The secret of the service of prayer - Chapter 12 - Part Three

00:00 We’re in the middle of chapter 12. We didn’t have time in the previous class to explain this passage by the Alter Rebbe. We read it inside, but we didn’t explain it. Here the Alter Rebbe explains what happens to a beinoni during prayer. Chapter 12 is where the Alter Rebbe explains what a beinoni is. The Alter Rebbe says that a beinoni is someone who, on the one hand, “has not committed a sin and will not commit one,” as we explained. In other words, he is now in a state where he is so strongly connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu that any thought of sin is completely out of the question for him. “He has not committed a sin and will not commit one.” So when it comes to actual conduct—thought, speech, and action, all 248 limbs and 365 sinews—the divine soul is the sole master. But he is still only a beinoni. Why? Because when it comes to his inner faculties, the essence of the soul—its ten faculties—he does not have complete control. There is a struggle. Yes, that’s the point. But the Alter Rebbe says here that there is a time when the beinoni does have control and mastery even over his inner faculties: the time of prayer. In other words, there is a time of day when even a beinoni can be like a tzaddik, to the point that it becomes very hard to understand exactly what distinguishes a tzaddik from a beinoni during prayer. With Hashem’s help, we’ll understand the difference later. But in practice, there is a time when the beinoni succeeds in turning even his mind and heart, his intellect and emotions, his inner faculties, entirely toward Hashem. The Alter Rebbe explains that this is especially true at the time of Shema, because Shema is when a Jew awakens his love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the main purpose of Shema. Through contemplating the oneness of Hashem, a person is stirred

02:04 to the love expressed in “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul.” This is said about the beinoni too. And this love gives him pleasure, vitality, and a sense of closeness; it makes him want to fulfill mitzvos in order to cleave to Hashem, as it says in Shema: “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” And how do I express that love? “And these words, which I command you today, shall be...” That means Torah and mitzvos, tefillin and mezuzah—everything mentioned in the continuation of Shema. That is what Shema is about. But besides Shema itself, we also recite the blessings of Shema. So the Alter Rebbe asks here: What are the blessings for? Shema itself is meant to awaken love. What is the purpose of its blessings? The Alter Rebbe says that the blessings before and after it, which were instituted by the Sages, prepare us to fulfill Shema. What is their purpose? To prepare us to fulfill Shema, [unclear]. We need to understand what that means. What does it mean that the blessings of Shema prepare us to fulfill Shema? Now, we generally know that every mitzvah has its own blessing. When a Jew washes his hands, he first says, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the washing of hands.” When he puts on tefillin, he says, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to put on tefillin.” Every mitzvah has a blessing before it. What exactly is the purpose of that blessing? We know that blessings are rabbinic. They are one of the seven rabbinic mitzvos. Torah law requires us to perform a mitzvah; the Sages instituted blessings as one of the ten—one of the seven rabbinic mitzvos. Why did the Sages tell us to recite blessings? Chassidus explains that there is the mitzvah itself, which fulfills Hashem’s will, and there is also the divine flow drawn down through the mitzvah. Every mitzvah draws down G-dliness. That, after all, is the purpose of mitzvos. A mitzvah is not just an obligation; the intent is that through

04:08 the mitzvah, G-dliness should be drawn down into the world. “For a mitzvah is a lamp, and Torah is light.” Mitzvos act like a lamp that brings light. This lower world is a world of darkness, and mitzvos draw G-dliness into it. To enable a Jew to draw G-dliness into the world in a revealed way—so that what the mitzvah draws down does not remain hidden—the Sages instituted blessings. This is explained in the maamarim that discuss blessings: the purpose is for that divine flow to be revealed. Sometimes you may draw something down, but it remains hidden. It is like the example Rabbi Chaim Vital gives: you build a house, but there is no light inside. The house is there; everything is there, but it lacks light. It lacks revelation. The point of drawing down G-dliness is that it should not remain hidden but should be revealed. Blessings have the power to accomplish that, and that is why the Sages instituted them. The Sages wanted to give a Jew the ability to bring what he accomplishes through a mitzvah into the open. That is why they instituted blessings over mitzvos, and that is why the blessings are worded as they are: “Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe.” If we consider the wording of the blessings, especially in light of the insights of Chassidus, we understand that this is their meaning. “Blessed” refers to drawing down; “You” refers to the Divine Essence; “Hashem” refers to the light that encompasses all worlds; “our G-d” means the King of all worlds. In other words, we draw down from the Divine Essence through the entire order of spiritual worlds, down to “King of the universe,” until it reaches this physical world below. Putting on tefillin draws down the divine flow associated with tefillin, and washing hands draws down the divine flow associated with washing hands. Now we come to Shema, and we see something interesting. Before Shema, we do not say a blessing, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to recite Shema.” There is no such blessing. That is not how its blessings are worded. So what are

