Likkutei Amarim Chapter 31 - Part 5

00:01 We’re up to chapter 31, near the top of page 40. The Alter Rebbe says here that serving Hashem should generally be done with joy, but at certain times there is also a place for serving Him through bitterness. In particular, when a person is sad and not eating, he should use that feeling and turn it into bitterness over matters of holiness, over his service of Hashem. He concludes: “And through this he will be rid of the sadness caused by worldly matters.” In the previous class, we discussed several explanations of this. What does it mean that he will be rid of sadness? Does it mean that, through bitterness over matters of holiness, he will no longer care about what he lacks materially? Or does it mean that he will actually be rid of those troubles too? That he will come to realize that he really needs to thank Hashem for everything he has? There are several other explanations of this as well. Chassidus also says that when a person uses his bitterness over matters of holiness for the work of teshuvah, this causes things to be arranged from Above so that he no longer has those material problems. There is a teaching that the Alter Rebbe cites several times in Likkutei Torah: When there is judgment below, there is no judgment Above. If a person judges himself below, Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not judge him Above—quite the opposite. This is said regarding several matters. The Rebbe writes about it in connection with the service of Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Teshuvah: If, during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, a person judges himself through teshuvah and bitterness and so on, then Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not judge him Above. If a person does not judge himself, then Hakadosh Boruch Hu has to judge him, and when Hakadosh Boruch Hu

02:18 judges him, it is not so pleasant. But if a person makes his own reckoning through self-examination and teshuvah, then he is not judged from Above. Similarly, that is the meaning here of “And through this he will be rid of the sadness caused by worldly matters”: When a person engages in self-examination and bitterness, using those feelings of bitterness and sadness for teshuvah, then from Above he is spared the need to experience bitterness and sadness over material matters. There is a story about the Alter Rebbe, whose yahrzeit we are marking, that illustrates this. Once, someone came to him. The story is told in several versions. Some say it happened more than once, which may be why there are different versions—the Alter Rebbe may have said this to several chassidim. In any case, the story appears in several of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s letters in different versions, and there is also a version in Hayom Yom. In brief, one of the Alter Rebbe’s prominent chassidim, who was also very wealthy, suffered a financial collapse. He lost his wealth, fell deeply into debt, and faced very serious problems with his livelihood and material affairs. He came to the Alter Rebbe and said that if it had been decreed that he should be poor and destitute, he accepted it. But he had sons and daughters and needed to arrange matches for them. At the very least, he wanted to be able to take care of those important obligations in life—the expenses of his family and his debts. He wept bitterly. According to one well-known version, the Alter Rebbe said to him: “You are concerned only with what you need, but you have forgotten what you are needed for.” You are thinking only

04:25 about yourself and what you need, but not about what Hakadosh Boruch Hu needs you for. That broke him. Some say he fainted; other versions say he began to cry. He left the Alter Rebbe and stayed for several weeks, immersing himself in serving Hashem with the other chassidim, in prayer and self-examination. After he had spent some time doing teshuvah, the Alter Rebbe called him in again, gave him a blessing, and told him that his circumstances would become even better than they had been before. He went home, his situation brightened again, and everything changed for the better. According to one version, the Alter Rebbe said that this is the meaning of the passage here in Tanya: “And through this he will be rid of the sadness caused by worldly matters.” When a person redirects his sadness toward serving Hashem through teshuvah, that also causes his circumstances to be changed from Above. He is freed of his material worries, and material blessing flows to him once again. The Alter Rebbe now continues. Here he returns to the subject of joy. After spending two and a half chapters discussing service through bitterness, the Alter Rebbe returns to where he began in the earlier chapters—chapters 26, 27, and 28, the chapters about joy—and turns the entire discussion around again. On the third line of page 40, the Alter Rebbe says: “Afterward he will come to true joy.” After a person has gone through all the self-examination we have discussed, he must not remain in bitterness and sadness, G-d forbid. Rather, this process should bring him all the way to true joy. How does a person move from the bitterness brought on by self-examination to a state of joy?

