Tanya Chapter 32 - Part 3

00:00 We’re here in Tanya, chapter 32, at the words “And therefore, those who make their bodies primary.” Up to this point, the Alter Rebbe has explained how a person can work on himself to have genuine Ahavas Yisroel, so that he will “love your fellow as yourself—every Jewish soul, from the greatest to the least.” This comes about by making the soul primary and the body secondary. Once the soul is primary for him, then, from the perspective of the soul, all Jews are one, with all the explanations of “one” that we discussed in the previous class. So the Alter Rebbe concludes, “And therefore, those who make their bodies primary and their souls secondary.” A person who isn’t at that level, but the opposite—the body is what matters most to him, and the soul is secondary. In other words, bodily matters, external things, appearances—those are what matter most to him, while the soul remains concealed, like something secondary. There cannot be true love and brotherhood between them. There cannot be genuine Ahavas Yisroel there, only a—sorry—a love that depends on something. What kind of Ahavas Yisroel does he have? A love that depends on something. What does that mean? We all know what Pirkei Avos says: there are two kinds of love. There is love that depends on something, and love that does not depend on anything. Love that depends on something and love that does not depend on anything. The love of David and Yonasan is called a love that does not depend on anything. The love of Amnon and Tamar is a love that depends on something. Now, in the plain meaning, as we learn Pirkei Avos, “depends on something” means material motives, motives rooted in ego. Right? That’s the straightforward meaning. Amnon’s love for Tamar depended on external things. Right? Because it was—it was a coarse love, a selfish love, a love bound up with ego. When love is tied to personal calculations, right?

02:20 Then it isn’t true love, and it cannot last. Once the thing it depends on disappears, the love ends. By contrast, love that does not depend on anything is true love. But according to what the Alter Rebbe explains here, as we’ve been discussing throughout the previous classes, even on a subtler, more spiritual level, love that depends on something is love tied to reason and understanding, to intellect, to an explanation, to someone’s virtues. If you connect with another Jew on the basis of some calculation—whatever the calculation may be, even one based on his virtues—right? Then, as soon as it’s tied to a calculation, it’s a love that depends on something. Your love lasts only as long as that person has those virtues. Once he no longer has them, the love will end. In contrast, essential love is a love that cannot be interrupted, that is not subject to a shortcoming or imperfection. Love based on the fact that a Jew has “a part of G-d above” is something that cannot change. So when a person makes the soul primary, that is true love. It is a love in full force that cannot be nullified, because it does not depend on any reason or understanding. It comes from the very fact that he is a Jew; that essence is something intrinsic, something that cannot change or cease. But if the body is primary, then the love, too, is tied to calculations, virtues, explanations, and reasons. Such love cannot last. Here the Alter Rebbe emphasizes a very important point that we need to understand: why does he keep emphasizing both sides? Even earlier, when he described how to arrive at true love, the emphasis was that it comes through

04:11 one’s body being despised and repulsive, while “who can know the greatness of the soul and spirit?” Two things are needed: the body must be despised and repulsive, and the soul must be primary for him. Then there can be Ahavas Yisroel. We might ask: for Ahavas Yisroel, the soul needs to be primary. Why does the body need to be despised and repulsive? After all, the whole point of the Alter Rebbe’s explanation seems to be that true love, genuine Ahavas Yisroel, is possible when the soul itself is what matters most. Once the soul is important to you, and from the perspective of the soul we are all one essence, that produces an essential love. So why emphasize the negative as well? Why isn’t it enough to emphasize only the positive, to speak only about the soul? Since the soul is primary for me, I have true love. The Alter Rebbe implies that this isn’t enough. The body must also be despised and repulsive. Why does that matter? It’s true that the Alter Rebbe spoke about this in chapter 31. We come here after chapters 29 and 30, where the Alter Rebbe discussed at length why a person should regard himself as despised and repulsive, right? And only after chapter 31 did we reach the conclusion that, after all of that, there is joy of the soul. True, that is the sequence of the chapters. But the Alter Rebbe’s wording here implies that this is relevant to Ahavas Yisroel. For you to have true love, it isn’t enough that the soul be primary for you. The body must be despised and repulsive. And likewise, on the other side, when the Alter Rebbe says that a person makes his body primary and his soul secondary, he again mentions two things: his body is primary and his soul is secondary. What is the emphasis here? The explanation is that, for genuine Ahavas Yisroel to be possible, there are two things involved. There is how one looks at a Jew. Yes, I’m a Jew, you’re a Jew, so we are one essence, and that leads to true love. As Jews, there is nothing separating us. There is