05:59 the blessings of Shema? The Sages instituted two before it and one after it in the morning, and two before it and two after it in the evening. There are seven blessings we recite in connection with Shema: three in the morning and four at night. “Seven times a day I praise You.” The Gemara derives from this that the Sages instituted seven blessings for Shema, but they do not say, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us.” What do they have to do with Shema? That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying: they prepare us to fulfill Shema. What did the Sages intend? What did we say Shema is about? This, this, this. From this, we need to learn how to—how to explain Chassidus. In any case, what is the point here? The purpose of Shema, as we said, is to awaken love of Hashem. For the beinoni—for every Jew who comes to Shema—the goal is “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might”: for a Jew to be stirred with love of Hashem. To reach love of Hashem, we learned in chapter 9, that love is awakened through contemplation. That is how things work: contemplation awakens love. So we need, we need, we need something to contemplate. “Hear, O Israel” is only one verse, and “You shall love” is two verses. The Sages saw this. As explained in Likkutei Torah on Shir Hashirim, there was a time when one verse was enough: a person would say “Hear, O Israel” and be stirred with love. He needed nothing more. But over the generations, the Sages saw that for a Jew to be stirred with love, he needed more than one verse. He needed to contemplate many other ideas. That is the purpose of the blessings of Shema. The blessings of Shema tell us: when you contemplate what they say—how all of creation is nullified before G-dliness; how the angels, the seraphim, and the ofanim say “Holy,”

08:11 “Holy”—the seraphim throughout the entire order of creation. And then, within this itself, there is the special quality of the Jewish soul: “With abundant love You have loved us.” So contemplating the blessings before Shema is a preparation. It helps a person say “Shema Yisroel” with much more inward feeling, much more enthusiasm, and more vitality. In particular, as explained in the maamarim, in the writings on Tanya, and in Hemshech 5666—in one of the maamarim that discusses this at length—contemplating the blessings before Shema has a special effect on the animal soul as well. For the G-dly soul, “Shema Yisroel” is enough; it needs nothing more, because the G-dly soul loves Hashem by nature. But you want to affect the animal soul. After all, we are talking here about the beinoni. The beinoni tries to refine the animal soul. He cannot accomplish that completely, but in prayer, his aim is to bring about an inner refinement in the animal soul too, so that it too will be stirred to love: “with all your heart”—with both your inclinations. That comes through contemplating the heavenly chariot, the seraphim, and the ofanim. Why is this described in the blessings? Because the source of the animal soul comes from the angels. As is known, the source of the animal soul is the animal in the heavenly chariot; it comes from the angels. So when the animal soul contemplates that, before descending here below, it was among the living beings of the heavenly chariot and had a love for Hashem—there it cried out “Holy, holy,” and “Blessed”—that helps awaken a love for Hashem in the animal soul here below as well. This is what the Alter Rebbe means when he says that it is a preparation for reciting Shema. And the same applies to the blessing after Shema: it also gives that love staying power. First, though, you have to prepare. That is what the blessing beforehand does.

10:09 You contemplate how the angels say “Holy” and “Blessed.” What is the difference between “Holy” and “Blessed”? Then you contemplate the Jewish soul—“With abundant love You have loved us”—how Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves it, and “as water reflects a face.” The Alter Rebbe explains this at length in Tanya, in the chapters where he discusses the subject. But what happens after Shema? After Shema, we do not want that feeling to fly away. A person has been stirred to love, but afterward that love can fade—“as it was swallowed, so it is expelled.” Just as it came, it can go. So the passages, the blessings we say after Shema—“True and firm,” and so on, and at night, “True and faithful”—are meant to take that contemplation and give it staying power. What does it say there? “Firm and right and enduring and upright”: this whole matter becomes part of my reality. You make it endure; you give it permanence. So this is what the Alter Rebbe means when he says that the blessings before and after Shema prepare us for the fulfillment of Shema: they help ensure that at least an impression of the love for Hashem remains after prayer. The Alter Rebbe will go on to say that, in order for the beinoni to be able to fight the animal soul afterward, he needs at least an impression—some memory, some trace of the feeling he experienced. So the blessings of Shema help a person make his spiritual achievement last throughout the day as well. That is what the Alter Rebbe is saying here. There is a story connected with this. When the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva was established, the Rebbe Rashab, of blessed memory, made a special effort to educate the Temimim in the avodah of prayer. That is why he wrote Kuntres Hatefillah and Kuntres Haavodah. In those booklets he explains at length what one should contemplate in each part of prayer: what to contemplate in Hodu, in Pesukei Dezimrah,