06:18 The Alter Rebbe says: “He should take this to heart, to comfort himself doubly, after all the foregoing true words.” A person needs to take it to heart—to speak to his heart in the right way and comfort himself doubly. This comes after he has contemplated everything we said earlier, and those thoughts concern things that are true. The Alter Rebbe is not saying that, to comfort yourself, you should declare them false: “Everything is fine. You have no problem. Everything is good.” No. A person needs to recognize that what he contemplated is true. But he must tell his heart: “It is indeed true, without any doubt, that I am utterly distant from Hashem, repulsive and loathsome, and so on.” Everything he contemplated, everything written in chapters 29 and 30, all that self-examination, is true beyond any doubt. “I am utterly distant from Hashem, repulsive and loathsome, and so on.” The Alter Rebbe is referring here to what he wrote in chapters 29 and 30. In the middle of chapter 29, he said that a person should “shout at it with great noise and anger,” calling the evil within him wicked, repulsive, loathsome, and vile. Here the Alter Rebbe returns to that point: A person must tell himself that it is all true. There is no getting around it. “I am utterly distant from Hashem, repulsive and loathsome, and so on. But all this is only I myself—that is, the body with the vital soul within it.” It is true, but it is true of the body. The body and the vital soul are in that state. “Nevertheless, within me there is an actual part of Hashem.” We must remember that within the body and the animal soul

08:37 there is also a G-dly soul. “Within me there is an actual part of Hashem, which exists even in the most unworthy of people.” Even if I think that, as far as my body and animal soul are concerned, I am among the most unworthy, that spark exists even in such a person: “the G-dly soul, with an actual spark of G-dliness clothed within it.” I have a G-dly soul, and within it is an actual spark of Hakadosh Boruch Hu that gives it life. “It is only in a state of exile.” The G-dly soul is in exile because of everything we discussed in the previous chapters. So I know that my G-dly soul is in exile, but I have not, G-d forbid, lost it. After all of this, I know the truth: Within me, within my body and animal soul, there is a part of G-dliness—a G-dly soul with an actual spark of G-dliness clothed within it. What, then, has happened? Through sins and transgressions, the G-dly soul has entered a state of exile. What does exile mean? In simple terms, it means that you are in a place but cannot be in control there. That is the defining feature of exile: A person is somewhere, but he is not in charge. On the contrary, others tell him what to do, where to go, what he may— That is what exile means. Likewise, the G-dly soul and the G-dly spark are within my body and animal soul. They are within me, but they are in exile. That is why all the things we discussed earlier, everything in the last two chapters, can be true. Yet the G-dly soul is still there. And if so, the more utterly distant from Hashem, repulsive, and loathsome I am, the deeper the exile of the G-dly soul within me. The pity we should feel for it is therefore very great. The poor G-dly soul is in a state that calls for great compassion.

10:49 In general, when it comes to compassion, we know that the more elevated someone’s previous state was, the greater the compassion when they fall. Compassion for a person who was always poor and destitute simply isn’t the same as compassion for someone who was very wealthy, lived a life of indulgence, and then fell. The compassion is much greater. In the words of Tanya, in Igeres Hateshuvah, “from a lofty roof to a deep pit,” an expression from the Gemara. But the Alter Rebbe cites it in connection with compassion. In chapter 7 of Igeres Hateshuvah, when explaining how to arouse great compassion, the Alter Rebbe asks: How does a person arouse great compassion within himself? Precisely by knowing and contemplating the soul’s source, how closely the soul is connected to the very highest level. And yet the soul has fallen to the lowest depths, with all the sins and transgressions—“from a lofty roof to a deep pit.” That is precisely what arouses the greatest compassion. So here, too, it’s the same. When I contemplate that I have a G-dly soul, and that within the G-dly soul there is a G-dly spark—the Alter Rebbe emphasizes this here, right? His wording is: “the G-dly soul, with the G-dly spark clothed within it.” What does that mean? Some say the Alter Rebbe is alluding here to the level of yechidah. The Alter Rebbe does not speak explicitly about yechidah in Tanya, but he says, “the G-dly soul, with the G-dly spark clothed within it.” After all, the G-dly soul is a part of G-d. Why add that a G-dly spark is clothed within it? Rather, the Alter Rebbe wants to emphasize that within the soul there is a G-dly spark. In other words, the greatness of the G-dly soul is that it contains something within it, beyond the fact that the G-dly soul itself is a part of G-d, with all its qualities. But the soul has descended below and become [unclear].

