Following on the words of Hillel that the Alter Rebbe brings in this chapter, we need to establish one foundational point about the order of things. The order does not begin with: a person has a hand, there are animals in the world, there are gallnuts, and now the question arises what to do with all of this, and since we are G-d fearing Jews we will use them for this purpose too. The truth is exactly the reverse: everything begins from the fact that what is essential is the will of Hashem, and what is essential is the Torah.
This is already hinted at in the very first word of the Torah: "Bereishis." Rashi explains it as "bishvil reishis," for the sake of that which is called "reishis": the entire world was created for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of Israel, both of which are called "reishis."
The Alter Rebbe compresses this whole foundation into a few words: "כי יסוד ושורש כל התורה להגביה ולהעלות את הנפש על הגוף מעלה מעלה", "for the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul high above the body." The whole Torah has one aim: that the spiritual soul, the neshamah, should be the essential thing, and the body should follow along after it.
What is the measuring stick by which a person can test himself, to see whether he has actually reached this point? His attitude toward another Jew. Someone who has truly arrived at a state where the soul is what matters to him and not the body will experience another Jew as one with himself, for his soul and his fellow's soul are literally brothers, "ואב אחד לכולנה," "and they have one Father." Once that is so, there is no difficulty at all in loving another person, because they are one.
But if a person runs into a problem with ahavas Yisrael, if he cannot genuinely love his fellow and cannot restrain himself from doing him harm, that is a sign that for him the body is the essential thing. And precisely because the body is essential, his body is disturbed by the existence of his fellow's body, his business is disturbed by his fellow's business, and so on down the line.
It emerges that for a person whose body is primary, the problem is not located in the single mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael. The problem is in the root and foundation of the entire Torah, since the whole Torah was given for precisely this point.
This is what Hillel was telling that man, and as the Rebbe hints in one of the sichos with a single phrase: "זיל גמור," "go and learn." "Zil," go out: get out of yourself, out of your ego, out of your body and your own situation, and then "gemor," then you will be able to learn Torah and connect to the truth of things. That is why Hillel ties the entire Torah to one matter and says that the whole Torah is ahavas Yisrael, which is the root of everything.
Still, we have to ask: why did Hillel speak in the negative, "what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," rather than in the positive, telling him to love his fellow as himself?
The Tzemach Tzedek, in his sefer Derech Mitzvosecha, in the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael, raises an interesting point that connects to what we are saying. Who knows a person better than he knows himself? A person knows his own flaws, his own shortcomings, his own failures. He knows perfectly well that he failed in something serious, that he did something forbidden, and nevertheless this does not cause him to look at himself negatively. As the verse says, "ועל כל פשעים תכסה אהבה," "love covers over all offenses." His love of himself covers over the offense.
Now, if someone else comes along and publicizes that very flaw, talks about that very offense and brings it to the surface, the person immediately loses his composure. And the question is: what happened? Did his fellow lie? He did not lie. He said the truth, and he said exactly what you yourself already know, and you know it better than he does, with all the details. He revealed nothing new and invented nothing false.
Rather, the complaint is something else entirely. You are not claiming that he lied. You are asking: why doesn't his love for me cover it over, the way my love for myself covers it over? Not that it isn't true, but that his love for me should be so great that he simply doesn't see it, exactly as I see the flaw in myself yet my love for myself covers the offense until I don't even notice it. Why can't someone else love me that way? That is what bothers him.
This is why Hillel put it as he did: what is hateful to you, that your offenses be exposed in the open, that the covering of love be peeled away from you, do not do to your fellow. Do not see his offenses, because your love for him should be so powerful that you are incapable of seeing the offense in him.
[True, a person is not always aware of his own shortcomings, and sometimes it is specifically an outsider who can shine a light on failings he has no idea about. Very often self-interest blinds him and prevents him from even admitting to himself that there was a problem here, and he finds a thousand and one justifications for why what he did was wonderful. But what we said above is speaking about a person who knows and recognizes what is demanded of him and knows his own soul: that here he spoke in the middle of davening, that here he did not daven with a minyan, facts he readily acknowledges, and even so it does not cause him any deficiency in his love of himself.]
