In the previous section we looked at the story of Rabbi Elazar and the man who was in the lowest of states. What, in the end, does the story teach us? To what level did Rabbi Elazar raise him? To a minimal level only: that he should be called a beriah, a creature. What that means in practice is that this man will say: I believe that I was created by the Holy One, blessed be He, "go to the Craftsman who made me." He has not become a Torah scholar, he is not even learned, he holds nothing in his hands at all. This is the very lowest rung.
And it is precisely about a person on this rung that Hillel says: go and learn from Aharon the Kohen to be "אוהב את הבריות" ("one who loves the creatures"). Even such a person, whose entire distinction is that he is a beriah and nothing more, you are obligated to love with a true love. Know that he is a part of you, that of him it is said "who knows their greatness and excellence," and of him it is said "one father to them all."
"אוהב את הבריות ומקרבן לתורה" - "loving the creatures and bringing them close to Torah":
The Alter Rebbe adds the continuation of Hillel's words about Aharon the Kohen: "ומקרבן לתורה" ("and brings them close to Torah"), and he explains: "וכולי האי ואולי" ("and with all this, perhaps") - if you will draw this person close, this person who stands on so low a spiritual rung, and pull him with cords of love, then perhaps, with a great deal of work and effort, you will succeed in bringing him close to Torah and to the service of Hashem, and he will begin to keep Torah and mitzvos.
This needs explanation. Since when does the mitzvah of "ואהבת לרעך כמוך" ("love your fellow as yourself") come with conditions attached? Is one to love another Jew only if he manages to bring him close to Torah and mitzvos? And if he does not succeed, or if he knows in advance that he will not succeed in bringing him to a single mitzvah, is there then no obligation to love him? Is the love a means toward the keeping of mitzvos, or is it a goal in its own right? Everything we have learned in this chapter until now makes it clear that the love is a goal, and here, suddenly, the tone seems to change.
True, the Alter Rebbe goes on to clarify: "והן לא - לא הפסיד שכר מצות אהבת ריעים" ("and if not, he has not lost the reward of the mitzvah of loving one's fellows") - even if you did not succeed in bringing him close to Torah and mitzvos, you have not lost the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael, because it is not a means but a goal. Still, why were the two matters linked to one another in the first place?
Which is higher, the souls of Israel or the Torah?
Here we must stop at a fundamental point. A person must first look at himself honestly, and out of that he will understand his relationship to his fellow. There is the well known question: which came first, and whose root is higher, the root of a Jew's soul or the root of the Torah?
On one hand: "a Jew, even though he has sinned, remains a Jew." Even though he sinned, and he holds no Torah and mitzvos, he has not forfeited his Jewish holiness. From here it emerges that Israel is higher.
On the other hand: the language of the Zohar, that Israel are bound up with the Torah and the Torah with the Holy One, blessed be He, three that are bound one to another. From here it would seem that without the Torah there is no connection at all.
There is no contradiction here, because everything depends on which aspect we are speaking of. From the standpoint of the lofty root of the soul of Israel, there is no question that it is higher than the Torah. But once the soul has descended and been clothed in a body in this physical world, there is no way to connect to the Holy One, blessed be He, other than through Torah and mitzvos. A Jew cannot say: I am a Jew and I have a Jewish soul within me, so I am connected in any case, and what need have I for Torah and mitzvos? The soul as it is above is bound to Him with an essential bond, but the soul clothed in a body is obligated in actual fulfillment, and this is the only route.
And just as a person must view himself this way, so must he view another Jew. He is obligated to love him because he is a Jew, since there is "one father to them all." But since he knows that in this world, while the soul is clothed in a body, the bond between a Jew and the Holy One, blessed be He, is formed and revealed only through keeping Torah and mitzvos, he will make every effort to draw that Jew to Torah and mitzvos. For it is precisely in this that his true love for him is expressed: he loves him, he wants him to be truly connected, and he knows that this is the only way that connection happens.
More than that: where is the mitzvah of ahavas Yisrael written, and from where do we know the greatness of every single Jew? From the Torah. It is the Torah that reveals to us the preciousness of a Jew, and a person cannot detach himself from it and say: now that the secret of the Jew's greatness has been revealed to me, I no longer have any need for the Torah.
This, then, is Hillel's intent: "אוהב את הבריות" - you must love him with no conditions whatsoever, but know that the aim must be "ומקרבן לתורה", to make every effort to bring him close, for here, with the soul inside a body, true connection to the Creator of the world runs through the Torah.
The precision of the phrase "והן לא":
Do not think that if you brought him close to Torah and mitzvos you have fulfilled the mitzvah one hundred percent, and if you did not, you hold only half of it in your hands. To this the Alter Rebbe says "והן לא" ("and whether not"). Had he written "and even if not," it would have implied that the complete state is the bringing close, and that in its absence something is lacking. The phrase "והן לא" comes to place the two situations on completely equal footing: whether you brought him close and whether you did not, the love is whole in either measure.
And where do we find this expression? With Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah. Nevuchadnetzar set up an idol before them, demanded that they bow to it, and threatened them, and they answered that nothing would help him and that they would not bow to an idol. Their words in the book of Daniel, in Aramaic, are: "והן לא, ידיע להוא לך מלכא" ("and if not, let it be known to you, O king"). Our Sages explain their intent: we are not refusing to obey you because we have been promised that the Holy One, blessed be He, will save us; whether He saves us or does not save us, whether you succeed in putting us to death or not, as far as we are concerned it is all the same, and to an idol we will not bow. The Alter Rebbe uses that very same expression: love the creatures, and if you succeed in bringing them close to Torah, how good, and if you do not succeed, you have lost nothing, and your ahavas Yisrael has reached its completeness.
The Rebbe's precision: "bringing them close to Torah," and not the reverse:
In one of his sichos the Rebbe points out a precision in the wording: it does not say "loving the creatures and bringing the Torah close to them," but "ומקרבן לתורה", bringing them close to the Torah. This is a most important point. People often assume that in order to draw a person close one has to take into account that the Torah looks rigid and hemmed in by a framework, that it has fixed rules. So someone comes along and says: if I present the Torah's rules to this Jew exactly as they are, he will not like what he sees and it will not sit well with him, so let us bring the Torah close to him, adjust it to the present situation, do a little "renovating" so as to bring it closer to humanity. Against this comes the precision in the language: the Torah stays exactly as it is, whole and within its framework, and it is the people who are brought close to it, not the Torah that is changed in order to be brought close to the people. With this, the path of the Reform movement is ruled out.
In summary: in this section we learned that even a person whose entire distinction is that he is a beriah and no more, we are commanded to love with a true love, and that nevertheless the aim is "ומקרבן לתורה". We explained that this is not a condition placed on the love, but a fundamental understanding: although the root of the soul of Israel is higher than the Torah, the soul clothed in a body connects to the Holy One, blessed be He, solely through Torah and mitzvos, and therefore bringing a person close to Torah is the expression of genuine love for him. We examined the precision of the words "והן לא," which equate the two situations, in the very language of Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah, teaching us that the love is complete either way, and we saw the Rebbe's precision: we bring people close to the Torah, not the Torah close to people.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 32.