12:07 in the blessings before Shema, and in Shema. Those are the booklets the Rebbe Rashab wrote about contemplation. There is a story that the Rebbe Rashab once told one of the Temimim, in connection with contemplating during prayer, that the main thing is to train yourself to find the progression of ideas in the prayers. If you do not understand what is going on in the prayers, it can seem as though there are many verses constantly repeating the same thing in different words. But the truth is that there is a progression of ideas. What is this chapter about, and what is the next chapter about? There is a sequence here. It is not just a few verses mixed together to make a prayer. It is not simply that they repeat it again; rather, every chapter adds another idea. So the Rebbe Rashab explained to him that if a person wants to be stirred, to have feeling and vitality in prayer, it helps to know the progression of ideas in the prayers. He told him that this is particularly easy to see in the blessings of Shema, because they have a clear progression. And in Tanya, in chapters 46, 47, 48, and 49—the chapters about “as water reflects a face”—we indeed see that the Alter Rebbe explains this entire progression, particularly in chapter 49. What is happening there? Why do we begin with the seraphim and ofanim, then move to “With an everlasting love,” and then reach “Shema Yisroel” and “You shall love”? When you understand the progression of ideas, you know what is happening, where you are going, and what the direction and goal are. Incidentally, the Alter Rebbe continues here and says: “But after prayer, when the expansive awareness of the Infinite, blessed be He, departs”—that awareness is present during prayer. So during prayer, the beinoni succeeds in transforming even his mind and heart

14:05 But that is something special to prayer. “But after prayer, when the expansive awareness of the Infinite, blessed be He, departs”—when that expansive awareness we spoke about in the previous lesson goes away—“the evil returns and awakens in the left side of the heart, desiring the desires and pleasures of this world.” He is not a tzaddik; he is a beinoni. How is the fact that he is a beinoni and not a tzaddik expressed? The moment he finishes praying, the love no longer remains as it was during prayer. He begins the struggle again. This explains the central difference between the tzaddik and the beinoni. As we discussed when we studied the tzaddik in chapter 10, a tzaddik is someone whose love for Hashem has penetrated him so deeply that anything not connected with G-dliness is repulsive to him, out of the question. And if something is repulsive to you, it makes no difference whether it is ten in the morning, twelve noon, or four in the afternoon. Something repulsive is repulsive twenty-four hours a day. Here too, there is a difference between a tzaddik who still has some evil and a tzaddik who is wholly good. For the former, it is repulsive in practice; for the latter, it is repulsive in its very essence. But they have this in common: it is repulsive. Something repulsive, something that is simply out of the question—yes? He has no attraction to it. That is why he has no struggle even after prayer. With the beinoni, by contrast, the animal soul is still there. It has not gone away. It is just that during prayer, because of his expansive awareness, his contemplation, and that time of connection, he managed to suppress the animal soul as well. Now the animal soul is still with him. And the Rebbe will explain in the next chapter: this is real; it is not false or imaginary. It is genuine,

15:56 But that is not the absolute truth. We will learn more about this later. And so the Alter Rebbe says that after davening, once the heightened awareness passes, his desire for the pleasures and delights of this world awakens again. Why isn’t he a rasha? That is what the Alter Rebbe explains now: “Only because he does not have sole authority to rule and govern the city.” As we said, the animal soul has indeed awakened, but it is not in charge. It cannot bring its desires from potential into action. Since the animal soul has no control, those desires do not come to fruition. In thought, speech, and action, he is still a beinoni; he remains in charge, as we discussed. It has not happened and will not happen. So when it comes to actual conduct, it is the G-dly soul that controls the body. But the animal soul can still stir a person and draw him toward desires. Yes. “Only because he does not have sole authority to rule and govern the city, he cannot bring his desires from potential into action, to be expressed through the limbs of the body in actual action, speech, or thought—to dwell in thought on the pleasures of this world and on how to satisfy the desires of his heart.” It is very interesting to look at the Alter Rebbe’s wording here. The Alter Rebbe says that the animal soul cannot take control of a person’s body and bring its desires from potential into action. The Alter Rebbe’s wording is interesting: “in actual action, speech, or thought.” Why does he add the word “actual”? What is that word doing here? Action, speech, or thought—what does “actual” mean here? The Alter Rebbe himself explains. “Actual” qualifies the word “thought.” It is interesting; we have to read it carefully: “actual thought.” “Actual” goes with “thought”—to dwell in thought on the pleasures of this world. In other words, there is a very fundamental point here about understanding what defines a beinoni. A beinoni is someone who may have an improper thought occur to him.

