The ninetieth "cheder" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Thursday, 20 Adar I, 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Ki Tisa, chamishi, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, the 20th of the month, one says from chapter 97 through chapter 103 inclusive.
Tanya, we are in the middle of chapter 30, from the words "va'afilu bivchinas". The shiur concludes on page 39 with the words "v'shanah ku'".
Today's teaching is unique, even rare in its style within the whole body of the Hayom Yom teachings. As is known, all the teachings were taken from sichos, from maamarim and from words of the Rebbe Rayatz. But in our case we have before us a very short exchange that took place between the Rebbe Rayatz and the Rebbe, and it is written very briefly - it is a short quotation that the Rebbe wrote for himself in his diary of the words that were said between them.
Since the exchange is very brief, and contains no lengthy explanation, the matter remains something that requires study and clarification in the depth of the subject; but let us try to understand as much as we can what is written here. In the original, in the Rebbe's diary, the teaching opens with a short sentence: the Rebbe Rayatz turned to the Rebbe and said "a pearl has been added" - there is a new pearl; that is, he was about to tell him a pearl. These opening words the Rebbe omitted from the daily teaching, and brought only the pearl itself.
The wording, in the original Yiddish, and in translation: "The meaning of 'avodah' is not that 'avodah' should be with truth, for truth is an avodah in its own right". Generally speaking, there is avodas Hashem which is varied across all sorts of areas - between a person and Hashem, between a person and his fellow, and in many matters - and usually the demand upon a person is that whatever he does he should do with truth; meaning, that the thing should not be external, not for the sake of some interest and not out of calculations, but that he should do it truthfully and be invested in what he does. According to this, "truth" is only a description of the intensity of the avodah you are doing - you daven, you do a kindness with someone, whatever it may be - make an effort that it should be with truth; but truth is not a concept in its own right, rather it attaches itself to the action being done.
Comes the Rebbe Rayatz and says: that is not the pearl. The avodah is not that the avodah should be with truth, rather truth itself is the avodah; the avodah is that the concept of truth should be fixed within our soul. In the teaching itself there is no explanation of what is meant by "truth itself", but it is possible to explain it: there is in Tanya, in Iggeres HaKodesh, an entire letter, letter 6, which comes to explain what truth is. There the Alter Rebbe explains the verse about tzedakah whose reward is "truth", and he explains that "truth" is a divine revelation - actual Elokus, as it is written "the truth of Hashem is forever". That is, that you should have the divine revelation, and it does not matter in what form it will be expressed and what the deed will be, but rather the sense of truth itself. There is no explicit explanation here, but perhaps it can be explained according to that letter, and certainly there is much more here than that.
And he added another sentence: "that even the fingernail should be truth" - that everything should be permeated with the concept of truth. Even the fingernails, which are generally the most trivial, external and lowest thing there is in a person - they too should be truth. That is, that truth should penetrate into the essence and the soul of the Jew, until there does not remain even one point that is not in its essence an expression of truth.
After the Rebbe Rayatz said this to the Rebbe, apparently there was visible on the Rebbe's face amazement and astonishment at the intensity of the demand. The Rebbe Rayatz said to him: "Why are you amazed?" - why are you so astonished and wondering at this demand? Reading the teaching one does not clearly understand what is happening here, but this is a sentence that the Rebbe Rayatz asked the Rebbe, and afterward he went on and showed him that this concept does indeed exist - and although it arouses amazement, the concept itself exists.
And where do we see this? He said to him: it is written in the Gemara in Maseches Sanhedrin (111a) that Moshe Rabbeinu "saw the attribute of truth and fell on his face". And this concept is written specifically in parshas Ki Tisa - which is the parshah of the shiur of that Thursday. It is written there about Moshe Rabbeinu "and Moshe hastened and bowed to the ground and prostrated himself" - that he fell on his face. The Gemara in Sanhedrin 111 asks: what did Moshe see that caused him to fall on his face? And in the Gemara there are two opinions, and in the second opinion it says: "the Rabbanan say he saw truth" - he saw the truth, and therefore he fell on his face.
What is the plain meaning in the Gemara? When one learns it simply, as Rashi explains: Moshe Rabbeinu at that occasion asked on behalf of the Jewish people, regarding the sin of the golden calf, that the Holy One Blessed be He should forgive them, and then he saw the attribute of truth. And what is the attribute of truth? Rashi explains that he saw that among the divine attributes there is the attribute of truth, and he feared that if, chas v'shalom, the Jewish people must be punished, there is no way whatsoever to nullify it - because it is true, and truth goes all the way. So Rashi explains.
But apparently the Rebbe Rayatz explains the Gemara on a deeper level - that the meaning is that Moshe Rabbeinu saw the attribute of truth itself, the divine revelation of the attribute of truth, and this caused him to fall on his face, out of amazement, descent and falling. And so we see in one of the Rebbe's maamarim, "Karov Hashem l'chol kor'av l'chol asher yikra'uhu be'emes", which he said on Shavuos 5698: that truth is something very lofty, and we find several times by Moshe Rabbeinu "and he fell on his face", and the meaning is that since he saw the attribute of truth, he fell on his face from the very concept of the attribute of truth. And this too is the amazement that the Rebbe was astonished and amazed by here; the Rebbe Rayatz says that there is a concept here, that indeed the Rebbe was amazed and astonished by the fact that he saw the attribute of truth.
In conclusion, the connection between this teaching and the sequence of subjects according to the order of the Rambam. We are now in the teachings that correspond to Sefer Hafla'ah, in which are the halachos: Hilchos Shevuos, Hilchos Nedarim, Hilchos Nezirus and Hilchos Arachin V'Charamin. In the previous teachings we saw the connection to Hilchos Shevuos, Nedarim and Nezirus, and one can say that today's teaching is connected in a very general way to the concept of Hilchos Arachin V'Charamin. And in general, according to the well known story of the Alter Rebbe, how he explained the concept in Maseches Arachin: "Arachin" is from the word ha'arachah, evaluation, and one of its meanings is that a person should evaluate himself, his avodah, his essence and what he is. And this is what the teaching comes and says to a person: evaluate yourself, evaluate what is going on with you, what avodah is incumbent upon you and what is demanded of you. The heading of Hilchos Arachin is in essence the general content of today's teaching.