The Rebbe's Explanations on Igeres Hateshuvah - General Introduction

00:01 In general, Igeres Hateshuvah is a part of Tanya that, as we know, the Rebbe explained and elucidated far more than any of the other parts of Tanya. Even just in the notes: when Rabbi Weinberg was giving his classes on the radio, the Rebbe reviewed all his classes. But you can see from the sheer number of notes and comments the Rebbe wrote on Igeres Hateshuvah that it is on a different scale. Not on Likkutei Amarim, not on Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, and not on Igeres Hakodesh did he write so many comments. Then there were several years when the Rebbe devoted himself to teaching Igeres Hateshuvah. It is known that after the Six-Day War, a little while after the war, the Rebbe spoke about the awakening to teshuvah that had taken place afterward, and he began speaking very strongly about teshuvah. This was mainly in 5729, 5730, and 5731. At every farbrengen—every Shabbos, and on other special days too—one of the sichos was an explanation of Igeres Hateshuvah. It followed the text in order, farbrengen after farbrengen. The Rebbe went through one passage, then another, then another. That was simply how the Rebbe taught it. Chassidim who were there at the time say it really felt as though the Rebbe had taken up the Tanya: he would take a passage, explain it, ask questions and answer them, just as he did in the Rashi sichos and with Likkutei Levi Yitzchak and so on. The Rebbe did the same with Igeres Hateshuvah. He went through the whole of Igeres Hateshuvah and would... Because of that, we have profound and wonderful explanations of the entire Igeres Hateshuvah. Some are more focused on the plain meaning, some go deeper, some are more... There are different kinds; it was not always the same approach. But the Rebbe, how should I put it, worked through Igeres Hateshuvah in tremendous depth. Later there was also a period when the Rebbe studied

02:25 the explanations of his father, Reb Levik. Here is another point. As is well known, and as the Rebbe said many times, Reb Levik had neither paper nor ink, given the circumstances in which he lived in exile. Rebbetzin Chana would prepare whatever she could obtain. So he wrote most of his notes in the Tanya itself. There are notes on Tanya, and a collection of them was published—a booklet, a collected booklet. It was among the first things the Rebbe published from Reb Levik, or perhaps the very first, if I am not mistaken: Likkutei Levi Yitzchak on Tanya. Likkutei Levi Yitzchak on Tanya contains all the notes Reb Levik wrote in the margins of the Tanya. He wrote on Igeres Hateshuvah, and on the whole Tanya. There are notes on all of Tanya. On Igeres Hateshuvah there are about seventeen notes. The Rebbe addressed every one of them during those years. This was in 5731 and 5732, around that time. The Rebbe addressed each note and gave an explanation of it. For a whole period—I do not know whether it was a year or half a year, however long it was, but it was a long period—the Rebbe would take a note and give a full explanation of it. He studied his father’s notes in the greatest depth. Now, Reb Levik’s notes, as is well known, are very brief. As the Rebbe would say, Reb Levik spoke at great length, but under the circumstances then he had to write everything very briefly. Reb Levik’s explanations are very abstract. As is well known, Reb Levik was a kabbalist, so he writes everything in the language of Kabbalah: allusions, gematrias, sefiros. So when you read Reb Levik’s interpretations of Tanya, you do not usually see in them

04:30 an explanation of Tanya. It is—exactly. You can learn how Tanya ought to be studied, yes? When you see how Reb Levik can sometimes interpret Tanya the way one studies a verse of Chumash, you can understand what it means to say that Tanya is the Written Torah. Right? Reb Levik examines every detail in Tanya: why this is written in the language of Kabbalah, that in the language of the Zohar, another thing in Aramaic, another in some other language. Why does he... And he finds allusions and gematrias. Why are there three words, and why does he cite three verses? Reb Levik examines Tanya as closely as one examines the Written Torah itself. He does so in a most remarkable way and draws ideas from it. But these are generally deep explanations in Kabbalah, and not everyone can manage them. What the Rebbe did with Igeres Hateshuvah—the remarkable thing he showed—is that every note of Reb Levik’s on Igeres Hateshuvah actually leads to an understanding of Igeres Hateshuvah. Every note provides a foundation for understanding what it says. You might think it is a note about Kabbalah, allusions, gematrias, or sefiros, but in fact, based on the principle, on the insight he offers, you can understand major, overarching points in Igeres Hateshuvah. The Rebbe showed this, one note after another. He turned all seventeen of Reb Levik’s notes into foundations for understanding Igeres Hateshuvah. So much so that today, after we have been privileged to have these sichos, it is hard to imagine how one could understand Igeres Hateshuvah without them. How did chassidim study Igeres Hateshuvah in the past? Now, that was in the early 5730s. Later, in 5739, during the period of Elul, there were five weeks when, instead of a Likkutei Sichos on the weekly parsha, a Likkutei Sichos on Igeres Hateshuvah was published. That was in 5739, throughout Elul and Tishrei. The committee for disseminating the sichos, who

