In the previous section we established that the hidden love does not depend on a father commanding his son and teaching him. For if that were the case, the son who was commanded and taught would know, and the son who was never commanded would not. The Alter Rebbe's words are "in the heart of klal Yisrael" - the love is present in the heart of every single Jew, whoever he may be. Even a Jew born at the far end of the earth, who has no idea at all that he is a child of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, has it as well. There is only one thing he needs to know: that he is a child of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and that he received this as an inheritance.
Because an inheritance demands nothing whatsoever of the heir. A day-old infant whose father was enormously wealthy and passed away understands nothing at all, and yet he is already wealthy right now: he received a fortune as an inheritance without having done a thing. Only one condition is required of an heir - to be an heir, and that is all. So too every Jew is, by definition, an heir, and the ones who bequeathed are our Avos, who left us this love as our inheritance.
The fourth question: "ואיך נכלל בה גם דחילו?" - "and how is fear also included in it?" The expression used throughout is "hidden love," yet what we want is that every Jew should have yiras Shamayim as well. For if he has only love, that love will push him to fulfill the positive mitzvos, and he needs fear as well - meaning, there must also be fear found in every Jew. But then why is this inheritance called by the name "love"? Love and fear are two completely opposite traits of the soul. How is it possible that within that very same love, within the inheritance our Avos passed down to us, fear is also included? Did love and fear suddenly make peace with one another and become a single emotion?
There are four questions here, and each one is a powerful question in its own right:
Where is this love rooted in the soul?
What is its content - what is this love asking for, what does it yearn for?
How can love be inherited at all?
How is fear also included within such a love?
With all of this, the chapter comes to explain the verse "כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאוד" - "for the matter is very close to you" - and in particular the word "מאוד," "very": the thing is found inside every single person, and all that is needed is to remove a certain shell, and there it is. [This verse was said by Moshe Rabbeinu to every Jew after Mattan Torah, at the end of Sefer Devarim.]
In this chapter we will receive the answers to the first question and the third: where the root of this love lies, and how it can be an inheritance. "What is its content" and "how is fear also included in it" will be explained in the next chapter. Here too the Alter Rebbe does not open in the order of the questions; he begins specifically with the third - how it is an inheritance - because that answer is the key that unlocks all the questions that follow, and it also explains why the matter is "very" close.
The answer is utterly simple: "והענין, כי האבות הן הן המרכבה" - "the explanation is that the Avos are themselves the merkavah, the chariot." Once we grasp the concept of "merkavah," and know that Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov stood at the level of a merkavah, we will understand how love can be inherited from them. [It is well known that the merkavah has four "legs" - Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov and David - and here we are speaking of the first three.]
The term "merkavah" is not an innovation of the Tanya. Its source is in the Midrash, which derived it from the wording of the verses:
By Avraham Avinu, after the Holy One finished speaking with him, the verse says: "ויכל לדבר איתו ויעל אלוקים מעל אברהם" - "He finished speaking with him, and G-d went up from upon Avraham." The Torah is speaking in the language of a mashal, but it chose to describe the connection between Hashem's speech and Avraham with the image of one who is, as it were, above him, like a rider seated upon his chariot.
By Yaakov Avinu the same expression appears: "ויעל מעליו אלוקים במקום אשר דיבר איתו" - "and G-d went up from upon him in the place where He spoke with him," and likewise "והנה ה' ניצב עליו" - "and behold, Hashem was standing upon him."
These expressions parallel the language used about the supernal merkavah that Yechezkel saw (in the first chapter of Sefer Yechezkel): "ועל דמות הכיסא דמות כמראה אדם עליו מלמעלה" - "and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness like the appearance of a man upon it from above." The word "עליו," "upon it," is borrowed from the merkavah, and since that very same word is used about the Avos, the Midrash states briefly that the Avos were like a merkavah.
What does the term "merkavah" actually mean?
