In the previous section we learned about the depth of the exile the soul finds itself in once it is clothed in a body, and about this the Alter Rebbe writes "והרחמנות עליה גדולה מאוד" ("and the pity one must have for it is very great") - just how great the compassion for the soul must be. Which raises the obvious question: what is a person supposed to actually do about it?
When a person sees that his own spark is literally sitting in exile, in a degraded state, and he holds the key that can get it out - would he sit and weep that his son is in captivity? Of course not. He would take the key, open the door and set him free. That is exactly how a person has to think it through: the more deeply he grasps how bitter the exile is, the stronger his energy and his joy must be in getting the soul out of it.
"ולזה אשים כל מגמתי" - "To this I will devote all my intent":
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "ולזה אשים כל מגמתי וחפצי להוציאה ולהעלותה מגלות זה" ("and to this I will devote all my intent and desire, to extract it and raise it out of this exile") - all of one's effort, attention, thoughts and plans are to be directed toward getting the soul out of exile.
And the goal is not merely to take it out of exile, since leaving exile would mean returning to the state that preceded the sin, that is, teshuvah for the sin. The goal is more than that: "להשיבה אל בית אביה כנעוריה קודם שנתלבשה בגופי" ("to return it to her father's house as in her youth, before she was clothed in my body"). As we learned in chapter 30, the very fact that the soul descended into a body capable of sinning - even if no sin was actually committed - is in itself an exile and a dreadful situation for it. Therefore a person must work to restore his soul to the state it was in before it descended into a body, meaning to remove from himself the very capacity to sin. Just as every person has certain transgressions that strike him as utterly absurd, that would never even enter his mind, so too, as long as he has not reached that same place regarding everything else, he has not yet returned his soul to its original state.
[And if you will ask: if the soul suffers so much, isn't its true liberation to leave the body altogether? The answer comes at the end of the chapter, but let us anticipate the direction: the purpose of the soul's descent into the body is not to escape the body but to work within it and harness it for holiness. This is hinted at in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos, "against your will you live and against your will you die": once the soul has come down here, it does not want to leave - not because desires are holding it back, but because it appreciates that precisely here it can reach a far greater ascent.]
The hint in the phrase "אל בית אביה כנעוריה":
The Rebbe makes a fascinating observation here: every style and turn of phrase the Alter Rebbe uses is never for literary flourish; there is precision in it. The phrase "ושבה אל בית אביה כנעוריה" is the language of the verse in Vayikra concerning the daughter of a kohen who married a Yisrael: once she married a Yisrael rather than a kohen, she may no longer eat terumah; and if her husband died or divorced her, she becomes a widow or a divorcee and returns to her father's house - "ושבה אל בית אביה כנעוריה" ("and she returns to her father's house as in her youth") - and then she once again eats terumah as in her original state. And the Zohar teaches that "the daughter of a kohen" is a name for the soul.
On that basis, the phrase is aimed precisely at the soul: she is the kohen's daughter returning to the state in which she can once again "eat terumah." Her descent into the body is her marriage, and the body is what holds her back; and the removal of the obstacle, the husband's death or his divorcing her, alludes to the nullification of the interference of physicality, while in the verse itself the words are meant literally, "כי תהיה אלמנה וגרושה" ("if she becomes a widow or divorced").
Not escape, but connection:
The Alter Rebbe goes on to describe the soul's state before its descent, "שהיתה נכללת באורו יתברך ומיוחדת עמו בתכלית" ("when it was absorbed in His blessed light and utterly united with Him"), and then he defines the objective: "וגם עתה תהא כלולה ומיוחדת בו יתברך" ("and now too it shall be absorbed and united in Him"). In other words, this is not about fleeing back to a previous state, but about recalling the intensity in which the soul stood above, and connecting with that very same intensity here, while it is inside a body.
How? "בתורה ומצוות":
"כשאשים כל מגמתי בתורה ומצות" ("when I devote all my intent to Torah and mitzvos") - when a person invests all of his time, thought, attention, action and force into Torah and mitzvos. The word "mitzvah" comes from tzavsa, togetherness and connection, and Torah connects the Jew with the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore, instead of sinking into sadness and bitterness over his situation inside a body, he should drag the body along with him and go learn Torah and do mitzvos.
And not a merely technical performance, but "להלביש בהם כל עשר בחינותיה כנ"ל" ("to clothe in them all ten of its faculties, as explained above"). True, someone who performs a mitzvah technically, who put tefillin on his arm, has fulfilled the mitzvah, and there is no question that the deed is the main thing. But when he invests all ten powers of his soul into the mitzvah, his emotions as well as his intellect, then he is connecting to the Holy One not only his hands but also his heart, and not only his heart but also his mind. And the more faculties of the soul he brings into the mitzvah, the greater the portion of his soul that is, at that moment, "back in her father's house as in her youth."