Since "the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul high above the body," love for another Jew is the great principle that contains the entire Torah within it.
The Alter Rebbe continues: "וגם להמשיך אור אין סוף ברוך הוא בכנסת ישראל", "and also to draw down the Ein Sof light into Knesses Yisrael." What, after all, is a mitzvah accomplishing when a Jew performs it? The mitzvah draws light and kedushah down upon him, each mitzvah in its own way, and the Name Havayah is drawn to the Jew at the moment he performs it.
[In one place in Likkutei Torah the Alter Rebbe says something fascinating: the word "mitzvah" itself is the Name Havayah. How so? Its last two letters, vav and hei, are the last two letters of the Name Havayah, and its first two letters, mem and tzadi, transform through the atbash cipher, mem into yud and tzadi into hei. So every mitzvah is the Name Y-H-V-H.]
This is the well known idea that a person arouses an "isarusa dil'tata," an awakening from below, through his deed down here, and thereby causes an "isarusa dil'eila," an awakening from above, and a drawing down of light. But for the light from above to actually be drawn down and rest upon the Jew, the place below, the place where the divine light is meant to dwell, has to be unified. If there is no unity in the place, kedushah cannot rest there, for the Holy One Blessed Be He dwells only where there is unity.
Here is a second point linking all the mitzvos to ahavas Yisrael: the function of all the mitzvos is to draw kedushah down here, and for kedushah to truly be drawn down a vessel must be prepared. The vessel in which kedushah rests is unity.
Let us look at the wording inside: "להמשיך אור אין סוף ברוך הוא בכנסת ישראל", to draw the Ein Sof light into Knesses Yisrael, meaning into the root of the souls of Israel, until the light shines for the Jew here below, "כמו שכתוב לקמן", "as explained later on" (and with Hashem's help we will learn this in chapter 41, where the Alter Rebbe elaborates on this point). And where must the light be drawn? "דהיינו במקור נשמות כל ישראל למהוי אחד באחד דוקא", "that is, into the source of all the souls of Israel, so that one be united with One, specifically." The oneness of the Creator unites specifically with the oneness of the souls of Israel. "ולא כשיש פירוד חס ושלום בנשמות", "and not when there is separation, G-d forbid, among the souls." If there is division among the souls as they are found in bodies, then the body is what is doing the dividing, and the place is not a fitting vessel for the Shechinah to rest in.
Later in the Tanya, in Igeres HaKodesh, the Alter Rebbe brings an analogy from the human body. Blood flows through the entire system, moving from the heart to all the limbs and from the limbs back to the heart. If, G-d forbid, there is a blockage in the flow of blood between one limb and another, that limb receives nothing from the heart, and it leads to gangrene, may it not happen to us, and to further complications. So too with the Jewish people: one whole body, where the flow has to pass among all of them, and if something is lacking in that connection, the divine light cannot be drawn down.
After all, that same Jew will later put on tefillin, or affix a mezuzah, or wear tzitzis, or do any other mitzvah. What is he trying to accomplish with them? To draw divine light down upon himself, and through himself upon the entire Jewish people. How can he draw it down when a state of separation exists?
That is why the Alter Rebbe says: "דקודשא בריך הוא לא שריא באתרא פגים", "for the Holy One Blessed Be He does not dwell in a flawed place." He does not rest in a revealed way in a place that is blemished, and what blemishes the place is the lack of ahavas Yisrael. "וכמו שכתוב ברכנו אבינו כולנו כאחד באור פניך", "as we say: Bless us, our Father, all of us as one, with the light of Your countenance." Precisely when all of us are as one is the blessing drawn down, as is explained at length elsewhere.