Merkavah means a level of absolute bittul, self-nullification, so complete that the bittul has penetrated, as it were, into their very "genes." To understand this, we have to distinguish between riding a horse and driving a vehicle:
The horse: the rider leads it wherever he directs it - he pulls right, and the horse goes right; he pulls left, and the horse goes left. But if he lets go of the reins and settles for concentrating in his mind, "I want to go right," the horse will not go right, because it has desires of its own, and it will go wherever it wants. [Only about the Baal Shem Tov's horse is it told that it went exactly where the Baal Shem Tov wanted.] So when the rider pulls on it, he is overpowering the horse's will and causing it to nullify its will before the will of the rider. That is a high level of bittul, along the lines of the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos, "nullify your will before His will" - but the horse still has a will of its own, and it is nullifying that will.
The vehicle: a person sitting in a car needs none of this, because the car has no will of its own. If you move it, it moves; if you do not move it, it does not move. There is simply no such thing as the car driving where it wants to go. Its bittul to the driver is total, with no independent will at all - a far higher level of bittul than that of the horse.
Our holy Avos were a merkavah: the degree of their bittul to the Creator was the highest level there can possibly be, and that bittul penetrated into their "genes" and became an essential part of who they literally were. And once they became such people, it is a necessity of reality that everyone who descends from them receives those genes.
Thousands of years have passed from Adam HaRishon until our own day, and everyone born of him - son after son, the entire world - looks the same: two eyes, two hands, two feet, a head and a body, exactly the same structure. Never once in history has a man and woman given birth to some other kind of creature. How does that precise form remain preserved over so many years? Because the body of Adam HaRishon and this structure are an essential part of him, this is he himself, and something essential carries on to the very end of all generations.
The same is true on the spiritual plane: the connection of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov to Elokus was so deep, so strong and so powerful that it became their very essence. This is unlike the example we mentioned earlier, of a man who loves his neighbor - there is no proof at all that his son will love that same neighbor, since this love is not his essence: he created it, today he loves him and tomorrow he may want nothing to do with him. But by the Avos, love of Hashem became their literal essence, and once it is their essence, it is like something genetic in today's language, which carries on to the end of all generations. It is simply not possible for any of their descendants not to receive that same point of neshamah that Avraham Avinu had.
[It was raised in the shiur that there is no necessity for a trait or a character quality to pass from a father to his sons: a father can have two sons utterly different from one another, and a fine quality that the father possessed does not necessarily carry over. And we find the reverse as well, that those who did not greet Israel with bread and water are not accepted until the end of all generations - but there it comes as a punishment, and it is not a necessity of reality that every single one of them until the end of generations will be like his forebears. Here, however, we are saying that Avraham Avinu transmits to all his children until the end of all generations a nefesh Elokis: a Jew born a hundred generations after Avraham Avinu has a neshamah, and he received it from his father. There is certainly an involvement of the Holy One here, who is a partner in the existence of a person and created a situation in which such a transmission is possible, but the matter still requires an explanation from the side of the Avos themselves.]
And from here a question arises: why specifically from Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov? If we say that this is purely a Divine matter, why did it not come from Adam HaRishon, who was also a general soul that included everyone? Why does the inheritance begin specifically with Avraham Avinu?
In summary: in this section we laid out the four questions on the hidden love - where its root in the soul is, what its content is, how it can be an inheritance, and how fear is also included within it - and we learned the Alter Rebbe's answer to the question of inheritance: "כי האבות הן הן המרכבה", "for the Avos are themselves the merkavah." We explained the source of the term in the Midrash and its meaning - absolute bittul with no independent will at all, in contrast to the horse, which nullifies its own will before the will of its rider - and we saw that the bittul of the Avos penetrated into their very essence, and therefore it passes as an inheritance to all their descendants until the end of all generations, just as the form of the body of Adam HaRishon passes down through all the generations.
In the next section we will take up the question that remains open: why does this inheritance begin specifically with Avraham Avinu and not with Adam HaRishon.