In the previous section we dealt with avodah that flows from the bittul of a servant to the will of the king, and with the words of the Yenuka that «ovdin tavin», good deeds, are in the category of the oil. In this section we will look more deeply at the difference between the feeling in a person's soul and actual deed, and from there we will turn to the Alter Rebbe's own words about the indwelling of the Shechinah and the revelation of G-dliness.
The «I» inside the feeling, versus the will of the king:
A person who goes to daven with no appetite for it at all, simply because he is the king's servant and this is what the king wanted: that is precisely the point of the parable. And one might ask, what is it worth that you did what the king said? Set against this the person who says, «I cannot put on tefillin, but I am a Jew in my heart.» The answer to him is: a Jew in your heart is worth nothing here. You are filling yourself up, in your own heart, with your own feeling, on your own level, but the will of the king you did not do.
Tefillah is not the ideal example, not because the example is a bad one, but because davening genuinely does require feeling. Tzedakah, on the other hand, certainly: a man drops a coin, he does not even know it fell from him, and a poor man finds it and it saves his life. With that good deed he fulfilled the will of the king, because here what stands out is the king's will and not his own «I». And when a person cries out, «What flavor is there in this?» his cry really comes from the question, «Where am I in this?» For here the «I» simply does not exist.
[As for what is said, that one who gives tzedakah or does a mitzvah and then regrets it loses the mitzvah, that speaks of a particular situation. The rule, however, is that «no aveirah extinguishes a mitzvah»; a mitzvah a person does is never snuffed out, and in truth one cannot regret a mitzvah at all.]
This point is hard to absorb and hard to accept, because it runs against the common human assumption. The human assumption says: wherever a person feels, that is where he is more alive. But pay attention: «I feel» - that is the «I». A beautiful ego, a refined and G-dly ego, but an ego.
This does not mean mitzvos should be done dryly; mitzvos need to be done with life. For the sake of understanding we pushed the matter to its extremes and set up two poles: one who does nothing and is only full of feeling, against one who does and has no feeling whatsoever. If you ask where there is more «I» and more personal sensation, certainly in the feeling; but where is there more expression of the king? In the doing. And this is what the Yenuka revealed to Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Yehudah: the deed is the oil, the thing that becomes the fuel that unites with the fire. It is a doing that nullifies a person's own existence and unites him with the king.
The Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 35:
«מבואר ומובן לכל משכיל כי הנה נשמת האדם» («It is clear and understood to every thinking person that the soul of man...»). Take the neshamah without deed, and even at its highest level: a complete tzaddik, serving Hashem with yirah and with ahavah betaanugim, love in delights, the highest level of feeling toward the Creator (we are not entering here into an explanation of these levels). Nevertheless, with all its greatness, «אינה בטלה במציאות לגמרי להיבטל ולהיכלל באור ה' ממש להיות לאחדים ומיוחדים בייחוד גמור, רק הוא דבר בפני עצמו» («it is not utterly nullified in its existence, to be absorbed and included in the light of Hashem itself so as to become one and united in complete unity; rather it is a thing unto itself»). Because this is an existence that loves, a soul drawn toward the king. You can describe its existence and say, «What an existence he has, so loving, so great» - and if there is some existence here, then there is no absolute bittul to the king, but rather another existence: a holy existence, but an existence. The existence of one «who fears Hashem and loves Him» (may we merit it!), but an existence.
[If someone asks: are ahavah and yirah not themselves an act of the king's will, since the king commanded «You shall love Hashem your G-d»? Indeed, love as the fulfillment of the king's will is exactly like the deed; we are not dealing here with the mitzvah side of it, but with its emotional side.]
Inner will and external will:
«מה שאין כן המצוות ומעשים טובים שהן רצונו יתברך» («Not so the mitzvos and good deeds, which are His blessed will»). In the deed a person does not act because he feels like it, but because this is the will of the king. «ורצונו יתברך הוא מקור החיים לכל העולמות והברואים» («and His blessed will is the source of life for all the worlds and creatures»). The Creator's will is the source and the essence of everything. But immediately a question arises: are only the mitzvos the Creator's will? Is the leaf on the tree not His will? Is the sun rising in the morning not His will? Everything is His will. What, then, is the difference between the mitzvos and the entire world?
The answer: it is true that everything is the Creator's will, but within will there is an external will and an inner will. Think of a man going to work: does he want to work, or does he want to receive the salary? And even when he wants the salary, is it the salary he wants, or does he want to live? His inner will is to live; from that he wants to have money, and from that he wants to go to work. All the accompanying desires are called external wills. By way of analogy, so it is Above: everything we see is the Creator's will, but the inner will is Torah and mitzvos, and the external will is the entire world. «In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth»: He wanted the whole world, and that is His will; but for the sake of what? «Bereishis», for the sake of the «reishis», for the sake of Israel and for the sake of the Torah.
