In the previous section we examined the difference between fulfilling a mitzvah through action and speech and the kavanah, the inner intent, of the mitzvah. Now we need to clarify: what precisely is the advantage that kavanah has over the deed itself?
Let us say at the outset, and emphasize it: this is not an essential advantage. The point is not that in the deed a person is somehow lowly and of lesser worth because the act is physical, while in kavanah he is loftier. From the standpoint of the essence of the matter there is no difference between them at all. The advantage of kavanah is relative to the person himself, relative to what he experiences: with kavanah a greater illumination shines within him. But in the essence of the thing itself, no.
A Jew who puts on tefillin in actual practice, with no kavanah whatsoever, has fulfilled the will of the Creator one hundred percent, and since he has fulfilled the Creator's will, he is at that very moment joined to Him. Think of someone who puts a plug into a socket and has no idea how it works. He has never heard of electricity and knows nothing about it; he only knows that when he plugs it in, results follow. Does the fact that he had no particular intent mean that he will get fewer results in practice? So it is with the act of a mitzvah: the one who does it is connected. And even the kavanah itself, in the nimshal, is nothing other than a Divine will, as will be explained.
The same is true of davening. Certainly a general kavanah is required, that a person know that he is now standing and speaking with the Holy One, blessed be He. But even if he did not concentrate on each and every word and did not have in mind the meaning of the words, and he simply said the entire Shemoneh Esrei, according to halachah he does not have to daven again (apart from the first brachah, as we learned). There is no deficiency, neither in a mitzvah performed in speech nor in a mitzvah performed in deed.
Let us look at the words inside (page 100, about eight lines from the bottom):
“ולא שדבקות המחשבה ושכל האדם בו יתברך, היא מצד עצמה למעלה מדבקות קיום המצוות מעשיות בפועל ממש” (“It is not that the cleaving of a person's thought and intellect to Him is in and of itself higher than the cleaving of the actual fulfillment of the practical mitzvos in deed”). One should not think that the cleaving of thought is loftier in its very essence, that it carries some greater advantage than practical fulfillment. From the standpoint of the matter itself, from the standpoint of the Divine will, there is no difference between them.
As in the well known expression, “אילו נצטווינו לחטוב עצים” (“had we been commanded to chop wood”): if the command had been to chop wood, that would be the mitzvah. We were commanded to put on tefillin, so we put on tefillin. The entire advantage of a mitzvah lies in its being the Divine will, and not in the fact that it gives us feelings or understanding. Kavanah too is not some mere “extra”; it is just as much the Divine will, one hundred percent, as the deed is. From the standpoint of the Divine dimension of the matter there is no difference between kavanah and deed: both are needed, and it is the Holy One, blessed be He, who determined what is indispensable and what is not. But from His side, whether a person has kavanah or whether he performs the act, in both cases he is fulfilling the Divine will and thereby becoming connected to Him. There is no “closer” and “less close” here; both stand at exactly the same level, with the same intensity of revelation and of connection.
[It is of course clear that it is His will that these matters be settled in a person's mind and heart as well, and when they are not present at the time of the deed there is a deficiency in the fulfillment of the Divine will, a body without a soul. But this does not invalidate the mitzvah, and the deficiency is not in the spiritual stature of the thing either. A person should not feel that when he had kavanah he is closer to the Creator. He has fulfilled an additional will and completed the mitzvah, but he has not drawn closer.]
Let us illustrate with two mitzvos: mezuzah and tefillin. Certainly, if a mezuzah is required and I did not affix it, the fulfillment of the mitzvah is missing. But is a mezuzah something that brings a person closer to the Creator than tefillin do, from the standpoint of the Divine will? No. This is His will and that is His will. Obviously one needs both mezuzah and tefillin, but as far as the fundamental thing taking place here, namely that this is the Divine will, there is no inferiority in the deed. This is what the Alter Rebbe wants to stress: do not think that the deed is Divine will at a reduced level and kavanah is Divine will at a perfect level. From the standpoint of Divine will, a deed is Divine will and kavanah is Divine will, and where He wants you to have kavanah, that kavanah is His will, and that is its entire advantage. There is no advantage in kavanah from the standpoint of kavanah itself.
And the other side of this principle deserves equal emphasis: kavanah alone, without a deed, has no value at all, and kavanah in and of itself is not something over which one makes a brachah.
“If he did not have kavanah, he has not fulfilled his obligation”:
We learned about this at the beginning of chapter 38, with regard to the first verse of Shema, where if one did not have kavanah he has not fulfilled his obligation. There, the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, is that the kavanah be present too. Just as He wants the tefillin to be placed on the left arm, one on the head and one on the arm, so too He wants there to be kavanah in that verse. That is His precise command, but not because with kavanah the person is closer. From His side there is no difference, and the entire advantage of kavanah is relative to the person.
In his words: “אלא מפני שזהו גם כן רצונו יתברך לדבקה בשכל ומחשבה ובכוונת המצוות מעשיות ובכוונת קריאת שמע ותפילה ושאר ברכות” (“rather, because it is likewise His will that one cleave to Him with intellect and thought, and with the kavanah of the practical mitzvos, and with the kavanah of Shema and tefillah and the other brachos”). The advantage of kavanah is not because it is kavanah, but because this is the Divine will: the Holy One, blessed be He, wants that on these occasions and others we cleave to Him by means of intellect and thought.
“והארת רצון העליון הזה, המאירה ומלובשת בכוונה זו היא גדולה לאין קץ למעלה מעלה מהארת רצון העליון המאירה ומלובשת בקיום המצוות עצמן במעשה או בדיבור בלי כוונה” (“and the illumination of this Supernal Will, which shines and is clothed in this kavanah, is infinitely greater, far higher, than the illumination of the Supernal Will that shines and is clothed in the fulfillment of the mitzvos themselves in deed or in speech without kavanah”). Here is the precision: it is not the will itself that is greater, for it is one single will, but rather the illumination of the will. In kavanah the illumination of the will is greater; in a deed without kavanah it is more constricted.
