In the previous section we looked at the hidden love (ahavah mesuteres) that is embedded in the soul of every Jew. A Jew, in his entirety, is ready to give up his very life rather than be severed from the Holy One, blessed be He.
Where was this Jew yesterday? Yesterday he was counted among the poshei Yisrael, the lightest of the light, a rasha. And then, in a single moment, everything he has done and the whole way he has conducted himself is forgotten and vanishes: the Jew inside him wakes up, and he is prepared to give up his life itself, without any reason or understanding. That is the nature of a Jew, like a flame that seeks to attach itself to its source above, with no reasoning behind it at all.
This point stirs in him even though it had been asleep and dormant, "ופועלת פעולתה בכוח ה' המלובש בה" ("and it acts with its power through the power of Hashem vested within it"), for the Holy One, blessed be He, dwells in the soul of every single Jew at every moment; all that is needed is that it come into revelation. And what brings it into revelation? The awakening of the yechidah of the soul, the level of chochmah shebanefesh.
For an ordinary person, what triggers this is a test of kiddush Hashem. As long as no such test comes his way, seemingly this point will not be aroused in him, unless he studies what the Alter Rebbe explains later in the sefer (chapters 24 and 25), that in truth every single aveirah is itself a question of standing up for kiddush Hashem.
[The ideal would be that this awakening happen every single day. In practice, though, for many people it surfaces only at a moment of a test of kiddush Hashem, and for some, everything turns over only shortly before death.]
What stops a person from seeing every aveirah as a test? The ruach shtus, the "spirit of folly." The ruach shtus tells a person to keep things "in proportion": there are transgressions that are not proper, true, but one should not make a terrible fuss over them, whereas the three cardinal sins, idolatry, immorality and bloodshed, those are the truly dreadful ones. That very distinction, dividing one thing from another, is itself the ruach shtus. In truth there is no difference between one thing and another: the smallest matter cuts a Jew off from the Creator of the world exactly as the greatest one does. A person has to open his eyes and understand that every single thing is a question of connection or disconnection, as will be explained further on.
Of this the Alter Rebbe writes, "וכמ"ש ויקץ כישן ה'" ("as it is written, 'And Hashem awoke as one asleep'"). Does the Holy One, blessed be He, sleep and wake? Rather, the verse speaks by way of a metaphor. The "Hashem" of the verse is the Holy One, blessed be He, as He dwells within the soul of every Jew, in the innermost point of the soul, in the yechidah and in chochmah shebanefesh. That point can lie dormant, when a person does not register that he carries within him a Jewish point that he must guard and never be cut off from; and that point can awaken, "ויקץ." What awakens it? Being brought to a test. And there is a better way than that: connection to the nesi'im of Israel, through which it becomes far easier to stand in a constant state of connection.
"לעמוד בנסיון באמונת ה' בלי שום טעם ודעת ושכל מושג לו" ("to withstand the test in faith in Hashem, without any reason, knowledge or intellect that he can grasp"). One who stands up to a test of kiddush Hashem does not understand his own act and cannot even explain it. Ask him why he refuses to be severed, when by refusing he loses his world, his family and his life, and he has no answer to give. Point out to him that in any case he does not keep Torah and mitzvos, and still he has no reply. Something inner is at work in him, and there is no explanation for it. And why is there no explanation? Because in truth this is not a matter of explanation at all: anything built on reason and intellect can always be met by the opposite argument, ipcha mistabra. But this is not in reason, not in knowledge, not in intellect, and therefore it simply cannot be otherwise: a Jew cannot, and does not want, to be severed from the Holy One, blessed be He.
And out of this he is able "להתגבר על הקליפות ותאוות עולם הזה בהיתר ובאיסור שהורגל בהם ולמאוס בהם" ("to overcome the kelipos and the desires of this world, both the permitted and the forbidden ones he had grown accustomed to, and to despise them"). Once the yechidah of the soul awakens in him, a person is capable of overcoming all his desires, both the permitted cravings and the forbidden ones in which he was sunk. Even though all his life he was habituated to these desires and others, and devoted his money, his time and his energy to obtaining them, the instant the Jew inside him awakens they all disappear, and there is no pleasure in the world with which he can be tempted to abandon his faith and his bond with the Holy One, blessed be He. He is ready to give up everything and to despise every desire and enjoyment of this world.
"ולבחור לו ה' לחלקו ולגורלו" ("and to choose Hashem as his portion and his lot"), as we say, "How good is our portion (chelkeinu) and how pleasant is our lot (goraleinu)." What is the difference between "portion" and "lot"? This is not the place to elaborate; in a word:
Chelek, "portion": something that comes with reason and understanding.
Goral, "lot": something that is above reason and understanding.
So we find in the division of Eretz Yisrael among the tribes, which was done both by portion, "to the larger tribe you shall give a greater inheritance and to the smaller a lesser one," a division by reason and calculation, and also by lot, with no reasoning entering into it whatsoever. So too in a Jew's bond with the Holy One, blessed be He, there are two layers: the intellectual and emotional layer, which is the chelek, and the layer of will and delight that is above reason and understanding, which is the goral. When the yechidah of the soul is revealed, a Jew chooses the Holy One, blessed be He, as both his portion and his lot, both on the level that he grasps with reason and on the level that is beyond reason, to the point of "למסור לו נפשו על קדושת שמו" ("to give his life for Him, for the sanctity of His Name").
This is the answer to the question of what this love is all about: this love exists in every Jew, whoever he may be. It makes no difference how he has conducted himself, who his parents were, or where he lives. If he is a child of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, there is a yechidah of the soul within him, and it will awaken the moment he is brought to a test.