06:43 would prepare the sichos for review by the Rebbe—and the Rebbe would edit them, which is how all the volumes of Likkutei Sichos we have came to be published—published Likkutei Sichos on Igeres Hateshuvah. The first five sichos were on Reb Levi Yitzchak’s first five notes, mainly on chapter 4 of Igeres Hateshuvah. All five notes are on chapter 4 of Igeres Hateshuvah. Just as an example. Those were published in the appendices to Likkutei Sichos, volume 29. That was in ’49, right. In 5750 the same thing happened again. In Elul 5750, during Elul and Tishrei, they did the same thing: instead of publishing Likkutei Sichos on the weekly parsha, they published Likkutei Sichos on Igeres Hateshuvah, dealing with the other notes. For several weeks they published Likkutei Sichos continuing the series—on the notes to chapters 6 and 7, Reb Levi Yitzchak’s notes on those chapters. And in 5751 all the rest came out. In other words, over three years—5749, 5750, and 5751—all the Rebbe’s explanations of Reb Levi Yitzchak’s notes on Igeres Hateshuvah were published. So today we have them all. Boruch Hashem, we have been privileged to have all these sichos containing the Rebbe’s explanations of Reb Levi Yitzchak’s understanding of Igeres Hateshuvah, all edited and approved by the Rebbe. They are simply wonderful sichos. They are profound, of course, but also wonderful for understanding Igeres Hateshuvah itself and its practical avodah. In other words, if you want to understand Igeres Hateshuvah, it is a profound work that needs to be understood. It is a subject of study, a deep subject. For the Alter Rebbe, teshuvah is not just striking your chest while saying “For the sin,” or even shedding tears and thinking that with that you have already done teshuvah. Teshuvah is avodah. Teshuvah is a subject of study. Teshuvah is a deep avodah on which the twelve

08:54 Chapters of Igeres Hateshuvah, at any rate. So that is by way of introduction to what we’re learning here. As we said, Rabbi Levik’s notes include one note on chapter 3, and all the rest are on chapter 4 onward. That first note, on chapter 3 of Tanya, is very interesting; I’ll come back to it shortly. But with Hashem’s help, our aim is to learn the chapters starting with chapter 4. We’ll cover what we can. We never manage to learn everything in the time we have, but this year we’ll try to learn these chapters—chapters 4, 5, and 6—as much as we can before Rosh Hashanah. First, though, let’s review so we know what begins in chapter 4 of Igeres Hateshuvah. Chapter 4 begins a new subject. What happens up to chapter 4, and what begins from chapter 4 onward? In the first three chapters of Igeres Hateshuvah, the Alter Rebbe mainly explains teshuvah according to the revealed dimension of Torah. Broadly speaking, those three chapters explain teshuvah from that perspective. The Alter Rebbe begins with a Gemara in Tractate Yoma, from which we learn that there are three kinds of atonement: for violations of positive commandments, for violations of negative commandments, and for transgressions punishable by kares or by a court-imposed death penalty. Three categories of teshuvah. What else do we learn from that Gemara? It says so explicitly: there are three distinctions in atonement, but teshuvah accompanies each one. For a positive commandment, there is teshuvah; for a negative commandment, one needs teshuvah and also Yom Kippur; and for transgressions punishable by kares or a court-imposed death penalty, one needs teshuvah, Yom Kippur, and also suffering. But what the Alter Rebbe wants to draw from that passage in Igeres Hateshuvah—sorry, from that Gemara—is that teshuvah and atonement are two different things. People mix them together into one package, but on the basis of this Gemara, he wants to distinguish between them. There is teshuvah, and there is atonement,