12:40 [unclear] The soul is here below. But however far the soul descends, the spark is always there. That spark is the point of chochmah within the soul; even more, it is the yechidah within the soul. There is a spark of the Creator clothed within the created being, within the G-dly soul, and this shows the soul’s greatness. Yet at the same time, it is in exile within the body and the animal soul. Think, then, of the depth of compassion warranted by the exile and captivity in which the G-dly soul finds itself. That arouses great compassion for the G-dly soul. And for this, one exerts all one’s strength and desire. What result does this bring about in a person’s avodah? Contemplating this leads a person to resolve to do everything in his power to take the G-dly soul out of exile and captivity. “And for this, he exerts all his strength and desire to take it out of and raise it from this exile, to return it to its Father’s house as in its youth.” To bring the soul back—to take it out of exile and bring it home, to its Father’s house. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is its Father. As the Alter Rebbe said in chapter 2, the soul is “truly a part of G-d above”; it has the status of a child. “You are children to Hashem your G-d.” Every Jew is a child, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the Father. The chochmah within the soul is connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to His wisdom and His will. Just as a child is drawn from the father’s mind, so, as it were, every soul is drawn from His chochmah. So Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the Father, and the soul is the child. The child is in exile and captivity. All of one’s avodah must be directed toward this; this is what one must be focused on: taking the soul out of exile and captivity. “To raise it from this exile, to return it to its Father’s house as in its youth, before it was clothed in his body.” To restore the soul to how it was before it descended here into the body, when it was “included in His blessed light and utterly united with Him.” The soul was then in a state of complete freedom and was connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

14:47 “And so, too, now it should be included in and united with Him, blessed be He.” To restore the soul to that state, to bring it back into connection with its source, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—that is the soul’s Geulah. How do we do this in practice, day to day? “By making Torah and mitzvos his entire focus.” A person invests all his energies in Torah and mitzvos, “clothing in them all ten faculties of his soul.” Here the Alter Rebbe is explaining what he taught in the opening chapters of Tanya: through Torah and mitzvos, a person clothes his soul and all ten of its faculties in Torah and mitzvos. In this way you leave exile, “and particularly through the mitzvah of prayer.” Among the mitzvos themselves, there is one mitzvah especially connected to the departure from Egypt: the mitzvah of prayer. Prayer is where the soul cries out. That is where this departure is also expressed openly. After all, the whole idea of prayer is “a ladder set on the earth, with its top reaching heaven”—leaving one’s inner exile, “to cry out to Hashem in its distress over its exile in his loathsome body, to take it out of confinement and cleave to Him, blessed be He.” To take the soul out of confinement, out of exile and captivity, and bring it to cleave once more to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “And this is the aspect of teshuvah and good deeds: the good deeds he performs in order to return the part of Hashem to its source and root, the source of all worlds.” The Alter Rebbe says here that this is called “teshuvah and good deeds.” We constantly find this expression in the words of our Sages: “One hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world is better than the entire life of the World to Come”—teshuvah and good deeds. “Through this, teshuvah and good deeds are a shield against calamity.” There are several such expressions in Pirkei Avos. The point is, teshuvah and good deeds. Why are teshuvah and good deeds always mentioned together?