And if one asks: we do find cases, rare ones, of a Jew who was prepared to abandon the faith of Israel, and even when he came to a test of kiddush Hashem he did not withstand it. Where was his yechidah shebanefesh then?
Chassidus explains that since a Jew was given free choice, and free choice in the plain sense means completely free, the Holy One, blessed be He, did not take his choice away from him even on this point. "Who can say to Him, what are You doing?" is said of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that very gift He gave to the Jew, of whom it is likewise said, "Who can say to him, what are you doing?" Therefore a Jew can, in rare cases, use the power of his free choice to do something that is against intellect, against nature and against all logic, just as a normal person does not jump off a roof to take his own life, and yet there are cases of a person doing something utterly illogical. But these are rare and abnormal cases. In the overwhelming majority of cases, when a Jew is brought to a test of kiddush Hashem, the point of his soul awakens in him and he is not prepared to be severed under any circumstances.
"ואף כי הקליפות גברו עליו כל ימיו ולא יכול להם" ("and even though the kelipos overpowered him all his life and he could not prevail over them"), even if we are speaking of a Jew whose whole life, all hundred and twenty years of it, the kelipos got the better of him in his day to day living, who stumbled again and again in every single matter and never once managed to overcome anything. This is an extremely bad state; as the Zohar says, those who never have the strength to prevail are the resha'im, and sometimes the very fact that they cannot prevail is already their punishment. "כמארז"ל שהרשעים הם ברשות לבם" ("as our Sages said, that the wicked are in the control of their heart"), and as we have already learned in Tanya, the wicked are "in the control of their heart": the moment a desire stirs in their heart they are dragged after it, and they are simply incapable of telling the heart "stop." And yet, as low a state as this is, such a person is not lost.
"מכל מקום כשבא לידי נסיון בדבר אמונה בה' אחד שיסודתה בהררי קודש, היא בחינת חכמה שבנפש האלוקית שבה מלובש אור אין סוף ברוך הוא - הרי כל הקליפות בטלים ומבוטלים והיו כלא היו ממש לפני ה'" ("nevertheless, when he comes to a test in a matter of faith in the one God, whose foundation is in the holy mountains, meaning the level of chochmah of the divine soul in which the Ein Sof, blessed be He, is clothed, then all the kelipos are null and void and are as though they had never been at all before Hashem"). That very same Jew, the most distant and lowest of them all, who never managed to prevail in anything, now stands face to face with a stark question: connected to the one God, or cut off from Him? And in a single moment he becomes a different person, ready to give his life for kiddush Hashem.
How does such a reversal happen? Nobody explained anything to him; all his life people tried to explain and he was never convinced by any explanation. Nobody showed him a light or a vision that would persuade him. So what changed? One thing only: the chochmah shebanefesh awoke in him. And once chochmah shebanefesh awakens, he is ready for mesirus nefesh, and nothing in the world will stop him.
In Likkutei Torah, in one of the Rosh Hashanah maamarim dealing with the blowing of the shofar, the Alter Rebbe brings the verse, "And it shall be on that day, a great shofar will be sounded, and those lost in the land of Ashur and those cast away in the land of Mitzrayim will come, and they will bow to Hashem on the holy mountain in Yerushalayim," and he explains the phrase "holy mountain." "Mountain" (har) is a name and a metaphor for love, as we find with Avraham Avinu, in whom love of Hashem was constant, and who called the place a "mountain." "Holy" (kodesh) alludes to the hidden love. So "the holy mountain" is the hidden love within the innermost part of a person's soul, and "whose foundation is in the holy mountains" means that the foundation of emunah is rooted in chochmah shebanefesh, where the faith of Israel in the Holy One, blessed be He, resides, the faith from which a Jew will never be willing to be severed.
On this the Alter Rebbe brings four verses:
"כדכתיב כל הגויים כאין נגדו וגו'" ("as it is written, 'All the nations are as nothing before Him,'" Yeshayahu).
"כי הנה אויביך ה', כי הנה אויביך יאבדו, יתפרדו וגו'" ("For behold Your enemies, Hashem, for behold Your enemies shall perish, they shall be scattered").
"וכתיב כהמס דונג מפני אש יאבדו וגו'" ("and it is written, 'As wax melts before fire, so shall the wicked perish before God'").
"וכתיב הרים כדונג נמסו" ("and it is written, 'Mountains melted like wax'").
Why specifically four verses? Had he simply wanted to assemble some supporting verses, one would have sufficed. Rather, as we learned at the beginning of Tanya, there are four kelipos: three kelipos that are entirely impure, and kelipas nogah. The three impure kelipos are what produce the forbidden desires of this world, while kelipas nogah produces the permitted desires of this world. The four verses come to hint that when the yechidah of the soul is revealed, all of the kelipos melt away. The first three verses, which use expressions of destruction and utter nullification, correspond to the three impure kelipos; the fourth verse, which says "melted," a word that implies dissolving and the possibility of merging, corresponds to kelipas nogah, which has the capacity to be transformed into good.
To summarize: in this section we learned that the innermost point of the soul, the yechidah and chochmah shebanefesh, although it is asleep and dormant, awakens at a moment of a test of kiddush Hashem, and then a Jew is ready to give his life with no reason or understanding at all, and to overcome every kelipah and every desire of this world. We looked at the ruach shtus that distinguishes between one transgression and another, at the difference between chelek and goral and the Jew's choosing the Holy One, blessed be He, as both, at the place of free choice in those rare cases where a person did not withstand the test, and at the explanation of "the holy mountains" as chochmah shebanefesh, by whose power all four kelipos are null and void.
In the next section we will continue our study of chapter 19 and the explanation of the Alter Rebbe's words that follow.