06:27 Again, just as the love I have for myself is an essential love, I’m a Jew and you are part of that same essence, so that produces true love. But the thing is that Ahavas Yisroel has to have an effect not only on matters of the soul. Ahavas Yisroel has to have an effect on bodily matters—and indeed, not merely there as well, but primarily there. Where do the problems mostly arise? In bodily matters. Right? Usually it’s about jealousy, hatred, competition. Why does my friend have nicer clothes than I do? Why does my friend have more money than I do? Why does my friend have more material things? And similarly, when people are involved in business and all sorts of other matters, the question arises: Why should the other person have it and not me? As the Rebbe once said about a din Torah. The Rebbe once spoke about this: why is it that when there is a question about the laws of treif, we go to just one rabbi? That’s how it is in halachah. Right? A person has a question about an animal, a bird, the laws of kashrus, family purity—laws involving very serious matters. You go to a rabbi and ask, and he says kosher or treif. But when it comes to monetary law, where the level of prohibition is lower—the Torah’s prohibitions can carry lashes, kareis, and much greater punishments; the Torah treats them as far more severe—one rabbi’s answer is enough. Yet in monetary cases they say no, there have to be three; there has to be a beis din. What’s going on? But the Rebbe once said that it’s very simple. When I come with a bird or a piece of meat or a question about the laws, it’s my personal question: may I eat it or not? The rabbi says no, and that’s that. But when it comes to monetary law, there are already two people involved. So

08:47 here it’s no longer just my personal question. It’s about who is going to win and who is going to lose. What a person isn’t prepared to accept is that the other person will win. If it were only a question about myself, I’m prepared to lose. People are prepared to lose. Look, you go to a rabbi. The rabbi says this meat has to go in the garbage. I take it and put it in the garbage. That’s that. It isn’t pleasant or easy. But for the other person to get it—oh, that’s already hard. Here you need a whole beis din. That’s how it is; it’s a trait of a Jew. So the whole subject of Ahavas Yisroel isn’t just about Ahavas Yisroel in matters of the soul. We want Ahavas Yisroel to extend to bodily matters. Ahavas Yisroel has to extend to bodily matters. That is why one’s body must also be despised and repulsive in one’s eyes. Simply having a soul that is a part of G-d is not enough. That’s all well and good as far as our spiritual connection goes, but if the body occupies an important place for you, that’s where the problem will arise. You won’t be able to connect with him. That is why the Alter Rebbe requires both things. When one’s body is despised and repulsive in one’s eyes, then bodily matters don’t matter so much to him, and he can readily give way. He has no problem with it. He can genuinely be happy that the other person has something, without all the jealousy, hatred, competition, and so on. And when the soul is primary, the love is like love for oneself. So both things are needed. Just a few words. And with this, the Alter Rebbe says, we can understand what Hillel the Elder said about this mitzvah: “This is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary,” and so on. Now the Alter Rebbe comes to a remarkable point, one of the most fundamental ideas in Chassidus. The Alter Rebbe now says that, based on this, we can understand something very, very important,