11:06 and this is the wording of the Gemara: “Three distinctions in atonement, with teshuvah accompanying each one.” In other words, teshuvah accompanies each one. Teshuvah is the foundation, and then there is atonement. Atonement is another matter. What’s the difference? Broadly speaking, teshuvah is the work a person has to do; it is the mitzvah, the obligation placed upon a person to return and reconnect with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A person committed a transgression, became disconnected, rebelled against the King, became separated. The first thing you have to do is reconnect yourself. That is teshuvah, and it has to happen with every transgression. It makes no difference whether it is a violation of a negative commandment, a positive commandment, or one punishable by kares or a court-imposed death penalty—there must be teshuvah. Teshuvah is the Torah mitzvah obligating a Jew to return to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and we need to understand how we return to Him. The second thing is atonement. Atonement is the cleansing. Besides reconnecting yourself, accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and returning to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there is the dirt left behind. A transgression causes damage. Every transgression causes some kind of damage, some dirt, some disconnection—something below, in the soul; above, in the higher worlds; and in the person as well. Hakadosh Boruch Hu placed the Jew at the center of all creation. When we do something good, we bring good to all the worlds, to our world, and to ourselves. And, G-d forbid, when we do something wrong, we cause damage. We do things, we dirty things, we do things we shouldn’t, we cause damage, and we need to repair it. There are three categories of this: the repair for violating a positive commandment works one way; for a negative commandment, another way; and for transgressions punishable by kares or a court-imposed death penalty, yet another way. So there is teshuvah, and there is atonement. The Alter Rebbe comes and says that first of all, we need to know what

12:57 the mitzvah of teshuvah is. There are many misconceptions about this too. People don’t know, even people who study it. Even great scholars may not grasp the point, because teshuvah is a very broad word and the books use it for many things. If you study the Rambam’s Laws of Teshuvah, there are ten chapters. Sometimes you don’t know exactly what the central point is and what the details are. There are entire books, like the Meiri’s work on teshuvah. Those familiar with the Meiri’s set of books know that he has a whole book on teshuvah. And Rabbeinu Yonah has an entire book, Shaarei Teshuvah. Entire books on the subject were written by truly great Torah scholars, but they include so many details about teshuvah that sometimes you don’t know what is essential and what is a detail. What? Here, in a remarkable way, the Alter Rebbe explains it fundamentally. Chapter 1 of Igeres Hateshuvah asks: What is the Torah mitzvah of teshuvah? There you see its foundation. It is just one point. What is that point? You call it “abandoning sin,” but he explains that even the phrase “abandoning sin” doesn’t make it entirely clear what we have to do. Abandoning sin—what does that mean? Is it confession, supplication, remorse, a resolution? What exactly do we do? What defines it? He explains that abandoning sin means making a deeply genuine decision: I will no longer rebel against the King. That is the straightforward meaning; that is the Torah definition of teshuvah. It is the inner decision to tell the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, that a Jew is returning to Him. That is the most literal translation of the word teshuvah: returning to Him, coming back and reconnecting with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In other words, underlying every transgression is rebellion. Underlying every transgression is the fact that I am rebelling against the King. Teshuvah

14:58 means repairing that rebellion. In simple terms, this is called accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. Returning and accepting the yoke of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the essence of teshuvah. After that come the details: remorse, confession, and so on. Confession is also required by the Torah, but it is not the mitzvah of teshuvah itself. Confession is a detail within the mitzvah of teshuvah, according to the Alter Rebbe. There are, of course, extensive discussions of this in the revealed dimension of Torah. Anyone who studies the subject of teshuvah among the scholars of that dimension knows it isn’t so simple. In the Rambam, we see that he writes that the mitzvah is only confession. The Rambam seems to imply that there is no mitzvah of teshuvah; at first glance, the mitzvah is confession. At the beginning of his Laws of Teshuvah, the Rambam writes that people must confess, citing the verse “and they shall confess” from Parshas Naso. There is the Minchas Chinuch, and there are various ways to explain the Rambam’s position. The Rebbe has a sicha about this in Likkutei Sichos, volume 38, Parshas Naso—three approaches to explaining the Rambam’s position. At any rate, the Alter Rebbe says this explicitly, and it includes the Rambam’s position as well. According to the Rebbe, the Rambam also holds this way. Again, we won’t go into the revealed-Torah side of the subject now. In practice, the point the Alter Rebbe teaches us is that the mitzvah of teshuvah is abandoning sin. Then there is the completion of teshuvah. As we said about atonement, that requires additional things. One of them is fasting and self-denial. In chapters 2 and 3, the Alter Rebbe explains that in the time of the Beis Hamikdash there were offerings, and besides the offering for a sin, there was also an olah offering. The Gemara in Tractate Zevachim says that the olah was a gift brought to the king. When you want to be received by the king, besides the offering—besides the sin offerings—you also bring a gift. In our times, that corresponds to fasting.