18:24 It is not as people think, that a beinoni has no improper musings at all, no improper thoughts. A beinoni can have an improper thought occur to him. The Alter Rebbe says this more explicitly later in Tanya. In chapter 27, the Alter Rebbe says that one of the things a beinoni experiences is improper thoughts and desires. Having improper thoughts and desires does not mean you are no longer a beinoni. Why not? Didn’t we say that being a beinoni applies to thought as well? The Alter Rebbe is precise here: “actual thought.” There is a difference between a thought that simply occurs and actual thought. “Actual thought” means dwelling on it. For a beinoni, immersing himself in something improper is out of the question. But having an improper thought occur to him without dwelling on it—well, that is part of... He has a yetzer hara; he has an animal soul. And if he has an animal soul, what does the animal soul do? It throws an improper thought at him. So the fact that an improper thought occurs to him does not mean that he is no longer a beinoni. He is still a beinoni. That is simply human nature: a person who has an animal soul will certainly have improper thoughts occur to him. But what does “actual” mean? That he dwells on it, that he willingly takes it up—that, G-d forbid, is out of the question for him. As the Alter Rebbe will also say at the end of this chapter, chapter 12, willingly embracing it in his heart is out of the question for a beinoni. But an improper thought can occur to him against his will. That is why he is a beinoni and not a tzaddik. Yet when it comes to his actual conduct—in thought, speech, and action—he is in charge. How, in fact, does a beinoni have the ability to overcome it? What gives a beinoni the strength to overcome it? What gives a beinoni the strength to overcome his—his thought,

20:25 speech, and action? I mean, on the one hand, you say he has two souls, he has a struggle, and he has desires. How does he actually manage to overcome them in practice? What gives him the strength? So the Alter Rebbe continues now and says, “For the mind rules over the heart.” Here we come to the foundation of all of Tanya, the key principle of the Alter Rebbe’s Tanya. The Alter Rebbe revealed this idea that the mind rules over the heart: if you know yourself—a person needs to know his strengths, to know the abilities he has, as the Rebbe says in Hayom Yom. We recently learned a Hayom Yom like this, where the Alter Rebbe said that the beginning of avodah is [unclear]—that the beginning of avodah is to make use of one’s natural abilities. That is the ability of the mind to rule over the heart; it is something inherent in our nature. “The mind rules over the heart,” as it says in Raya Mehemna, Parshas Pinchas, “by his birth and the nature of his creation.” It is part of a person’s inborn nature that the mind governs the heart. So even for a beinoni, because of this, the decision, the will, and the thought in the mind have the power to control the heart’s desires that come from the animal soul. Consequently, he can be a beinoni in thought, speech, and action. This brings us back to what we learned here: the Alter Rebbe emphasizes the distinction between the beinoni throughout the day and the beinoni during davening, when he contemplates and brings himself to feel love for Hashem as well. This explains the point. One of the things we see in the avodah of Chassidus—starting with the Alter Rebbe—is how much the Alter Rebbe spoke about spending a long time in davening. After him, all the Rebbeim spoke about spending a long time in davening. It is because of the very point the Alter Rebbe teaches us

22:41 here. In other words, the Alter Rebbe explains that serving Hashem is not just about being a good Jew in practice. It is true that a beinoni’s thought, speech, and action are the main thing; that is the goal. But there is also an intention and a purpose that a person should work on his inner self, refining his mind and heart as well. And when is the time when you have the opportunity to do that? Primarily during davening. That is why chassidim placed such importance on spending a long time in davening, contemplating during davening, and giving davening plenty of time. It is in order to bring the G-dly light and inner strength into one’s intellect and emotions. That is the ultimate purpose of the soul’s descent into this world: to refine the body and the animal soul, not only in actual conduct, not only in thought, speech, and action, but also in the depths of one’s heart, so that it penetrates one’s inner faculties as well.