After that introduction, which also served as a review of several points we have already clarified, we will now learn the end of the chapter from inside the text. We are on daf 51 (page 101), at the first full line after the small print.
What is the kavanah of the mitzvos?
Kavanah, intention, means that a person performs the mitzvah for the sake of Heaven, with feeling and with vitality. But we have to ask: where does that feeling come from, and what is the source of the love that accompanies the performance of the mitzvah? On this the Alter Rebbe explains that there are two levels in kavanah, parallel to the two levels of soul found in a body: the level of chai (the living, animal soul) and the level of medaber (the speaking, human soul).
The level of chai and the level of medaber:
The kavanah of chai: service that comes from one's nature and instinct. It is the nature of a Jew to want to be connected with the Aibershter, and a person awakens in his soul the Jewish nature already within him and brings it to the point of an actual desire: I want to put on tefillin, because this is my connection with the Aibershter and I want to be bound up with Him. This does not come after deep contemplation of the greatness of the Creator, but from arousing the nature hidden within him.
The kavanah of medaber: a higher level, in which a person contemplates and immerses himself in the greatness of the Creator, and out of that contemplation far deeper emotions are born within him.
«To change the nature of his character traits»:
The Alter Rebbe, the author of the Tanya, was once asked what Chassidus is all about, what it comes to introduce, and what the purpose is of studying its concepts in depth. He answered: «The whole matter of Chassidus is to change the nature of one's middos. Not only to change one's natural middos, but to change the very nature of the middos.»
Let us explain. Take a person whose nature is chesed and love, whose character is open and accessible to everything and everyone: if you leave him to himself, with no avodah at all, his love will be drawn to the empty things of this world and its affairs. And the same is true of a person with the opposite nature, a nature of gevurah, of caution and fear: without avodah he will be afraid of nonsense and trivialities. For «a wild donkey is man born»: left to himself, a person behaves in a wild and unrefined way.
Yiddishkeit: «to change one's natural middos», that is, to change the channel in which they flow. The middah itself stays exactly as it was, but instead of love for worldly matters there is love for kedushah, for Elokus and for mitzvos; and instead of fear and dread of worthless things, there is yiras Shamayim. Instead of the middos running in the animal direction, they run in the direction of Elokus.
Toras haChassidus: «to change the color of one's middos», that is, to change the nature itself. A nature of love alone is not enough, because in serving Hashem a nature of yirah is also demanded. A person is not entitled to content himself with steering his own nature toward the good; he has to serve Hashem even in matters that run against his nature.
«Did any special deed ever come your way?»:
The point is brought to life in a story in the Gemara. One of the Tannaim asked his friend whether he was a ben Olam Haba, and the friend answered him with a question: «Did any special deed ever come your way?» Tell me one special deed you did in your lifetime. And bear in mind, this is a Tanna who learns all day long, keeps mitzvos, and does everything.
So he told him: on erev Purim there were two purses in his house, money he had collected over the course of the year. One was designated for buying the Purim seudah, since the mitzvah of the day is feasting and rejoicing and he had nothing else to buy it with, and the second was designated for matanos la'evyonim, gifts to the poor. A poor man came and knocked at the door, and since everything was ready and waiting, he gave it to him, except that by mistake he gave him the purse designated for the Purim seudah. Seemingly he should have taken the second purse in its place for the seudah, but instead he left the money designated for the poor to the poor, and laid out other money, money that was not readily available to him, for the Purim seudah. His friend answered him: for this deed you are a ben Olam Haba.
But what is so great about this deed? Here is a man who sits and learns Torah all day, whose «mouth never stopped from learning»! The explanation is that persistence in learning does not by itself prove that a person is a ben Olam Haba, because it may be that his character is closed and withdrawn, a character of marah shechorah, melancholy. There are people whose nature is to sit all day by a book and read, who do not like to give out anything of themselves, to take a walk or get around, and even people who are not observant have such a nature. If so, it may be that this man simply made use of his nature for learning Torah, and there is no great deed here that would earn him Olam Haba.
But when a man who all his life appears to have a character of marah shechorah, contracted, calculating, measured, suddenly behaves with openhandedness and expansiveness with money, a middah that belongs specifically to the nature of an open person who does not make calculations, that is a sign that he is a ben Olam Haba. For he is serving Hashem not according to his nature, but according to what is demanded of him.
