In the previous section we learned, following the Alter Rebbe's gloss, about a person whose soul has come down to such a level that he simply cannot reach beyond tevunas taalumos libo, the quiet understanding hidden in his heart. That is the ceiling of what he can attain, and for him that understanding is what will supply the chayus, the vitality, in his avodah.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "כאלו עסק בהם בדחילו ורחימו ממש אשר בהתגלות לבו [בחפיצה וחשיקה ותשוקה מורגשת בלבו ונפשו הצמאה לה' מפני רשפי אש אהבתו שבלבו כנ"ל]" - "as though he had engaged in them with actual fear and love, the kind revealed in his heart (with a desire, a craving and a yearning actually felt in his heart, his soul thirsting for Hashem because of the flames of love burning within him, as explained above)." The novelty here is precisely in the case of a person who has no live, active feeling at all. Had his emotion been alive and revealed, this whole chapter would be unnecessary: such an emotion clothes itself in action by itself. The chiddush is that even one who is not moved, who does not step out of himself, and who holds nothing more than an intellectual conclusion and an inclination in that direction, has already accomplished the thing.
Which is higher, revealed emotion or tevunah? On the one hand it would seem that the higher rung is precisely the live, powerful emotion, and the very style of the Tanya suggests that tevunah is a lower level, with the chapter coming to console the person who has not arrived at full feeling and to show him that this path is also good. Yet there are places where the opposite is explained, that this very level is the loftier one: quite simply, the mind is above the heart, and an emotion that remains within the world of the mind is a more refined emotion. (Torah itself is not an emotion, but its fulfillment has to come out of emotion.)
"A fool has no desire for understanding, but only to lay bare his heart." This verse, said by Shlomo HaMelech in Mishlei, appears in many maamarim of chassidus, and it is explained in two ways:
On the level of pshat (as one of the commentators on Mishlei explains) - the fool has no desire to acquire new understanding. He does not want to hear another shiur, to hear something new; he is content with whatever is already revealed in his heart.
On the level of chassidus - "tevunah" is the very level this chapter is dealing with, an understanding that never reaches revealed emotion but remains on the level of the intellect, together with an inclination that it is fitting and right to act in such and such a way. The fool says: I do not want tevunah, I want "the revealing of my heart", an actual live and revealed emotion.
And why is he called a fool? Because with a tzaddik the emotion always stays in its proper place, and his love for Hashem is as it should be. But one who is not on the level of a tzaddik can have his revealed emotion slip out of its place. It is like what is written of Avraham Avinu, from whom Yishmael came out: Avraham is the emotion of love, and from it a kelipah emotion can also emerge. So it happens that a person is uplifted and stirred in davening, in joy and in dancing, and when he walks out of shul he carries that very same elevation straight into the territory of kelipah, even into forbidden things, without sensing any difference at all. From tevunah, by contrast, the chitzonim draw nothing, for only one conclusion flows from it - that it is fitting and right to do what the Holy One has commanded - and no mishap will grow out of that.
The Alter Rebbe explains that this tevunah by itself puts chayus into the performance of the mitzvos: "הואיל ותבונה זו שבמוחו ותעלומות לבו היא המביאתו לעסוק בהם" - "since this understanding in his mind and the hidden love in his heart is what brings him to engage in them." For why is he learning Torah and keeping mitzvos right now? Because he contemplated the greatness of Hashem, grasped that He is the ultimate truth and good and that one must cleave to Him, and his conclusion is that he must go and learn and fulfill mitzvos. That conclusion is not merely an external trigger; it clothes itself in the deed. The person acts out of an inner drive and a certain vitality - not the vitality of full-blown emotion, but some vitality is there - and therefore it becomes wings for the deed, lifting it upward.
"ולולי שהיה מתבונן בתבונה זו לא היה עוסק בהם כלל אלא בצרכי גופו לבד [וגם אם הוא מתמיד בלמודו בטבעו אעפ"כ אוהב את גופו יותר בטבעו]" - "and were he not contemplating this contemplation, he would not occupy himself with them at all, but only with the needs of his body (and even if he is by nature diligent in his learning, nevertheless by nature he loves his body more)." Man on his own, "a wild donkey's colt is man born": the affairs of his body are what interest him, and he does not run of his own accord to learn and to daven. Even the person we learned about in chapter 15, who is naturally diligent because of a melancholy temperament, the Alter Rebbe says loves his body more by nature. He is under no compulsion to channel that nature specifically into learning Torah. He could express that very same nature in long hours of sleep, or in studying the sciences and philosophies that draw his curiosity, and not necessarily in picking up a sefer and learning Torah. What awakens in him the right push to turn that nature toward Torah is the contemplation of Hashem's greatness and the conclusion that emerges from it. Energy is thereby placed into the deed, and the deed becomes parcha le'eila, it rises and soars and does what it is meant to do.
