Let us continue with a review of the previous lesson, in the Alter Rebbe's own words: "ולכן עושים גופם עיקר ונפשם טפלה" ("and therefore they make their body primary and their soul secondary"). This describes a Jew who looks at his body as the main thing and at his soul as secondary, a Jew who, in effect, never learned chapter 31. He remains stuck in lowliness of spirit, in sadness and bitterness over the fact that he has a base and lowly body, that very real lowliness of the body which the Alter Rebbe spelled out at length in chapters 29 and 34. But there the Alter Rebbe went on to instruct that one must then turn and look at the loftiness of the soul.
And when a person makes his body primary and his soul secondary, his body is not his fellow's body, and his fellow's body is not his. He therefore has no way of truly connecting with another person, because he has built a wall around himself: "I am this, and the other is someone else." Between two such people there can be no genuine love and brotherhood.
There simply cannot be true love between two people whose connection is formed from the side of the body. And if we do find love and friendship between people for whom the body is primary, it is love that is dependent on something, an external love that comes from some cause and not from the truth of the matter. But true love, love that depends on nothing, unlimited love that cannot be undone, love that rises from the depth of the soul the way a person loves himself, exists only where the soul is primary and the body secondary.
Now, in certain places it is explained that sometimes one should begin specifically from the opposite end. If a person cannot succeed in arousing within himself the state in which his soul is primary and his body secondary, so as to arrive at ahavas Yisroel, let him start from the finish line: let him connect with another Jew and actually love his fellow, and through that the revelation of his soul will be awakened and the love will become genuine. In other words, one should not wait until he reaches the higher level and refrain from working on ahavas Yisroel until then. One begins with ahavas Yisroel, and the love itself arouses and reveals the innermost soul.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "וזהו שאמר הלל הזקן על קיום מצוה זו זהו כל התורה כולה ואידך פירושה הוא כו'" ("and this is what Hillel the Elder said regarding the fulfillment of this mitzvah: this is the whole Torah, and the rest is its commentary"). He is referring to the well known story brought in the Gemara in Tractate Shabbos:
There was once a gentile who came before Shammai and said to him: "Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot." Shammai pushed him away with the builder's measuring rod in his hand, that is, he rejected him. The man came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him. Hillel kept the man's condition and said to him: "דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד" ("what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow"), and he concluded: "זו היא כל התורה כולה, ואידך פירושה הוא, זיל גמור" ("this is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary; go and learn it"). Meaning: all the other details of the Torah are nothing but commentary on what I have just told you. Go and study them, but the whole Torah I have already given you.
There are many points worth examining in this passage of Gemara. Let us first see the Alter Rebbe's explanation here in Tanya, and afterwards we will add further points written elsewhere in chassidus. But in order to appreciate the chiddush of this chapter relative to the Gemara, we first need Rashi's explanation of Hillel's words.
Rashi's question: how can one say that the entire Torah is nothing but details of this one mitzvah of ahavas Yisroel? The Torah is divided, broadly speaking, into mitzvos between a person and his fellow and mitzvos between a person and G-d. Had Hillel said that the foundation of all the mitzvos between a person and his fellow is "what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," that would be understandable, for that is indeed their foundation. But Hillel did not limit his words to the mitzvos between a person and his fellow. He said flatly, "this is the entire Torah," implying that even the mitzvos between a person and G-d are details of this one principle. How does that work? What connection is there between the mitzvah of tefillin, or any other mitzvah between a person and G-d, and ahavas Yisroel?
Rashi offers two explanations:
The first explanation: Hillel did not mean "your fellow" in the sense of another Jew at all, but "your Friend," the Holy One blessed be He. Rashi cites the verse in Mishlei, "רעך ורע אביך אל תעזוב" ("your friend and your father's friend do not forsake"). According to this, Hillel was telling the gentile: do not transgress the words of the Holy One blessed be He, just as you would not want others to transgress your words. On this reading there is no question at all, since from the outset we are speaking about everything that G-d commands, and that naturally includes the entire Torah.
The second explanation (Rashi's "another version"): "your fellow" means your fellow literally, a friend in the plain sense. And what is the connection to the mitzvos between a person and G-d? To this Rashi says: "such as robbery, theft, adultery and most of the mitzvos." Note that even here Rashi uses the phrase "most of the mitzvos": most of them can be connected to the details of "what is hateful to you," but there are mitzvos that are hard to connect to it.
The Alter Rebbe here in Tanya teaches that Hillel's words are to be understood exactly as they sound. As the Rebbe once said in a sichah, look at it simply: how did the gentile understand it? After all, Hillel was speaking to him. (One can discuss whether Hillel said this before the conversion or after it, but even if it was afterwards, this was the condition he had set.) Simply speaking, the man understood that "your fellow" means a fellow human being, not that it refers to the Holy One blessed be He. If so, we have to decipher Hillel's statement according to its plain meaning.
And in order to understand the connection between this mitzvah of "what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow" and the claim that this is the entire Torah, we must first understand what the foundation of the whole Torah is, what its root is, what is being sought, what the goal and purpose is that the entire Torah comes to accomplish within a Jew. Once we grasp the purpose, we will understand why the whole Torah is details of ahavas Yisroel.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "כי יסוד ושורש כל התורה הוא להגביה ולהעלות הנפש על הגוף מעלה מעלה עד עיקרא ושרשא דכל עלמין" ("for the foundation and root of the entire Torah is to raise and elevate the soul high above the body, until the very source and root of all the worlds"). This is the goal shared by all the mitzvos, both those between a person and his fellow and those between a person and G-d, and this is the point of which one can say that it is the foundation of everything. This idea is already hinted at in the opening of Tanya, in chapter one.
We can use a formulation that precedes this, from the Gemara at the end of Tractate Kiddushin, a line the Rebbe would repeat hundreds and thousands of times: "אני לא נבראתי אלא לשמש את קוני" ("I was created solely to serve my Maker"). In the common editions of the Gemara the wording is "I was created to serve my Maker," but the Rebbe points to an ancient manuscript of the Gemara in the Vatican, in which the version reads "I was created solely to serve my Maker."
And what this means is that a Jew must look this way not only at himself and at his own body, but at his immediate surroundings and at the entire world. Everything one sees around him, including himself: "I was not created." There is no goal and no purpose in creation as a thing in itself. Even though we see a vast world and a wondrous creation, it has no significance on its own terms, only "to serve my Maker." This is bittul in the plainest sense, self-nullification, a person bending himself over.
Two ways of looking at the mitzvah of tefillin:
The first approach: a person says, thank G-d, I have a healthy body, hands and feet, praise G-d for His goodness. Now I would like to be a G-d fearing Jew, and I know that the Torah has a mitzvah of tefillin, so I will take my left arm and put tefillin on it. So far it all sounds excellent.
The second approach, the deeper one: a Jew begins from the opposite end, which is really the straight end. There is a mitzvah of tefillin in the Torah. What is the mitzvah of tefillin? To take parchment, write a passage on it, and put it on. And for the mitzvah to be possible, a number of components are needed: parchment, and for that you need animals; ink, and for that you need the gallnuts that grow on a certain tree; and hands, a left arm, so that there is something to place it on. It emerges that in order for the mitzvah of tefillin to be fulfilled, the Holy One blessed be He created the animal, created the gallnuts and created the left arm. And all of these together, what were they created for? So that the mitzvah of tefillin could be fulfilled.
From this foundation, that the entire existence of the body and of the world is nothing but secondary, serving the fulfillment of the mitzvos and the elevation of the soul, we will go on to understand why the entire Torah is nothing but commentary and details of the mitzvah of ahavas Yisroel.