In the previous section we learned that once the ahavah mesuteres (the hidden love for G-d that every Jew carries) comes to the surface in a Jew's heart, he is not willing to be cut off from G-dliness even for one brief moment. Now we will look at the different levels within this, at the fact that this love is unlimited, and from there we will return to the Alter Rebbe's own words at the close of the chapter.
The levels in the revelation of the hidden love:
The level that exists in everyone: a test of faith versus denial of G-d. For every Jew it is clear that this is something essential, and in such a test the hidden love awakens in him.
Someone in whom the ruach shtus (the "spirit of folly" that lets a person forget his connection to G-d) is not operating all the time: he does not need a test of faith versus denial in order for the will to be bound to the Al-mighty to awaken in him. Even a test of keeping Shabbos, of kosher food, of lashon hara, or of causing another person pain stirs him to say: I do not want to do this, this thing cuts me off from G-dliness.
Rare individuals, beinonim on a very high level: they will not transgress even the smallest comma in the Shulchan Aruch, because in every single detail it is clear to them that it severs them from G-dliness, and they do not want to be severed.
In other words, when the hidden love is revealed, there is no blurring of what is essential. What counts as "something essential" depends on the level: from the baseline that exists in every single Jew, for whom it is clear that faith versus denial is essential, all the way to the Jew on a high level for whom every single detail is essential. In any case, from the moment the hidden love is revealed, a person is no longer confused about what is essential.
A love that a person generates himself through hisbonenus (contemplation) is not unlimited. Take a physical example: a person contemplates a certain food, or a certain person, his qualities and his role, and the contemplation awakens love in him. But that love is defined by the level of contemplation it came from. If he forgets the contemplation, or it weakens in him, or someone comes along and demolishes his whole conclusion ("That man? He is actually like this and like that"), the whole structure can collapse. A love that was built from the start by contemplation has its ups and its downs.
The hidden love, by contrast, is not something a person generated by contemplation. As we learned, a Jew is born with it, it is already inside him, and all he has to do is awaken it. And once it is awakened it is without limit, because the One who placed this love in us is the Al-mighty, and since He is unlimited, the love He placed in us is also without limit.
In what ways does this "without limit" express itself?
It is in every single Jew, whoever he may be. It makes no difference what his background is, in what country he was born, or who his parents are. As we learned in Tanya, this love is an inheritance to each and every one of the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, an inheritance to us from Avraham Avinu.
Mesirus nefesh (self-sacrifice) over anything at all, not only in matters of faith. Once the love is revealed in him, he will not be willing even to perform a purely external act, as in the story of Chana and her seven sons, and not even to bow his head to an idol as a technical outward gesture with no inner belief whatsoever. For something that has no limit does not make calculations of "big matter" and "small matter." It takes in everything.
Without limit in terms of time. As we learned in the previous lesson, a person does not say, "I will sin for five minutes and do teshuvah in an hour and close the file." Someone who is aware of the hidden love within him will not be willing to sin in even one square of time.
There is no difference between an ordinary weekday and a special festival. The love is there constantly.
This has a particular connection to the days we are standing in now, the eve of Yom Kippur. This is a unique day, and in the language of the Gemara, "עיצומו של יום מכפר" - "the essence of the day atones." From the very entry of the day there is a special power in it that atones for everything. Chassidus explains what actually takes place on this day: on Yom Kippur that inner love shines and is revealed in the Jew, and once it shines, it atones for all the sins.
And the reason is this: when did the person sin? When that love was not present in him consciously and tangibly. The moment it is revealed, every sin he committed becomes utterly absurd, because had he been living all along in that atmosphere of revealed love, he would never have sinned at all. The revelation therefore erases everything. The person says to himself: what nonsense was I doing? It is simply not relevant. Did I really cut myself off from the Al-mighty? I do not want that, and from today on I am connected permanently, because this is a true connection, constant and eternal.
Everything said until now is a general, quick summary of what we have learned from chapter 18 until here, about the unique character and the unique quality of the hidden love. The subject is not yet finished in Tanya, and now, at the close of the chapter, we will see some completing points to all of this. Part of what will be brought in the coming lines we have already mentioned briefly.
Question: how is it that there are Jews who do not believe?
Before we speak about such Jews, we have to keep in mind the words "של נעליך מעל רגליך" - "remove your shoes from your feet." We cannot speak about holy and pure people; we do not even reach the hem of their ankles. Nor are we able to know what situation we are dealing with, whom we are dealing with, and what it is really about.
Perhaps the answer to the question lies in a story that happened to me. In 5745-5746, when I was learning by the Rebbe, every Friday we would go out with a group of Jews to put on tefillin with people in a shopping center. In one of the stores a Jew said to me: "You see that store over there, the one that belongs to a Jew? If you manage to get him to put on tefillin, I will put fifty dollars into the tzedakah box on the spot." Words like that draw a person into the challenge.