16:49 In Chassidus, we find several ways of explaining this. Here the Alter Rebbe explains it in one way. Often in Chassidus, they are explained as two things: there is teshuvah, and there are good deeds. First there must be teshuvah, and afterward come good deeds. Yes, Chassidus often gives this explanation: through teshuvah, a person’s deeds can then become good. Teshuvah has to lead him to action, and then they are called “good deeds”—good and luminous. It’s like dirty stones: they need to be cleaned, and after you clean them, they become good. Teshuvah cleans the deeds, and then the deeds are good. There are several explanations in Chassidus. Here the Alter Rebbe explains “teshuvah and good deeds” not as two things, but as one. Teshuvah: a person wants to do teshuvah. What does that mean? How does one do teshuvah? Teshuvah means returning the soul. The Alter Rebbe is speaking here about teshuvah—not teshuvah of regret. Here he means teshuvah ila’ah, teshuvah of joy, as he will explain in a moment. Teshuvah is the return of the soul. You want to return the soul? You return it through good deeds. The good deeds themselves are the teshuvah. You do good deeds—perform mitzvos, study Torah, and particularly engage in the avodah of prayer. These are the good deeds that bring about teshuvah, the return of the soul: the soul leaves exile and captivity and draws close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So here the Alter Rebbe gives us a most fundamental principle of how to serve Hashem, what Chassidus calls the inner Geulah. After all the bitterness, after all the teshuvah and everything else, one must turn the heart from a state of bitterness to a state of joy. And the joy, as he will go on to say shortly, is this very point: a person can leave exile and captivity by taking himself in hand, studying Torah, and fulfilling mitzvos. To bring back the

18:51 the soul, to take it out of exile and return it to her Father and Master. That is the greatest joy, and that is teshuvah. The goal—the teshuvah of teshuvah—is to do it with joy, bringing about the soul’s return. There is a well-known story connected with this, by Divine providence. The Rebbe told it several times at farbrengens on 24 Teves. Once, the Mitteler Rebbe fasted because of a dream, and the Alter Rebbe heard about it. The Alter Rebbe strongly disapproved. The Mitteler Rebbe was not well, and the Alter Rebbe did not want him fasting because of a dream. He wanted to give him a punishment, and he did. There was even something else involved. Then the Alter Rebbe wanted him to describe the dream. After much urging, he finally did. He had seen a river, with a great deal of water rushing through it. It was a dangerous river. Over it was a plank, a wooden step, and various tzaddikim were crossing. The river was moving and the plank was moving, and it was dangerous. Then the Alter Rebbe crossed, and he crossed safely. That was the whole dream. Yet this dream led the Mitteler Rebbe to fast. Why? The story does not make clear what happened. After all, [unclear] asked: What was so terrible about this dream? But the Mitteler Rebbe saw something there that pained him, that troubled him—perhaps something concerning the other tzaddikim he saw. In any case, he fasted because of the dream. The Alter Rebbe then explained why he had seen him walking steadily, crossing the river without falling: it was because he had worked with baalei teshuvah. The Alter Rebbe had helped people become baalei teshuvah. The Rebbe told this story several times at farbrengens on 24 Teves, because

20:49 the Rebbe Rashab had told it at a farbrengen on 24 Teves 5667. So the Rebbe retold it several times over the years, and one year he gave a full explanation. The Rebbe explained that it does not necessarily mean baalei teshuvah in the simple sense. Rather, it means what the Alter Rebbe says here in this chapter: he revealed teshuvah as a level in the service of Hashem. Not only repentance for sins, but teshuvah as the return of the soul. The Alter Rebbe explains that the definition of teshuvah is returning the soul: “to return her to her Father’s house as in her youth.” Through this service of returning the soul, the Alter Rebbe brought chassidim to become baalei teshuvah in the truest sense. He brought about this teshuvah, this return of the soul, even in the greatest chassidim. That is what the Alter Rebbe means here. This whole account that the Alter Rebbe brings here—the exile and the return, taking her out of her exile—is also cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov. As is known, the Baal Shem Tov explained the soul’s descent into this world with an analogy about a prince who grew up with his father, the king. The king wanted to test him and reveal his hidden strengths, so he sent his son far away, to a distant place. The Rebbe Rashab also brings this in the maamarim of 5666. It is an analogy found in Chassidus. The Rebbe had a particular enthusiasm for this analogy, also in connection with shlichus. In any case, the king sends the prince far away. The purpose is to reveal his inner strengths and also to transform that place. But sometimes the prince forgets his mission and becomes one of the lowly people in that distant place. He forgets the—

22:46 Then teshuvah is needed: to return. Teshuvah means that the prince gets up, awakens, leaves that place and returns to his father the king. And this happens, in fact, every single day, especially in the service of prayer, and more broadly through Torah and mitzvos.