17:02 After a person has done teshuvah, after saying vidui, he wants to be completely clean. So, to cleanse himself completely, so that no blemish, no trace, no impurity, and so on, remains—even though through teshuvah itself he will no longer be punished. But a Jew doesn’t just want to avoid punishment; he wants to be pleasing and beloved. To become pleasing and beloved requires fasts. The Alter Rebbe goes into the whole subject of fasts at length: how many fasts, which fasts, and so on. Then he says that in our generation, we must not undertake fasts, because we are a weak generation, and therefore we need to minimize self-afflicting fasts as much as possible. The main effort should be in tzedakah. With that, the Alter Rebbe concludes the first three chapters of Igeres Hateshuvah. That is the foundation of Igeres Hateshuvah: the first three chapters, according to the revealed dimension of Torah. Now, a vort from Reb Levik. As we mentioned, there is a vort from Reb Levik on chapter 3. I’ll say it briefly. The Alter Rebbe says there are two approaches. Some say that for every sin a person commits, he must undertake the number of fasts prescribed for that sin, just as with a sin offering. If a person did—We learned the subject, right? Someone who ate forbidden foods. If a person sinned unintentionally, he has to bring a sin offering, and if he became aware of it, then he has to—That is a full sin offering. If it happened again, he would have to bring another sin offering. For each separate sin, he has to bring a separate sin offering. With a burnt offering, on the other hand, no: one burnt offering can be brought for several matters. So this led to two approaches among the Kabbalists. If a person committed the same transgression several times, must he undertake fasts corresponding to each and every time, or one set for all the sins? It depends on whether you view it like a sin offering or like a burnt offering.

18:55 We need to understand that for ourselves. In any case, the Alter Rebbe offers a resolution—or rather, a reconciliation—and this reconciliation is not the Alter Rebbe’s own innovation. The Alter Rebbe also brings it from the Kabbalists: the reconciliation they accepted is three. Not for every instance, and not just once, but three times. In other words, even if a person committed a sin eleven times—the Alter Rebbe’s wording is “even if he sinned ten or twenty times.” The Alter Rebbe is speaking about the “known sin,” the sin of emitting seed in vain. The Alter Rebbe says that if a person sinned in this way “some ten or twenty times, for example,” and then adds, “and so on, indefinitely.” If a person, G-d forbid, stumbled in the matter of the known sin ten or twenty times, the question is whether he has to undertake ten or twenty sets of eighty-four fasts—which, as he explains here, means calculating the equivalent in tzedakah today—or just one set. And the Alter Rebbe reconciles the approaches: three sets, three times eighty-four, which is 252, as the Alter Rebbe explains. So Reb Levik focuses on the words “ten,” “twenty,” and “so on, indefinitely.” Why does the Alter Rebbe write these numbers? Ten, twenty, and so on, indefinitely—three expressions. “And so on, indefinitely” means even more, however many times it may be. It seems superfluous. Why does the Alter Rebbe need these examples, and why these numbers? So Reb Levik addresses this and says that we are speaking here about a very severe sin, as is known. The known sin is a sin that blemishes the soul, and so on. Reb Levik says that the blemish caused by the known sin is in the mind. The Alter Rebbe says this later in Igeres Hateshuvah, in chapter 9: the blemish caused by the known sin is connected with

20:49 the mind, because the whole matter of emitting seed in vain begins in the mind. So the blemish is in the letter yud of the Divine Name. That corresponds to the mind, to Chochmah. So the blemish is in the letter yud. That is why he says “ten”: ten is the letter yud. But there is the letter yud itself and there is the word spelling out its name, yud-vav-daled. That adds up to twenty. Right. So ten corresponds to the letter yud; twenty corresponds to its spelling, yud-vav-daled. And then, “and so on, indefinitely.” What does “indefinitely” mean? Because this spreads to the whole—the matter of the known sin reaches the entire soul, not just the letter yud. The blemish is in the entire—So that is why it says “and so on, indefinitely.” That, so to speak, is the meaning. That is what is written; that is all Reb Levik says. Well... all right, Kabbalah, as we said. The Rebbe comes along and develops an entire subject out of it. I’m only saying it very briefly. You have to study the sicha inside. It is a very fundamental sicha on the whole subject of teshuvah. And the Rebbe explains that these three expressions—ten, twenty, and so on, indefinitely—are not only an interpretation according to Kabbalah. They also explain why we need to do this three times. Why did the Alter Rebbe ultimately say three times? He says there is an approach that requires it for each sin, each time you commit the sin. Another approach says once, and the third approach, which the Alter Rebbe rules according to, says three times. Why three times? Why three times? What is the basis for that reconciliation? So the Alter Rebbe brings this from the Zohar. The Zohar says that when a person causes a blemish, sins, commits a transgression once, he makes a stain. If he does it twice, the stain sinks in; and the third time, it penetrates completely. These are striking words too. But what do they mean? What is the explanation? So the main point of the Rebbe’s explanation is