10:49 That is a teaching of our Sages. But according to the Alter Rebbe’s explanation, this teaching takes on a particularly wonderful meaning. We all know the story of Hillel the Elder. A prospective convert came to him and wanted to convert while standing on one foot. Shammai sent him away—threw him out. And what did Hillel do? Hillel told him what is written here: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. This is the entire Torah; the rest is its explanation.” All the commentators ask: Why is Ahavas Yisroel the entire Torah? The Torah has mitzvos between one person and another, and mitzvos between a person and Hashem. So it is not the entire Torah; it is half the Torah. Many mitzvos relate to Ahavas Yisroel, and all of them relate to “Love your fellow as yourself.” But putting on tefillin does not. [unclear] Tzitzis, kashrus—there are many mitzvos that have no apparent connection to Ahavas Yisroel. Why is it the entire Torah? Rashi also raises this question. Rashi, in the commentary on the parsha, says this is Rabbi Akiva’s teaching. [unclear] So here the Alter Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation. It is a central principle in Chassidus, showing us why Ahavas Yisroel is so deep and so fundamental—why, as we discussed, it is the heart of Tanya. The Alter Rebbe gives two explanations here, and they complement each other. I’ll read what it says. The Alter Rebbe says: “For the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul above the body, higher and higher, to the Source

13:03 and Root of all worlds.” That is one explanation. Why is Ahavas Yisroel the entire Torah? Because what is the entire Torah about? Raising the soul above the body. All 613 mitzvos—whether between one person and another or between a person and Hashem—are, in their essence and innermost point, about a Jew making the spiritual prevail over the physical. In the familiar expression, allowing form to prevail over matter. As it says several times in Hayom Yom: allowing form to prevail over matter. A Jew has a body, and the body is material and physical. The Jew’s purpose is to make form prevail over matter. In other words, a Jew must elevate the spiritual. You take something physical, lift it out of its material state, and make a mitzvah out of it. You elevate it. You take the physical and lift it beyond its physicality, turning it into something G-dly. In the Alter Rebbe’s words, this is “to raise and elevate the soul above the body”—to elevate the spiritual above the physical. This is one of the things always mentioned about Matan Torah. What happened at Matan Torah? There was smoke: “Mount Sinai was entirely in smoke.” It was a revelation of G-dliness in the physical, expressed through the smoke. Refinement means taking the material and burning it away. That is the whole point of serving Hashem: refining the physical through our avodah, so that the soul governs the body and makes something spiritual out of the physical. As the Rebbe says in Hayom Yom, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world from nothing into something, and a Jew makes something into nothing—makes the physical spiritual. That is the whole purpose of our avodah. What does it mean, in a person, for the soul to rise above the body? “To raise

15:18 and elevate the soul above the body, to the Source and Root of all worlds.” With the words “to the Source and Root of all worlds,” the Alter Rebbe means that there can be many degrees of elevation. You can raise the soul above the body a little or a great deal. So the Alter Rebbe says, “to the Source and Root of all worlds.” In other words, we must reveal the spiritual and elevate the soul above the body to the very highest levels, to the Source and Root of all worlds. The ascent reaches through the entire order of creation; it is not limited to the physical. By fulfilling Torah, a Jew brings about an ascent throughout the entire order of creation, all the way to its highest level, the ultimate purpose of all the worlds. That is one approach. We will soon see that there is another aspect to this, but this is the first approach. So what is the central point here? How does this explain Hillel’s statement that “this is the entire Torah”? The meaning, it seems, is that Ahavas Yisroel is the test of whether you have grasped the point of Torah and mitzvos. That is apparently what the Alter Rebbe is saying. Ahavas Yisroel shows that the soul is primary and the body secondary. So when a Jew works on the mitzvah of Ahavas Yisroel, he has the entire Torah—not only the mitzvah against gossip. For the entire Torah is about making the spiritual more important to you than the physical, and turning the physical into something spiritual. You make something into nothing. What is the test of whether the spiritual is primary for you and the physical secondary? Ahavas Yisroel. That is why Ahavas Yisroel is the entire Torah. That is the first explanation. There is a second explanation as well, but we will leave it for the next class.