This is exactly the difference between chai and medaber in avodas Hashem: the chai does good things, even excellent things, but all of it follows his natural inclination; the medaber does what is demanded of him, because that is what is demanded, and not only because that is his nature. These two levels are the two levels within the kavanah of the mitzvos: the higher level of medaber, and the lower level of chai.
Now let us read the Alter Rebbe's own words from inside:
«כוונת המצות לדבקה בו יתברך» (the intention of the mitzvos, to cleave to Him, blessed be He), the kavanah a Jew has in performing mitzvos, that he wants to be bound up with the Creator, «שהיא כנשמה לגוף» (which is like a soul to the body), as we have already learned: the kavanah is like the soul and the actual performance of the mitzvah is like the body, «נחלקת גם כן לשתי מדרגות» (is likewise divided into two levels), just like the two levels of soul in a physical body walking around in the world: chai and medaber. Both of them have a soul enlivening the body, but the difference between them is enormous.
«כי מי שדעתו יפה» (for one whose daas is fine), a person who has daas, who has the power to contemplate and to step out of himself. Because that is the very characteristic of intellect and daas: not to think the way things appear to a person from his own standpoint, but to step out of himself and to know Hashem, to use his intellect in order to know the Creator. «ולהתבונן בגדולתו יתברך ולהוליד מבינתו» (and to contemplate His greatness, blessed be He, and to beget from his understanding), for every intellect gives birth to emotion, and contemplating the greatness of the Creator works immediately on the emotions: «יראה עילאה במוחו» (a sublime awe in his mind), a lofty yiras Shamayim within the understanding of the mind, «ואהבת ה' בחלל הימני שבלבו» (and love of Hashem in the right chamber of his heart). These are not emotions that the person merely aroused from what was already in him; they are emotions created as a result of deep understanding.
«להיות נפשו צמאה לה'» (so that his soul thirsts for Hashem), a great thirst for the Creator. And how will he quench that thirst? «לדבקה בו על ידי קיום התורה והמצות, שהן המשכת והארת אור אין סוף ברוך הוא על נפשו» (to cleave to Him through the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos, which draw down and radiate the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, upon his soul). He wants his soul to be bound up with the Creator, and the way to shine a G-dly light upon his soul is through Torah and mitzvos, «לדבקה בו» (to cleave to Him): whoever wants to cleave to the Creator knows that the only way to do so is by fulfilling His will.
«ובכוונה זו הוא לומד ומקיים המצות, וכן בכוונה זו מתפלל ומברך» (and with this intention he studies and fulfills the mitzvos, and with this intention he prays and recites blessings). When he learns Torah he is not merely learning the words and he is not merely saying them; an inner system is pulsing within him with very powerful feeling, out of the awareness that he is learning right now because this is his way of connecting to the Creator.
«הרי כוונה זו... על דרך משל כמו נשמת המדבר שהוא בעל שכל ובחירה» (this intention is, by way of analogy, like the soul of the medaber, who possesses intellect and free choice). Such a kavanah, such a feeling of dveikus in the Creator born out of the contemplation that preceded it, is comparable to the soul of the medaber. The distinction of the medaber is that he possesses intellect, and the distinction of intellect is that it has the power to lift a person above his nature, and that is bechirah, the ability to choose even something that runs against one's nature. «ובדעת ידבר» (and he speaks with daas), his whole distinction lies in the fact that he speaks, and that he speaks with daas, since the whole distinction of daas is the ability to rise above oneself. This is the kavanah of the medaber.
To sum up: in this section we learned that the kavanah of the mitzvos, the desire to cleave to the Creator, which is like a soul to the body of the mitzvah, is divided into two levels, parallel to the two levels of soul in a physical body: chai and medaber. We dwelled on the Alter Rebbe's saying that the whole matter of Chassidus is «to change the color of one's middos»: not only to steer the natural middos toward kedushah, which is what Yiddishkeit demands, but to change the nature itself and to serve Hashem even in matters that run against it, as emerges from the story in the Gemara about the purse for the Purim seudah and the purse for matanos la'evyonim. And finally we learned, in the language of the chapter itself, the kavanah of the medaber: one whose daas is fine enough to contemplate the greatness of Hashem, and who begets from his understanding a sublime awe in his mind and love in the right chamber of his heart, until his soul thirsts for Hashem to cleave to Him through Torah and mitzvos. His kavanah is like the soul of the medaber, who possesses intellect and bechirah, and who rises above his nature.
In the next section we will take up the second level of kavanah, the kavanah of the chai, service that comes from one's nature, and the difference between the two levels.