And so the Alter Rebbe continues: the G-dly will came down upon created beings «על ידי צמצומים רבים, בהסתר פנים של רצון העליון ברוך הוא, וירידת המדרגות עד שיוכלו להתהוות ולהיבראות יש מאין ודבר נפרד בפני עצמו ולא יבטלו במציאות» («through many tzimtzumim, in a concealment of the supernal will, and a descent of levels, until they could come into being and be created as something from nothing, a separate entity unto itself, and not be nullified out of existence»), as we learned at length in the previous chapters. The G-dly will within creation is a will covered over by so very many garments, until creatures came into being who cry out, «Where is the Creator at all?» Created by the Creator's will, yet paying no attention whatsoever to the fact that his entire existence comes from the Creator's will. That is how deeply the will is hidden in this creation.
«מה שאין כן המצוות שהן פנימיות רצונו יתברך, ואין שם הסתר פנים כלל» («Not so the mitzvos, which are the innerness of His blessed will, and there is no concealment of face there at all»). The 613 mitzvos written in the Torah are the Creator's inner will. And why did He want specifically tefillin, Shabbos and a mezuzah? There is no «why» here: that is what He wants. And one who connects to these things connects to His will.
Whereas one who seeks the pleasures, the feeling, the joy, the swooning, the love and the awe, which are all exceedingly lovely, and the intellect and the comprehension, which are enlightened and vast: if he gets stuck there and does not move forward to the mitzvos, he is stuck in his own world and in his own delight, and he has not connected to the delight and the will of the king.
«אין החיות שבהם דבר נפרד בפני עצמו כלל, אלא הוא מיוחד ונכלל ברצונו יתברך והיו לאחדים ממש» («the vitality within them is not a separate entity at all, but is united and included in His blessed will, and they become literally one»). The moment a person performs a mitzvah, his body unites with the will of the Creator: not with his own will and not with his own pleasures, but with His blessed will. True, the thing looks dry compared with «swooning», which looks alive and juicy and comes with ceremony and bells; but those are his bells and his noise. In a mitzvah the «I» may feel dryness, yet the king is present there far more revealed.
And if you ask: Torah study too is the Creator's will, so why did the Yenuka choose specifically «ovdin tavin», good deeds?
At this stage of the chapter there is indeed no difference between Torah and mitzvah: learning too is the Creator's will (and in fact, the very learning we are engaged in right now is the greatest mitzvah we have to do at this moment). When we set a person's «I» against the Creator's will in the simple sense, it makes no difference which will it is: the Creator's will in learning, in doing, or in speaking, anything that is the Creator's will is included in this superiority of doing the king's will one hundred percent. But in the second half of the chapter the Alter Rebbe will explain why, within the Creator's will itself, there is an advantage to «ovdin tavin» over the study of Torah.
The matter of the indwelling of the Shechinah:
«והנה עניין השראת השכינה הוא גילוי אלוקותו יתברך ואור אין סוף ברוך הוא» («The matter of the indwelling of the Shechinah is the revelation of His blessed G-dliness and the Ohr Ein Sof») in a thing. When the Creator reveals Himself in some thing and in some place, that is called a revelation of the Shechinah. And what is this revelation? That one can point to that place, to that person, to that reality, and say of them «שנכלל באור ה' ובטל אליו במציאות לגמרי» («that it is included in the light of Hashem and utterly nullified to Him in its very existence»). And when can that sentence be said? When a person is fulfilling the will of the Creator, for then his own desires are set aside and the Creator's will stands at the top of his order of priorities. That is bittul bimtzius to the Creator's will, and that is the indwelling of the Shechinah.
For example: at this hour the Creator's will is that we set aside all our occupations and contract ourselves into one single point, to understand the words of the Yenuka. And as we connect to this point and nullify all our other realities, that itself is the indwelling of the Shechinah, «שאז הוא ששורה ומתגלה בה ה' אחד» («for then it is that the one Hashem rests and is revealed in it»).
«אבל כל מה שלא בטל אליו במציאות לגמרי - אין ה' שורה ומתגלה בו» («But whatever is not utterly nullified to Him in its existence, Hashem does not rest and reveal Himself in it»). A reality or a state that is not completely nullified may well be G-dly, may well be spiritual, may well be moving to the point of swooning, as in all the examples we brought; but if it is not nullified to the king, and the person is doing it because of the pleasure he gets from it, this is not the right address for the indwelling of the Shechinah.
