: it is a kelipah, but not one of the three impure kelipos; on the other hand, it is not holiness either. And it has good and evil within it. The good in nogah is when you use it to help you serve Hashem. The evil in nogah—

08:03 is when it leads you away from serving Hashem. That is how Chassidus distinguishes between the good in nogah and the evil in nogah. Here, then, he says that sadness over spiritual matters is the good in nogah. In other words, a person uses this trait: he becomes sad because he is not learning or davening, because he is far from Hakadosh Boruch Hu and has committed transgressions. But this sadness about his service of Hashem also involves a sense of self. Because here too, the underlying thought is, “I wanted to be—and I should have been—on a certain level. I should already have reached a higher level. I should already have been someone who serves Hashem. I should already have belonged to something loftier, and I see that I don’t. I’ve been in yeshivah for several years, and I thought by now I’d be someone devoted to serving Hashem, or an intellectual, or an expert in Nigleh, or a real Chabad chossid. But it isn’t working out for me.” This can cause a person to fall into depression, sadness and low spirits—a downcast heart, a broken heart. Here too, the basis is a sense of self. At its root is “I”: “I want to be like this; I want to be like that.” There is a passage in Likkutei Torah where the Alter Rebbe says that the basis of sadness is a person’s thought that he ought to be like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. The Alter Rebbe takes an extreme example: he wants to be like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and because he cannot be like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, he falls into sadness. He has fixed on Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. In any case, a person constructs some picture for himself. I don’t think that for us it is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. You know, you form a picture of some kind of chossid, some kind of person who really understands,

09:52 What a great chossid—and you say, “That’s what I want. I want to reach that chossid’s level.” But I try, and I see that I have desires and a yetzer hara, and that I’m nothing, so I fall. I fall into sadness. So at the root of sadness, there is always some sense of “me”: my picture of what I should look like, and the fact that I don’t look the way I should. That is kelipah. And so the Alter Rebbe asks: How can a person seek out something like that? It is the opposite of serving Hashem. Kelipah is selfhood, and selfhood is the opposite of G-dliness. So a person says, “How can I use the approach of chapter 27 or chapter 30? After all, it will bring me to a state of sadness, and sadness is selfhood, and selfhood is the opposite of G-dliness. Holiness, by contrast, is specifically joy.” That is the Alter Rebbe’s question. The Alter Rebbe answers: It’s not a problem. No, it’s not a problem. Why not? As we discussed in the previous class, “From the forest itself comes the handle for the axe that cuts it down.” At the beginning of one’s service of Hashem, when you want to break the evil, sometimes there is no choice: you have to use selfhood itself, to take from within the kelipah the strength to break the kelipah. That is what “from the forest itself comes the handle for the axe that cuts it down” means. What does that mean in simple terms? In the most basic, straightforward terms, as we see it in our lives: If you approach someone on the street, say—the Rebbe once told Rabbi Avraham Korf, the shliach in Miami, when he went out on shlichus sixty years ago, “You’re going to Miami.” Miami was a spiritual wasteland at the time. There were hardly any Jews there. It was a place where… So the Rebbe said:

11:53 “When you go out on mivtzoim and approach a Jew to put on tefillin, don’t talk to him about G-dliness. Don’t talk to him about Gan Eden or Atzilus. Tell him that putting on tefillin will bring him success in business.” He wants to make money; that is what he wants. Speak to him about material things. Of course, this is service of Hashem that involves selfhood. But at the beginning of the work, you need to pull a person out of the mud. You have to speak his language; otherwise you won’t get him out of the mud. You have to use something from his world. His world is money. He is immersed in business up to his nose and beyond. That is his world; that is what speaks to him. Or, as the bochurim here do on mivtzoim, they talk about football: may your team win. Yes, they use that. Along these lines, when discussing… As it says in the maamarim of 5659, Reb Moshe Eidel [unclear] speaks about yiras Shamayim. Yiras Shamayim involves selfhood. Nevertheless, to escape evil, sometimes a person is sunk completely in evil. You cannot speak to him about yiras Shamayim, fear of G-d, awe of Hashem’s greatness—it is not relevant to him at all. G-dliness does not speak to him. So the only way to flee from outright evil is to reflect on simple things: “You’re ruining your life.” Real, simple things from ordinary life that make a person realize he cannot go on this way. This is called the good within kelipas nogah. The reckoning is based on selfhood, but it is that very selfhood that pulls the person out of outright evil. That is why chassidim say that when you are at the beginning of the work and need to flee from outright evil, there is no choice: “From the forest itself comes the handle for the axe that cuts it down.”