I went into that Jew's store. He was an older man, he could have been my grandfather. I approached him with a pair of tefillin and said, "Dear Jew, perhaps you would like to put on tefillin?" He answered, "Nothing doing, I do not want to put on tefillin." And he began to tell me shattering things: "I was in the Holocaust, and I saw with my own eyes what happened to my father, to my mother, to my brother and to my sister, all of them." Where was the Creator of the world, and how could anyone expect him to put on tefillin? For forty years he had not put on tefillin, and he was not willing to listen. He practically threw me out of the store.
I tried to open with reasoned arguments, but I saw that reasoning was not working here. This is not a question that calls for an explanation in answer; standing in front of me was a man who had lived through what he had lived through. At that moment the Al-mighty gave me one sentence, and I said to him: "The truth is that you are so right in what you say, that by every rule of logic, how is it that you are standing here and were not taken together with your family? You yourself say that you saw what happened to your father, your mother, your brother and your sister. So how are you here? Is it not because the Al-mighty pulled you out and saved you, and for some reason He is watching over you and wants you here?" The moment I said that sentence, that Jew burst into tears like a small child, and he put on tefillin.
And what do we learn from this? The Jew who shouts "there is nothing, there is nothing" shouts that way because his hidden love has not been awakened, or because something is blocking it. And when you lift off the covering, it turns out that he too has a hidden love for the Al-mighty.
Question: and what about the Jew who comes to shul once a year?
The average Jew, and we are not speaking of someone who is careful in his observance, goes to shul once a year, on Yom Kippur, while all year long he carries on with his affairs. How does that fit with what we have been saying?
The matter of "I will sin and then repent" we touched on in the previous lesson as well, and it comes up again later in the chapter, so when we get there we will deal with it more fully. But by way of an answer: that Jew who comes to shul once a year on Yom Kippur, at that moment he genuinely means to come. He is not doing it for anyone else; he really is in that state, and at that moment he really does love the Al-mighty. What happens afterwards is that the yetzer hara gets the upper hand over him again.
And there is no need to go looking for "that Jew." Let each person look at himself and he will find that Jew inside himself. At that moment he truly reached a state in which, if he could only remain in that atmosphere permanently, he would be one of the great rabbonim. The problem is that afterwards he does not have the strength, the tools and the surroundings to hold on to it. But that takes nothing away, not even a little, from the intensity that is present in him in its full force at that very moment.
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We stopped at the line ending with the words "ושליט ומושל עליו כנודע" - "and it rules and governs over him, as is known." In the earlier part of the chapter the Alter Rebbe explained that when that hidden love is awakened in a Jew, he is ready even to die al kiddush Hashem rather than be severed from matters of G-d's will even for one brief moment.
And the Alter Rebbe continues: just as a person is ready to do anything in the area of "turn away from evil," not to be severed, G-d forbid, from G-dliness by the things that sever him, so too in the area of "and do good." On the positive side, anyone in whom the hidden love is revealed will be ready, with great force, to do everything he can in order to create that connection to G-dliness on a constant basis.
Before bringing several examples of this, the Alter Rebbe explains that the Jew's exertion has to be "להתגבר כארי בגבורה ואומץ הלב נגד היצר המכביד את גופו" - "to overcome like a lion, with might and courage of heart, against the yetzer that weighs down his body."
From the style here it is clear that the avodah of "do good" is harder than guarding oneself from failure in "turn away from evil." It is far easier for a person in whom the love has been revealed to decide that he will not desecrate Shabbos and will not eat non-kosher food, than to decide, out of that same hidden love, that he will sit and learn another five hours of Torah, or run to fulfill a mitzvah, or take a few more coins out of his pocket and give tzedakah. "Do good" squeezes out deeper inner strength than "turn away from evil."
In summary: in this section we looked at the different levels in the revelation of the hidden love, from the test of faith versus denial that exists in every person, up to the rare individuals for whom even a comma in the Shulchan Aruch is something essential. We learned that a love produced by hisbonenus is limited by the level of the contemplation and has its ups and downs, whereas the hidden love, which the Al-mighty placed within us, is without limit: in every single Jew, in every single matter, at every time and on every day. We looked at the character of Yom Kippur, that "the essence of the day atones" because on it that inner love shines and the sins become utterly absurd, and at the story from which we saw that even the Jew who shouts "there is nothing" has a hidden love inside him once the covering is lifted. Finally we returned to the Alter Rebbe's words, that just as the love works in "turn away from evil" so it works in "and do good," with an exertion "like a lion, with might and courage of heart," and that this avodah demands deeper inner strength.
In the next section we will take up the examples the Alter Rebbe brings for the aspect of "and do good," and the matter of "I will sin and then repent" that appears later in the chapter.