In the previous section we saw that when a Jew internalizes the unity of Hashem in his own awareness, he thereby brings about the revelation of G-dliness in the world in the most literal sense. The very fact that a Jew walks through the world with faith in the oneness of the Creator in his mind, and every Jew, whoever he may be, carries that inner emunah, actually effects this revelation in the world; with his very footsteps he reveals it.
Two reasons for joy:
What he gains: he has merited that the Creator enters his mind, takes up lodging and dwells together with him.
What is gained Above: he gathers joy for the Creator, for the divine "desire" is that He have a dwelling, in a revealed way, right here in this world. As it were, the person lends Him a hand and gives Him the ability to expand and realize that very desire.
By revealing the Creator within his own awareness, a person brings the awareness of the Creator into this lowest world for one more stage and one more moment. This is not only a conquest of brain cells, it is a conquest of moments in time. The world, after all, is made up of place and of time, and every single part of it has to be filled with this revelation. When a person contributes to that revelation, he adds to the concept of dirah betachtonim, a dwelling for G-d in the lower realms, and brings it closer.
Let us return to the lines on the previous page:
“וזה כל האדם ותכלית בריאתו ובריאת כל העולמות עליונים ותחתונים להיות לו דירה זו בתחתונים” (“This is the whole of man, and the purpose of his creation and of the creation of all the worlds, upper and lower: that He have this dwelling in the lower realms”). What is the purpose of all the galaxies and all the worlds, spiritual and physical alike? All of it is so that here, in this lowest world, there should be a dwelling for the Creator. And with his own small act, within his own awareness, a person brings that purpose closer.
It is worth noting: years ago the Rebbe asked that every child be taught by heart twelve pesukim and sayings of Chazal, and he chose passages of central importance: “Shema Yisrael,” “In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth,” “The Torah that Moshe commanded us,” “Love your fellow as yourself.” Of the twelve, two were taken from the Tanya, and both of them appear in chapter 33. The first of them is this very passage, and every Chabad child, from the age that he can speak, recites it by heart.
And now back to the point we had reached: “וזו היא דירתו בתחתונים” (“and this is His dwelling in the lower realms”). By grasping the unity of Hashem and rejoicing in the inheritance he received from our fathers, a person makes for the Creator a dwelling in the lower realms.
“Six hundred and thirteen mitzvos were given to Israel”:
This is what our Sages said in the Gemara in Maseches Makkos: “תרי”ג מצוות ניתנו לישראל” (“six hundred and thirteen mitzvos were given to Israel”), the mitzvos that the Jewish people received. The Gemara points out that this number is hinted at in the gematria of the word “Torah”: ת is four hundred, ו is six, ר is two hundred, ה is five, a total of six hundred and eleven. “The Torah that Moshe commanded us” accounts for 611; and the two commandments “I am Hashem your G-d” and “You shall have no other gods,” which we heard directly from the mouth of the Almighty, complete the 613.
The key to the 613:
Throughout the generations the great ones of the world sought to give a Jew a key with which to enter the world of the 613 mitzvos. It is hard for a person to succeed in keeping all 613, hard from the outside and hard from within, as we mentioned earlier. So they give him a key: out of the 613, a few matters were singled out as more fundamental and more essential than the rest, and he was told: start with these; if you stand firm in them and keep them properly, they will serve as a gateway and a help to reach all 613.
King David reduced them to eleven, and the Gemara lists them all: “He who walks wholeheartedly, and does righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart,” and so on.
Then came Yeshayahu and reduced them to six.
Yeshayahu came again and reduced them to two.
Then came Chavakuk and reduced them to one, as it says: “וצדיק באמונתו יחיה” (“and the righteous man shall live by his emunah”).
What is that one thing? Emunah, faith. Faith in what? In the unity of Hashem. And what does “shall live” mean? As we will see below, it is not merely a continuation of life, but something like techiyas hameisim, the revival of the dead: a passage from a state that is the opposite of life into life itself.
And why is it specifically emunah that gives a person everything? After all, every Jew believes in any case.
The explanation is folded into what we said earlier. If a Jew believes only that the Holy One created the world, he sees a big, beautiful world and believes that it does not exist on its own but that the Holy One brings it into being and gives it life at every single moment. That is a very fine faith, but it remains on the simple, basic level, and he has not related at all to the matter of His oneness, that this entire world is in truth null and void, and that the Creator is the only reality.
A person who stays on that level of faith will say, when difficulties come upon him in life: what can I do? This world that the Holy One created has tripped me up and is piling up obstacles against me. He has no strength to cope. That basic faith does not help him, in the familiar phrase, to get through the world.
But if he believes in His oneness, that the Holy One indeed created the world yet He is above the world, and the whole world is null and void relative to Him, then it follows that the commands He gave are higher than the world and they run the world. And if so, why should he be impressed by problems, difficulties, obstructions and delays? Obstructions and delays belong to the world, while the Creator is above everything, and the entire world is utterly nullified before Him. That is why specifically this faith is what opens the gate to reaching all 613.