13:51 But there is selfhood within kelipas nogah. You have to take something from where the person is, and from there take the axe—the strength to break the kelipah. That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying here too. Indeed, the feeling that comes from this reflection may leave you, for a moment or a few moments, in a state of sadness, because that is how the process works: “From the forest itself comes the handle for the axe that cuts it down,” and you counter it with something of its own kind. To pull a person out of evil, you also have to use things connected with the kelipah of the body. That is the principle the Alter Rebbe is stating here. In parentheses, the Alter Rebbe adds that the Arizal writes that even concern over one’s sins should be confined to the time of confession, not to the time of prayer or Torah study, when one must be joyful with the joy that comes specifically from holiness. What is the Arizal saying? A person makes an accounting of his soul and thinks about his sin. That is concern over one’s sins. People think that concern over one’s sins is teshuvah. So what is wrong with thinking about my sins in the middle of learning or davening? The Arizal says: Don’t. Why not? The Alter Rebbe explains here that those are times for G-dliness. The time of prayer and the time of Torah study are times when G-dliness is revealed, and G-dliness can be grasped only through bittul. Where there is selfhood, G-dliness is not present. Concern over one’s sins involves selfhood. Granted, it is selfhood on the side of holiness, but it is still selfhood. There is a feeling of kelipah here. It is the good within kelipas nogah, but it is still nogah. G-dliness cannot shine where nogah is present. This is a wonderful point. In chapter 26, the Alter Rebbe also said that one must not allow an extraneous thought—sorry, a worry. In chapter 26, the Alter Rebbe said that concern over one’s sins must be reserved for a particular time; one should not

16:01 let it arise in the middle of the day. There, the Alter Rebbe gave a different explanation. In chapter 26, the Alter Rebbe says that if thoughts of worry about sins one has committed, about serious transgressions, come to a person in the middle of the day, they come from the yetzer hara. He says, “It is known to be one of the yetzer hara’s schemes to cast him into sadness.” That is another point. When, in the middle of the day—in the middle of Torah study, in the middle of learning or davening—the sins you committed suddenly come to mind, that comes from the yetzer hara, which wants to cast you into sadness. It reminds you of your sins, and then you feel like a piece of garbage and give up. That is another point, another issue: the danger that sadness can lead to despair and so on. The Alter Rebbe will speak about that shortly as well. But here the Alter Rebbe adds something else from the Arizal: sadness involves selfhood, and selfhood is not a vessel for G-dliness. During Torah study and prayer there must be bittul, and joy is a vessel for bittul. That is why it matters so much to study Torah with joy, to engage in the service of prayer with joy, and not to think about other matters. The Alter Rebbe adds here—and this is the Rebbe’s precise reading—that one must be “joyful with the joy that comes specifically from holiness.” Joy that comes from holiness. At first glance, everyone understands the Alter Rebbe to mean that one must be joyful because joy belongs to holiness, as we explained. Joy belongs to holiness because joy is bittul. But the Rebbe says that is not the meaning, because the Alter Rebbe has already said that earlier: “The Shechinah rests only amid joy.” The Rebbe says that by the words “joyful with the joy that comes from holiness,” the Alter Rebbe means that the joy in the service of prayer and in Torah study must be a joy of holiness, and not a joy of

17:53 Uplift, revelry. And much more, very strongly. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but at the end of all our siddurim there’s a letter from the Alter Rebbe. I don’t know how many bochurim read that letter. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth reading. There are two letters from the Alter Rebbe printed in every Tehillas Hashem siddur. In one of them, the Alter Rebbe writes—look, there are two let— In one letter, the Alter Rebbe calls for joy: the avodah of davening has to be mit a simcha, with joy. But at the same time, the Alter Rebbe says there that the joy must be joy in G-dliness, not revelry. From the letter, it seems there was a practice in the first generation of Chassidus among chassidim who weren’t Chabad chassidim—there weren’t really Chabad chassidim yet. There were those called Litvakers and Kaliskers, chassidim who had a practice of learning a little Torah. Some argued that since the Baal Shem Tov insisted that avodah be mit a simcha—that was the innovation of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings—there had to be joy. So before davening, they would get together, joke around, roll about, make a celebration, say l’chaim, and so on. Then afterward they would daven with great joy. That was an approach. There were people who... Sounds good, doesn’t it? So the Alter Rebbe writes a very sharp letter there, printed in all the siddurim. The Alter Rebbe says that this is the opposite of what was intended; it isn’t the way. The joy meant by davening mit a simcha is not revelry. It’s joy that comes from inward study, from Torah, from understanding, review, and toil. That’s the joy being spoken about. And the Rebbe says that this is what the Alter Rebbe is alluding to here in parentheses: “And he should not be concerned, even though—”

19:48 Davening and Torah study must be done with joy that comes specifically from holiness. What kind of joy? Holy joy, not revelry. In any case, that’s the first part of chapter 31. Later in the chapter, the Alter Rebbe will say that what we’re dealing with here isn’t sadness at all; it’s bitterness. The Alter Rebbe will distinguish between sadness and bitterness, but that’s in the second part. Here, the Rebbe says, the discussion is about sadness, not bitterness. And here the Alter Rebbe says, “He should not be concerned.” At first glance, this seems contradictory. In the first part of the chapter, the Alter Rebbe says not to be concerned about sadness—that sometimes sadness can also be a good thing. But later in the chapter, the Alter Rebbe rejects sadness. The Alter Rebbe says that in holiness it isn’t sadness at all; it’s bitterness. Sadness belongs to kelipah; bitterness belongs to holiness. That seems contradictory. The Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation of this. With Hashem’s help, we’ll discuss it in the next class.