Here is the essential addition the Alter Rebbe is making here. At the beginning of the chapter he said that a person who has simchah, the joy of the soul, has a straight and easy path to ahavas Yisrael. Now he adds that it is not only ahavas Yisrael that comes through the joy of the soul; this leads to the entire Torah, since ahavas Yisrael is the key to everything. One might have understood from the first part of the chapter that this is simply a virtue that brings a person to ahavas Yisrael, with no connection between the joy of the soul and anything else. Not so: ahavas Yisrael is the key to all matters, and all of them together are bound up with it and come as a result of it, as is hinted in Hillel's words, "this is the entire Torah."
To round out the subject: there is the well known saying from the Twelve Pesukim that the Rebbe instructed every child to know by heart, the statement of Rabbi Akiva, "ואהבת לרעך כמוך, זהו כלל גדול בתורה," "Love your fellow as yourself: this is a great principle in the Torah." At first glance this does not line up with Hillel's statement, and although on the surface they look like the same thing, they are not. When you say "a great principle in the Torah," you do not mean that it is the whole Torah; you mean that the Torah contains details and it contains principles, and this is one of the great principles among them, and there may well be other great principles in the Torah. Hillel's statement is far broader. Hillel is not classifying ahavas Yisrael as one large matter within the Torah; he is saying that it is the entire Torah, and that the entire Torah is contained within it.
Is there really a contradiction between Rabbi Akiva and Hillel? On the inner level, Rabbi Akiva is not contradicting Hillel at all, for Hillel was Rabbi Akiva's teacher, a generation before him. Rather, Rabbi Akiva is hinting at something: if you want to grasp the depth of ahavas Yisrael, which is the entire Torah, where will you come to know it? "A great principle in the Torah," through the study of Torah. You cannot say: since this is the entire Torah, ahavas Yisrael is enough for me, and what do I need tefillin and mezuzah and everything else for. So Rabbi Akiva comes and says: know that it is a great principle, but in the Torah. If you learn Torah, delve into it and fulfill what is written in it, you will connect to and uncover the power of this great principle of ahavas Yisrael, and then you will discover that it is indeed the entire Torah. The two cannot be severed from one another.
And to complete the matter, in one of the sichos the Rebbe brings a short story from which we can learn just how far the demand of ahavas Yisrael reaches. The Rebbe cites a story that the Previous Rebbe once told about one of the great men of Israel, one of whose children was in a very grave condition, the opposite of health, may it not happen to us. The father's natural reaction was that he wept bitter tears and could not find a moment's rest. Afterward he took himself to task and said: "I am still at the very beginning of avodas Hashem, only at the start of the road. If I am incapable of crying like this and feeling such pain over another child, and only because this is my own child, that is a sign that I am still lacking in genuine love for every single Jew."
He demanded of himself that the pain be felt for every single Jew, since all Jews are literally brothers and "one Father to them all," and not that the pain should come only because this is your son, or your relative, or your own affair, in which case it flows from thinking about yourself. The Rebbe connects this to what is written here in Tanya: this is what the Alter Rebbe is demanding of a Jew in this chapter, to reach this level of "all Israel are literally brothers, for they have one Father," all the way to the highest level of ahavas Yisrael.
In summary: In this section we learned that the order does not begin with the body and its needs but with the will of Hashem and with the Torah, as hinted in "Bereishis," "bishvil reishis," for the sake of Torah and Israel. The root of the entire Torah is "to raise and elevate the soul high above the body," and the test of that is one's attitude toward another Jew. Therefore a deficiency in ahavas Yisrael is not a deficiency in one mitzvah but in the foundation of the whole Torah, and that is Hillel's "zil gemor." We explained why Hillel spoke in the negative, based on the Tzemach Tzedek in Derech Mitzvosecha, that "love covers over all offenses." We learned a second point: the root is to draw the Ein Sof light into Knesses Yisrael, "so that one be united with One, specifically," since "the Holy One Blessed Be He does not dwell in a flawed place," as in the analogy of the blood flowing through the limbs of the body. Finally we clarified the relationship between Rabbi Akiva's "great principle in the Torah" and Hillel's "the entire Torah," and the story that shows how far the demand for genuine ahavas Yisrael reaches.
In the next section we will continue learning the words of the Alter Rebbe in the remainder of the chapter.