22:53 that whenever a person commits a transgression, there are actually three aspects. With every transgression a person commits, there is the transgression itself. Every transgression is connected with a particular limb, right? A transgression is connected with a limb, and that limb becomes blemished. So there is the transgression itself, the essential point of that particular sin. Let’s say, for example, a person spoke lashon hara. Okay, so he committed a transgression connected with speech, with the tongue. Okay, so he blemished his tongue. There is the actual sin of lashon hara, but every limb contains something of all the other limbs. It says that there are 248 limbs, right, and that all the limbs are interconnected. So when you blemish the tongue, there is also a blemish in all the limbs as they are included in the tongue. That is a second blemish: all the limbs as they are present within the tongue. Then there is a third thing, the reverse. The tongue is also present in all the limbs. Just as all the limbs are included in the tongue, so the tongue also extends into—it has a connection with all the limbs; it is present in all the limbs. So, with a sin, it turns out that there are three blemishes: the essential point of the sin; the inclusion of the other limbs within that sin; and the way that sin is included in the other limbs. These are three aspects, and accordingly, those are the three expressions: ten, twenty, and indefinitely. They correspond to these three aspects: the blemish of the sin itself, the inclusion of the limbs in that blemish, and the spread of the blemish through all the limbs. And that is why three sets of fasts are needed, and so on. The Rebbe explains in the sicha that, broadly speaking, this applies to every matter. In any case, there is a lengthy discussion of it. You have to look at it inside. The Rebbe goes on to explain what it means that there is the essential point of the sin

25:02 and there are its particular details. We don’t have time for it, but it’s interesting. And the Rebbe explains why the Alter Rebbe brings this specifically in connection with the known sin: because the Rambam writes, regarding the sin of emitting seed in vain, that all the faculties of the soul are involved in it, since the whole matter of seed is connected with the entire body, and all the faculties of the soul are present in this sin. The Rambam explains in Hilchos Dei’os that this sin causes a blemish throughout. Therefore, it is especially in this sin that you can see how, on the one hand, it has the blemish itself, the essential blemish of the sin, which is severe; the inclusion of all the limbs within this sin; and the way this sin also spreads through all the limbs. So it turns out that Reb Levik’s Kabbalistic vort has a complete explanation that brings us to the broader subject of Igeres Hateshuvah. And as is well known, as the Rebbe writes there, one of the reasons the Alter Rebbe wrote Igeres Hateshuvah was to help chassidim, particularly with rectifying the known sin. Because this is a sin that is difficult to overcome. It is something rooted in human nature. Passion and desire are part of human nature; it is difficult to overcome them. And so the Alter Rebbe, whose way is to extend a hand and give every single person the strength to make amends, wrote it for that purpose. That is why the Rebbe writes that the very study of Igeres Hateshuvah also helps rectify the known sin. The Rebbe once said—yes—that there is a maamar in Toras Shalom from 5668, around the time the Rebbe began [unclear]. Yes, it’s in—It’s in Toras Shalom 5668. The maamar beginning “Hayosheves Baganim,” if I’m not mistaken. Toras Shalom 5668. There the Rebbe says that Igeres Hateshuvah as a whole was written to help chassidim rectify these matters.

27:03 of the known sin. So studying Tanya itself, and studying Igeres Hateshuvah, is also part of the rectification and of the whole matter. We know—we’ve spoken about this already—that the Rebbe would always write to young men about this, telling them not to be afraid and not to occupy themselves with rectifications. They should put it out of their minds, because the fear and the thoughts themselves, and so on, can lead to the sin. So they should not dwell on it at all. They should focus on their avodah and on studying Torah, both Nigleh and Chassidus. Nevertheless, especially when Rosh Hashanah approaches, in the months of Elul and Tishrei, it is an appropriate time to study Igeres Hateshuvah, to work at it and understand it. Besides the need to put what it says into practice, the Rebbe writes that the study itself is also part of the overall rectification, part of the atonement.