In the previous section we learned about the advantage of sadness when it comes in a deliberate, planned way, and this is what is called merirus (bitterness). We went into this at length through the words of Shlomo HaMelech about the advantage of light over darkness and the advantage of wisdom over folly.
The Alter Rebbe closes this part of the chapter with an explicit proof from Scripture for how essential simcha is in serving Hashem: “ומקרא מלא דיבר הכתוב”, “an explicit verse states it.” The verse appears at the end of Sefer Devarim, in Parshas Ki Savo, in the midst of the harsh words of the tochacha (“and all these curses shall come upon you”), and there the Torah reveals why all of this came upon a person: “תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה' אלוקיך בשמחה ובטוב לבב... מרוב כל”, “because you did not serve Hashem your G-d with joy and with gladness of heart, out of an abundance of everything.” Because he did not serve Hashem with joy and gladness of heart when he had an abundance of everything, all of this came upon him.
Two ways of reading the plain meaning of the verse:
He did not serve Hashem at all. At the very time when he had an abundance of everything and was living in comfort and pleasure, when everything was in its place, precisely then he did not serve Hashem and did not make use of that hour of joy and gladness of heart and abundance.
A further precision in the wording of the verse: even though he did serve Hashem, he did not serve Him with joy, and that is a great deficiency. This is the explanation of the Arizal, as the Alter Rebbe goes on to write: “ונודע לכל פירוש הארי זל”, “and the explanation of the Arizal is known to all.”
Even before the Arizal's explanation, the Rambam had already written in Hilchos Lulav: “The joy a person feels in performing a mitzvah and in his love for the G-d who commanded it is a great service, and whoever holds himself back from this joy deserves to be punished, as it says, ‘because you did not serve Hashem your G-d with joy and with gladness of heart.’” In other words, the absence of simcha brings, G-d forbid, things that are not good: even someone who has avodas Hashem in hand, if it is without joy, loses everything.
What, then, does the Alter Rebbe add when he writes “ונודע לכל פירוש הארי זל על פסוק זה”, if the idea is already found in the Rambam? The answer is that the Arizal is being precise about the words “מרוב כל”, “out of an abundance of everything.” Plain joy is not enough; what is demanded is a joy greater than every kind of joy a person knows. While serving Hashem a person must be in the greatest joy that can possibly be, a demand that goes beyond what the Rambam set out.
Where have we come so far?
In the twenty-five chapters we have learned, the Alter Rebbe laid down a very strong foundation, explaining at length how “the matter is very close to you,” until a person actually wants to serve Hashem. Now, as he comes to the stage of putting it into practice: if there is sadness in him, he has a roadblock, and he cannot move forward in anything at all. Sadness gives him nothing; on the contrary, it knocks him down. Whoever wants to move forward must have only simcha in him, and under no circumstances sadness, because simcha is what brings zerizus (alacrity) and an open heart. This is not a joy that depends on anything external, and from our side it demands hard work. Now we will learn what that work is.
First we have to identify the things that cause a person sadness and how one can avoid them. When a person looks at what goes on around him day to day, he seemingly has a thousand and one reasons to be sad: he lacks this and that, things are not good for him here, he is under pressure there, he lost out here and lost out there. In banei, chayei umezonei, children, health and livelihood, these three things, every person can find something he is missing. And now someone comes and tells him: despite all these reasons, which may even seem justified, you have to dance with joy all the time. How does that work? How does one get past all of these stations?
There is a story told about one of the great rabbonim, who in later years served as the rav of the city of Cracow: an enormous talmid chacham, and at the same time a major merchant with a far-reaching business in the timber trade. He himself sat in the beis midrash, while his workers floated the timber on rafts down the river from one side to the other and sold it, and at the end of the month they would bring him the profits. Every raft and every ship carried a huge quantity of timber worth an enormous sum of money.
Once a great storm sank an enormous shipment at sea, carrying many months' worth of profits, and nothing was left of it. His people looked for some way to inform the boss about the loss. How do you tell a man in one day that his entire fortune has gone under? The plan they came up with: several talmidei chachamim came to the rav and asked to learn a daf of Gemara with him in Maseches Berachos, where it says, “Just as one makes a blessing on the good, so one makes a blessing on the bad.”
The Gemara there asks: but it is not the same blessing at all. On the good one says “Hatov vehameitiv” and on the bad one says “Dayan haemes.” And it explains that the intent is not the same text of the blessing, but the same feeling of joy: just as he makes the blessing “Hatov vehameitiv” with joy, so must he make the blessing “Dayan haemes” with joy.
The students asked him: “Rebbi, what does this mean? How can a person be in a state of joy when something that is not good happens to him?” He began to explain at length that a Jew must accept such things with emunah and bitachon, until he had convinced them. They said to him: “Still, we do not understand how this is possible. Let us suppose, purely theoretically: if they were to tell the rav that his entire fortune had sunk in the sea, would he rejoice?” He answered them: “Certainly, one should rejoice and dance.” They said: “In that case, rebbi, the rav may begin to dance.” At that moment he grasped what they were saying and fainted on the spot. When they revived him, they said, “Nu?” He said to them: “It is all well and good when the thing is written in a sefer.”
When the matter touches a person himself, putting it into practice is not simple at all and not easy. In Tanya the Alter Rebbe comes to speak to the Jew precisely at the point where it touches him, so that it should not remain theory alone. And what he says here is likewise no simple matter, but a very great avodas Hashem. So let us see what that avodah is: what the raw material of the thought is, and what a Jew must contemplate so that the hisbonenus will lead him to simcha.
To summarize: The Alter Rebbe seals the discussion with an explicit proof from Scripture, “תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה' אלוקיך בשמחה ובטוב לבב מרוב כל”, in which the Torah reveals why the words of the tochacha came upon a person. There are two ways of reading the plain meaning: that he did not serve Hashem at all precisely when he had an abundance of everything, or that he did serve but not with joy. The Rambam in Hilchos Lulav already derived from here that one who holds himself back from the joy of the mitzvah deserves to be punished, and the Arizal's novel point lies in the precision of the words “merov kol”: plain joy is not enough, what is demanded is the greatest joy of all the joys a person knows. After twenty-five chapters in which the foundation was laid for “the matter is very close to you,” it emerges that sadness is the roadblock that does not let a person move forward, while simcha is what brings zerizus and an open heart. Yet in daily life the reasons for sadness in banei, chayei umezonei are many, and as emerges from the story of the rav of Cracow, “it is all well and good when the thing is written in a sefer”; putting it into practice when it touches the person himself is a very great avodas Hashem.
In the next section we will learn the Alter Rebbe's counsel, “עצה יעוצה לטהר לבו מכל עצב”, “there is sound counsel to purify one's heart of all sadness,” and we will examine the material for the hisbonenus through which a person arrives at simcha, and the principle of ‘gam zu letovah,’ this too is for the good.