And this is what we see in real life: a person facing obstructions and delays, whatever they may be, as long as he has not yet gotten past them, the test looks impossible to him. But once he has coped, succeeded and come through it, he looks back and says: that was the problem? It was nothing at all, no more than a hair's breadth.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: “וזהו שאמרו רז“ל תרי”ג מצוות ניתנו לישראל... בא חבקוק והעמידן על אחת, שנאמר וצדיק באמונתו יחיה” (“this is what our Sages said: 613 mitzvos were given to Israel... then came Chavakuk and reduced them to one, as it says, ‘and the righteous man shall live by his emunah’”), “כלומר כאילו אינה רק מצווה אחת” (“that is, as though there were only one single mitzvah”): look at it as though you have only one mitzvah. A person who looks at 613 mitzvos and finds the whole thing so hard and so long should see it as though he has only one, “היא האמונה לבדה” (“namely, emunah alone”). And what does he gain by this? “כי על ידי האמונה לבדה יבוא לקיום כל התרי”ג מצוות” (“for through emunah alone he will come to fulfill all 613 mitzvos”).
And what is it that will bring a person to all 613? “דהיינו שיהא לבו שש ושמח באמונתו בייחוד ה׳ בתכלית השמחה” (“that his heart should rejoice and be glad in his faith in the unity of Hashem, with the utmost joy”): that he be happy in the fact that he believes in the unity of Hashem. And where does the joy come from? From the ability to internalize the divine reality and bring it into his own awareness, “כאילו לא הייתה עליו רק מצווה זו לבדה, והיא לבדה תכלית בריאתו ובריאת כל העולמות” (“as though this were the only mitzvah incumbent upon him, and it alone were the purpose of his creation and of the creation of all the worlds”). For all the worlds were created in order to make possible within them the revelation of the truth: all the concealment and hiddenness were created in order to be removed. It is like a game of hide and seek: he hides precisely so that he should be found. It turns out that all the worlds, with all their concealments and hidings, exist only so that He be revealed.
“הרי בכוח וחיות נפשו בשמחה רבה זו תתעלה נפשו למעלה מעלה על כל המונעים מקיום כל התרי”ג מצוות” (“then through the power and vitality of his soul in this great joy, his soul will rise far above all that hinders the fulfillment of all 613 mitzvos”). The joy, the vitality, the energy and the elevation of soul that come to him from having merited to discover the secret: there is a secret in the world, and whoever walks around in the world has no idea what is really going on, and he has merited to uncover it and to meet face to face the truth standing behind it all. His soul is lifted up, and he looks down at every obstruction and delay from above: what is this disturbance? How can something physical and technical stop me from connecting to G-dliness, which is above everything?
And it makes no difference whether the disturbances come from within or from without. From the outside it is “what will people say,” people are looking at me, and one can answer: I do not care what they say. But sometimes the disturbances from within are harder than those from without, when the person himself thinks the thing is not really necessary and gets in his own way. In any case, whatever the disturbance may be, from inside or outside, one can get past all of it, and it begins with emunah in the unity of Hashem.
[It is worth setting the matter straight: some mistakenly think that Chavakuk came to have mercy on Israel, to erase the heavy load of 613 mitzvos and leave them with only one. That is not so, and Chavakuk would never have agreed to such a thing. Chavakuk came and said to the person who finds it hard and does not know where to begin: take this one key, and through it you will reach all 613 with ease. That is what Chazal mean by “reduced them to one”: when a Jew has emunah in the unity of Hashem, nothing will stand in the way of his moving forward, and everything moves forward. There is no reduction of the 613 here, but a strengthening of them, and an explanation of the sheer power of emunah.]
“Shall live”, precisely:
And this is what he said, “באמונתו יחיה” (“by his emunah he shall live”). “יחיה” is precise, for this word too is exact: it is like techiyas hameisim, by way of analogy. What happens at the revival of the dead? The one who is brought back to life does not simply continue his former life; he begins everything anew. So too with a person who takes emunah for himself: from the moment that correct faith lives in his awareness, his whole life is new. Whatever came before was in the category of the dead, and from now on life begins. This is what Chavakuk is saying: you want to live? Open the key of emunah for yourself, and then “תחיה נפשו בשמחה רבה זו” (“his soul will live through this great joy”).
To sum up: in this section we learned that the revelation of the unity of Hashem within a person's awareness is itself the making of a dwelling for the Creator in the lower realms, a conquest of place and of moments in time; and from here come two reasons for joy: that the Creator takes up lodging and dwells in his mind, and that the person, as it were, lends Him a hand in realizing the desire for a dirah betachtonim. We looked at the words “This is the whole of man and the purpose of his creation,” which is one of the twelve pesukim the Rebbe chose; at the progression in the Gemara in Maseches Makkos, from King David down to Chavakuk, who reduced them to one, “and the righteous man shall live by his emunah”; and at the point that this is not a leniency in the 613 but a key to them, since faith in His oneness, that the entire world is null and void relative to Him, lifts a person above every obstruction and delay, from within and from without. Finally we examined the precision of the word “yichyeh,” “shall live”: like the revival of the dead, that a person's life begins anew through the power of emunah.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 33.