“כגודל מעלת אור הנשמה על הגוף שהוא כלי ומלבוש הנשמה” (“like the measure of the superiority of the light of the soul over the body, which is the vessel and garment of the soul”): just as the light of the soul has an advantage over the body that serves it as a vessel and garment. And the nimshal in the mitzvos: “כמו גוף המצווה שהוא כלי ומלבוש לכוונתה” (“just as the body of the mitzvah is the vessel and garment for its kavanah”).
And again the Alter Rebbe emphasizes the point, now in even clearer language: “ואף שבשתיהן” (“and although in both of them”), in the mitzvah and in its kavanah, “מלובש רצון אחד פשוט בתכלית הפשיטות בלי שום שינוי וריבוי חס ושלום” (“there is clothed one single will, utterly simple, without any change or multiplicity, heaven forbid”). The Divine will is entirely simple: it is not present more here and less there, and the Divine will is not more “pure” here and more “coarse” there, heaven forbid. One cannot divide up the will. If so, the entire advantage of deeds and of kavanos is only that through them we connect to the Divine will, and that will is present in both equally, for it is “מיוחד במהותו ועצמותו יתברך בתכלית הייחוד” (“united with His very essence and being in perfect union”). The mitzvah of kavanah is united with Him in perfect union, and the mitzvah of deed is united with Him in perfect union, with no difference whatsoever.
Then what is the difference between them after all? “ההארה אינה שווה בבחינת צמצום והתפשטות” (“the illumination is not equal in terms of tzimtzum and expansion”). This is like an analogy already mentioned: in physical reality, the entire difference between inanimate matter, plant, animal and the speaking being lies only in the degree of expansion or tzimtzum of the life force, while the Creator is present in all of them equally, except that there the matter is concealed. Here it is the reverse: both in kavanah and in deed the Creator is present in a revealed way, in both of them, and the whole difference is in the tzimtzum or the expansion of the illumination.
For a person's distinction lies in his being an intellectual being: with the intellect he feels more, and the intellect affects his heart and his inner self. Therefore when he has kavanah, the Divine will shines within him to a greater degree, and when he has no kavanah, the Divine will does not shine within him as much. But this is a deficiency only in the illumination as it is experienced by the person, while in the actual connection to the Divine will nothing at all is lacking.
Two examples of this principle:
The first example is Mivtza Tefillin. The Rebbe asked that people go out into the street and put on tefillin with fellow Jews, and there were many in the past (and there are such people today as well) who wondered what good this accomplishes. Take the Jew to a seminar, sit with him for a month, change his outlook and his inner world, then one can say you have done something; but what have you achieved by putting on tefillin with him once, after which he went back to his life as before? The answer is the very principle explained here. Do you want to connect Jews to the Holy One, blessed be He, or do you want to connect them to themselves, to their own emotions and their own intellect? If you want to connect them to the Holy One, blessed be He, then do what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants: today this Jew needs to put on tefillin, so put on tefillin with him. Do you want to learn with him afterwards? Learn with him, and that too is certainly a mitzvah. But do not belittle the putting on of tefillin and do not minimize its value, because belittling it reveals a basic failure to understand what connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, actually is. It does not come from us, it comes from Him. If it depended on us, if we were the ones trying to climb up to Him, we would never arrive anywhere at all. He came down to us, “וירד ה' על הר סיני” (“and G-d descended upon Mount Sinai”), and told us: here, I am giving you tools with which to connect to Me. And what He gave us is what connects us. He gave us deed and He gave us kavanah, and all we have to do is connect ourselves to His will.
The second example, in an entirely different area, is Tikkun Leil Shavuos. On the night of Shavuos the custom is to recite the Tikkun, which consists mainly of reading from Torah. Anyone familiar with its structure knows that it is built of passages set one next to another, where the connection between them is not always apparent: there are long, coherent sections, and sometimes three verses from the beginning of a parshah and three verses from its end. On the face of it, what is gained by saying words without understanding them? Would it not be better to sit and learn one parshah in depth and understand every single word? And indeed there are those who look at this dismissively, and that is precisely the point: on the night of Shavuos, the festival of the giving of the Torah, you have to internalize that what fundamentally connects you to the Torah is not your intellect, but the fact that it is the Creator's Torah. If you think that your connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, stems from your own understanding, then look only for things that are interesting and comprehensible to you. But the truth is that you are connected to Him because this is His Torah and these are His holy letters, and whether you understood or did not understand makes no difference to the essence of the matter.
[The same applies when one learns a subject that seemingly has no bearing on us, such as the laws of the korbanos, and the question is asked, “what does this have to do with us?” It is the very same point, and with G-d's help it will have everything to do with us very soon, in actual practice. Other examples of this kind could be brought as well.]
To summarize: in this section we learned that the deed suffers no inferiority relative to kavanah. The Divine will clothed in the mitzvah and in its kavanah is one single will, utterly simple, without change or multiplicity, united with His very essence and being in perfect union, and it cannot be divided. The mitzvah of deed connects a person to the Creator exactly as the mitzvah of kavanah does. The entire advantage of kavanah is that it too is His will, and the only difference lies in the illumination of the Supernal Will: in kavanah it is in a state of expansion, and in a deed without kavanah it is in tzimtzum, and that is only relative to the person. From here comes the principle that is relevant in actual practice: our connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, stems from Him and from His will, and not from our understanding and our emotions.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's explanation in chapter 38.