«ואף צדיק גמור הדבק בו באהבה רבה» («And even a complete tzaddik who cleaves to Him with great love»). Take even a complete tzaddik who is cleaving to the king right now with great love: still, «לית מחשבה תפיסא ביה כלל» («no thought grasps Him at all»). No thought of a human creature can take hold of the Creator. «כי אמיתת ה' אלוקים אמת - הוא ייחודו ואחדותו, שהוא לבדו הוא ואפס בלעדו ממש» («for the truth of Hashem Elokim Emes is His oneness and His unity, that He alone is, and there is literally nothing besides Him»). The Creator's true reality, that «there is literally nothing besides Him», no human thought grasps or absorbs it. Therefore, one who makes do with the imaginings of his own thought alone and says, «Here I am going deep, connecting, rising, and it seems to me I have grasped something», has grasped himself, and barely even that, but not the Creator's will. And consequently this lover: what is he loving? The level of imagining he has arrived at, which is a «yesh», a something, and not an «efes», a nothing. He has not nullified himself to nothing; he has remained with all the powers of his intellect intact, and uses them to go deeper, and since «no thought grasps Him at all», his thought grasps nothing, and therefore «אין אור ה' שורה ומתגלה בו» («the light of Hashem does not rest and is not revealed in him»).
And this is the concluding, summarizing sentence: «אלא על ידי קיום המצוות, שהן רצונו וחכמתו יתברך ממש בלי שום הסתר פנים» («but only through the performance of the mitzvos, which are literally His blessed will and wisdom with no concealment of face at all»).
So what, then, about hisbonenus, contemplating the greatness of the Holy One blessed be He?
There is no doubt that a person must fill his entire being with thought about G-dliness, his entire heart with feeling toward G-dliness, and all his faculties without exception. But he must know, even while he is doing it, that what he is doing is filling up his own being, and that this is not his point of connection to the Creator. The point of connection is formed in the doing, in doing the Creator's will. And yet he cannot, and indeed is not permitted to, make do with the doing alone: if he makes do with it and says, «What do I care about feeling and intellect?», then animal feelings and animal intellect will fill him up all by themselves, and they will make him coarse as an animal and will contaminate him, and in the end he will not even manage the doing itself. Therefore a person must fill his entire being as much as he is able, and know how to keep everything in proportion and in its place: the point of connection is in doing His will, and that is no contradiction to the obligation to fill all the other faculties.
Another question: a person is strongly drawn to a certain craving which the Holy One blessed be He hates and commanded not to act upon, and he forces himself, afflicts himself and suffers in order not to do it. Is that suffering the will of Hashem?
The answer is: yes. Keeping a mitzvas lo saaseh is a mitzvah, and there is even a special intensity in it. As we learned in chapters 26 and 27, this is the Creator's delight from a person's «iskafya». And the suffering involved is not the suffering of the person himself; it is the suffering of the animal within him.
As for thought: if a person willfully thinks forbidden thoughts against the Creator's will, that is indeed an aveirah in thought, and he is a rasha in thought. But the title «rasha» in deed is given only when the matter passes over into the stage of action: if the craving is burning in him and he stands and fights and does not fall, he is no rasha. A person is made of layers: on one layer he may have failed, and on another layer he has succeeded.
The parable of the two prisoners on Seder night:
A Jew is sitting on Seder night in a gentile prison. He sees no one and knows nothing, he does not even know that today is Pesach. The food served in that prison is always, as a fixed matter, matzah that is kosher for Pesach (there was a stockpile there of a hundred tons of matzah, and that is what they ate). Seder night arrives, and the Jew does not know it is Seder night and knows nothing at all; they served him supper of matzah, and he ate matzah.
In the prison across the way, where the food served is bread, sits a tzaddik who knows every secret of Kabbalah in the matzah, and the entire Haggadah by heart, forwards and backwards. The time came: he said the Haggadah by heart and remembered it all. The time came to eat matzah, and he said, «Master of the world, I have no matzah, but at least let me have in mind all the kavanos of the matzah according to Kabbalah.» But matzah he did not eat; and of course he ate no bread either, he did not fail.
Which of the two fulfilled the Creator's will that night? What is the Creator's will on Seder night? To eat matzah. And who ate matzah? The first one, and so it turns out that he is the one who did the Creator's will. The second one, poor man, wanted it very much; he is an oness, compelled, and he certainly will not be punished, but the mitzvah of matzah he did not fulfill at all.
In summary: in this section we learned that feeling, even the holiest and most refined feeling, is an expression of the «I» in a person, while the deed is an expression of the king's will. In the Alter Rebbe's words: even the soul of a complete tzaddik who serves with yirah and with ahavah betaanugim is not utterly nullified in its existence; it remains «a thing unto itself», the existence of one «who fears Hashem and loves Him». Not so the mitzvos, which are the innerness of His blessed will with no concealment of face at all, unlike the whole of creation, which is an external will that came down through many tzimtzumim and in concealment of face. We saw that the indwelling of the Shechinah is the revelation of G-dliness in a place that is utterly nullified in its existence, and therefore it is not found in the imaginings of thought and love, since «no thought grasps Him at all», but only through the performance of the mitzvos. It was also clarified that a person must fill his entire being with contemplation and with feeling, yet know that the point of connection is in doing His will, as was illustrated by the parable of the two prisoners on Seder night.
In the next section we will take up the second half of the chapter, where the Alter Rebbe will explain why, within the Creator's will itself, there is an advantage to «ovdin tavin» and to actual deed over the study of Torah.