"ובפרט במצות התפילה" - "and especially in the mitzvah of prayer":
The word "tefillah" is related to "נפתולי נפתלתי" - wrestling and entwining with G-d, and also to "פתיל," a cord, two threads twisted together until they become one. When a person takes hold of himself and stands in prayer, he becomes one and bound up with the Holy One. In the Alter Rebbe's words: "לצעוק אל ה' בצר לה מגלותה בגוף המשוקץ להוציאה ממסגר ולדבקה בו יתברך" ("to cry out to G-d from its distress in its exile within the repulsive body, to bring it out of confinement and to cleave to Him"). In prayer a person cries out: Master of the world, give me the strength to connect to You, and let this body not get in the way; take my soul out of the lockup it is in, and let it cleave to its Creator.
"וזו היא בחינת תשובה ומעשים טובים" - "and this is the aspect of teshuvah and good deeds":
Why is the expression always "teshuvah and good deeds"? On the simple level: repent, and then start doing good deeds. But here it is explained that every good deed is itself teshuvah. For "teshuvah" comes from the word "to return," which means the person was already there once and has to come back to that same state - not only to regret the wrong he did, but to return to where he stood before. Before its descent into the body the soul was in an exceedingly lofty G-dly state, and the body gets in its way; and so every good deed a person does returns it and reconnects it to G-dliness. In the Alter Rebbe's words: "שהן מעשים טובים שעושה כדי להשיב חלק ה' למקורו ושרשו" ("these are the good deeds he does in order to return the portion of G-d to its source and root").
[The descent is for the sake of an ascent, and certainly an ascent higher than the original state, for otherwise the whole descent would have been unnecessary - as will be explained at the end of the chapter.]
This principle was the subject of a major dispute in the early days of chassidus. As recorded in the history of chassidus, the Alter Rebbe held a great debate in Minsk with the leading misnagdim, and one of the stumbling blocks they found hardest to accept was the chassidic teaching that every person needs to do teshuvah - tzaddikim too, those immersed in Torah too, and Torah scholars too. Their argument was: teshuvah is for sinners, so what sense does it make that everyone should repent? The Alter Rebbe explained to them, and this is one of the foundations of chassidus, that every good deed is teshuvah; teshuvah is a constant avodah and not only a response to sin, since every higher state a person rises to beyond where he stood yesterday means that he has returned and is now standing higher than he was.
"וזו תהיה עבודתו כל ימיו בשמחה רבה" - "and this shall be his avodah all his days, with great joy":
And this is what a person's joy should be, that he is returning to his father's house: "היא שמחת הנפש בצאתה מהגוף המתועב ושבה אל בית אביה כנעוריה בשעת התורה והעבודה" ("the joy of the soul as it leaves the loathsome body and returns to her father's house as in her youth, during the time of Torah and avodah"). Every single time a Jew performs a mitzvah, it is an immense joy for his soul, which at that moment is connecting to G-dliness. Granted, at that very moment the body is still in the same state it was in, and his nefesh habahamis is pulling him toward nonsense; and when he finishes the mitzvah he will notice that he has not sprouted wings and is the same person he was yesterday. But in every single moment of doing a mitzvah and learning Torah he is connecting his soul to G-dliness and returning it to its source, and that is a very great joy.
"כמאמר רז"ל שצריך להיות כל ימיו בתשובה" ("as our Sages said, that one must be in a state of teshuvah all his days") - if teshuvah meant only its simple sense, repentance for sin, it would follow that in order to be in teshuvah all his days a person would have to be sinning all his days. That is obviously not the intent. Rather: all his days he should keep advancing and advancing, and every advance is teshuvah.
[And on the other hand it is written, "there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin" - and there too the sin is not necessarily literal; it can mean a shortfall. A person who could have reached a hundred and fifty percent and reached only a hundred and thirty, the gap between them is his "sin." In any case this verse offers no excuse to a person asked why he sinned, since there is no necessity that the sin be meant in the coarse sense of the word.]
In summary: in this section we learned that once a person contemplates the great pity his soul deserves, he is not to sink into tears and bitterness, but rather to convert his awareness of the depth of the exile into energy and joy - "ולזה אשים כל מגמתי וחפצי להוציאה ולהעלותה מגלות זה". The goal is not only teshuvah for sin, but "להשיבה אל בית אביה כנעוריה קודם שנתלבשה בגופי", and in that very phrasing lies the Alter Rebbe's precision, drawing on the verse about the daughter of a kohen, which the Zohar identifies as a name for the soul. The way to accomplish it is Torah and mitzvos, mitzvah from tzavsa, connection, clothing all ten faculties of the soul in them, and especially prayer, from "pasil," a cord, becoming one with the Holy One. And we learned that every good deed is an aspect of teshuvah, returning the portion of G-d to its source and root, which is a foundation of chassidus: that teshuvah is the constant avodah of every person, with great joy.
In the next section we will take up the conclusion of the chapter, where the Alter Rebbe explains the purpose of the soul's descent into the body: that its aim is not escape from the body but working within it and elevating it, and why this very descent is what brings about a greater ascent.