It is told that when the Alter Rebbe was released from prison and traveled to visit the strongholds of the misnagdim, they asked him there: where is the source for the idea that Torah and mitzvos done without feeling do not ascend above, while those done with feeling do ascend? The source is explicit in Tikkunei Zohar - "אורייתא בלא דחילו ורחימו לא פרחא לעילא", "Torah without fear and love does not soar on high" - as the Alter Rebbe will cite later in the Tanya. But since those Jews recognized only the words of the Gemara as a source, and not Zohar and Kabbalah, he brought them an explicit source from the Gemara.
The Gemara in Pesachim raises a difficulty from two verses in Tehillim that contradict one another: one verse says "for Your kindness is great unto the heavens", and another says "for Your kindness is great above the heavens". The Gemara answers that there is no contradiction: one speaks of a person who engages in Torah and mitzvos lishmah, for their own sake, and the other of one who engages in them not lishmah. So it is stated outright: one who acts not lishmah reaches only "unto the heavens", his Torah and mitzvos remain below and do not rise to the upper worlds; whereas one who acts lishmah, out of an intention to connect to the Holy One and not for some personal interest, reaches "above the heavens".
None of this means that a person without vitality should not act, for the Gemara says: "A person should always engage in Torah and mitzvos even not for their own sake, for out of doing them not for their own sake he comes to do them for their own sake." But he must know that the goal and the destination is to bring chayus into the deed. And this is precisely what chassidus is about: the word 'chassidus' contains the letters of 'chai', alive. It brings life into everything, so that it all be done with the proper and genuine feeling.
The question arises: how can one connect the tevunah in the mind with the deed actually performed? What will join them? To this the Alter Rebbe says: "וזה רמזו רז"ל באמרם מחשבה טובה הקב"ה מצרפה למעשה" - "and this is what our Sages hinted at when they said that a good thought the Holy One joins to the deed."
Here is the Gemara's language in full: at the beginning of the passage it says "a good thought He joins to the deed", and it brings as proof the verse "and for those who think of His Name". But at the end the Gemara uses a different formulation: Rav Assi said, "even if a person thought to do a mitzvah and was prevented by circumstances beyond his control and did not do it, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had done it" - meaning that he planned to do a mitzvah and in the end it was never carried out. That formulation is familiar also from the laws of korbanos: "This is the law of the burnt offering, of the meal offering, of the sin offering and of the peace offerings" - whoever occupies himself with the laws of the burnt offering, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had brought one.
"והוה ליה למימר מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו עשאה" - "it should have said, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had done it." If that were all that was intended, why did the Gemara not use that wording from the start and say "a good thought, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had done it"? From the fact that it opened specifically with the words "joins it to the deed", it is clear that something more is being hinted at here.
For what does the term "joining" mean? In physical terms, one joins a tenth man to a minyan: nine men are already there, and a tenth is added to them. The word "to join" implies that the thing being joined and the thing it is joined to both already exist, and all that is needed is to bring them together. If so, the statement "a good thought He joins to the deed" cannot be referring only to the case of "he was prevented and did not do it", because there there is no deed at all, only a thought, and what joining could there be? From here it is clear that something additional is being hinted at.
In summary: in this section we learned that even one who has not the capacity to reach revealed emotion, his tevunas taalumos libo is enough to bring chayus into the deed, as though he had acted out of a felt craving and yearning. We looked at the two approaches to the question of which is loftier, revealed emotion or tevunah, and at the explanation of the verse "a fool has no desire for understanding, but only to lay bare his heart", namely that revealed emotion can give the chitzonim something to draw from, while tevunah gives them nothing. We saw that without contemplation a person would occupy himself with nothing but the needs of his body, even if he is diligent by nature, and that Torah and mitzvos are parcha le'eila, they soar on high, specifically when done with dechilu urchimu, as the Alter Rebbe proved from the Gemara in Pesachim regarding "unto the heavens" and "above the heavens". Finally we examined the precise wording "a good thought He joins to the deed", which is not the same as "Scripture accounts it to him as though he had done it", since joining applies only to two things that already exist.
In the next section we will explain what that additional idea hinted at in the words "joins it to the deed" actually is, and how the good thought becomes joined to a deed that is actually being performed.