We have arrived at chapter 40 of Tanya. This chapter is a direct continuation of the closing section of chapter 39, as you can hear already in its opening words: «But as long as he has not gone back and studied this thing lishmah...» So let us first review briefly how chapter 39 ended.
At the end of chapter 39 we learned about a Jew's Torah, prayer and mitzvos, and about the need to see to it that they have an ascent, that they connect with higher levels in Elokus and in the upper worlds. And how is that connection made? Through the intention of lishmah, for its own sake. There is the bare act of the mitzvah and the bare act of learning, and there is Torah studied lishmah and a mitzvah done lishmah. When a person learns or performs lishmah, his Torah and mitzvos acquire vitality and a soul, and by that power they rise. And as was explained at length, where they rise to depends on the kind of feeling involved: natural dechilu urechimu, natural love and fear of Hashem, lift the learning to the world of Yetzirah, while intellectually generated dechilu urechimu lift it to the world of Beriah.
Within this there are two possible situations:
Plain, neutral learning: it is neither lishmah nor shelo lishmah. A Jew simply sits and learns. There is no enthusiasm in it, no love and fear, but there is also no ulterior motive that is the opposite of holiness.
Learning shelo lishmah: this is more serious. A person learns Torah with a «p'niyah», a self serving motive, for instance in order to be known as a talmid chacham and gain honor for himself, and similarly goals of honor, money and other external interests.
Between these two situations there are two differences:
In the ascent itself: learning done out of a self serving motive does not rise anywhere at all. It stays below and is seized by the kelipos. The reason is that the intention, the thought and the drive that make him do it for his own honor stem from a place that is not pure, from kelipah, and consequently the Torah he learned has a hold in the lower worlds and in the kelipos. In plain, neutral learning, by contrast, there is nothing there to drag it down into kelipah.
In the way it is repaired: someone who learned with a self serving motive and then realized that he acted improperly has only one way to pull his learning out of the grip of kelipah, and that is teshuvah. But someone who learned in a plain, neutral way repairs it simply by going back and learning that very same thing again, this time out of love and fear of Hashem, and that repetition lifts the first learning along with it. No special teshuvah is required, along the lines of what was said about a prayer recited without kavanah.
[What is this teshuvah? First of all azivas hachet, abandoning the sin: he has to stop learning that way. And then charatah, regret for what he did in the past. Regret from the depths of the heart uproots the pleasure that was in the act and the energy that was channeled in a direction that was not good, and in that way it severs the learning from the kelipah. After all, Torah is what he learned, and even though he did not learn it properly, Torah it remains. The problem lay in the thought and the intention that accompanied it, and once that unworthy feeling has been uprooted, there is nothing left to hold the learning back from rising.
As for learning out of sheer habit, «mitzvas anashim melumadah»: there is no child who feels nothing. A child who plays feels fun and enjoyment, and even a child who is taught to do something «because that is how it has to be» does it with a certain feeling, on his own level of understanding. As he grows older his understanding changes and he begins to grasp other things. The problem begins when the thing turns into a routine act empty of any content.
And one point is worth noting regarding a «p'niyah» in learning: a young man who sits and learns in kollel and receives a stipend is not in the category of one who learns Torah for the money. He is learning Torah, and the support he receives is only in order to feed his family. In practice he could earn several times as much at any ordinary job. That is not to be called learning for the money.]
The Alter Rebbe's words: «אך כל זמן שלא חזר ולמד דבר זה לשמה», as long as he has not gone back over that same learning with the intention of lishmah, that is, out of love and fear of Hashem, and the learning remains exactly as it was learned, in a plain, neutral way. Even if from now on he conducts himself properly, that particular sugya which he learned back then he has not gone back and learned again. In that case, «אין לימודו עולה אפילו בי' ספירות המאירות בעולם היצירה והעשיה», his learning does not rise even into the ten sefiros that illuminate the worlds of Yetzirah and Asiyah.
To the world of Beriah it certainly does not rise, since as we learned in chapter 39 that requires intellectually generated love and fear, which is a lofty level. But even to the ten sefiros that illuminate the world of Yetzirah, for which natural love and fear would suffice, it does not rise. And not even to the ten sefiros that illuminate the world of Asiyah, which is seemingly far lower, not even there does the learning rise. And the reason is: «כי הספירות הן בחינת אלקות, ובהן מתלבש ומתייחד אור אין סוף ברוך הוא ממש», for the sefiros are Elokus, and within them the Ein Sof light itself is clothed and united. The ten sefiros of any given world are the Elokus of that world, G-dliness in a revealed state, and there are gradations in this: the Elokus of Asiyah, of Yetzirah, of Beriah, but it is all levels within Elokus. Therefore Torah that was learned with no feeling whatsoever has no connection to Elokus at all: «ובלא דחילו ורחימו לא יכלא לסלקא ולמיקם קדם ה' כמו שכתוב בתיקונים», without dechilu urechimu it cannot rise up and stand before Hashem, as is written in the Tikkunim.
[At this point a question hangs in the air, and it is worth noting it in parentheses: what does it mean that the Torah does not rise? Is it not Hashem's Torah? A Jew learned Torah, and that Torah is holy in itself, whether there was intention in it or not. The Alter Rebbe will address this question further on.]
If so, what does become of that learning? After all, in the end he did learn Torah. With learning done out of a self serving motive it is understandable that it does not rise at all, because there is a negative feeling gripping and holding it that blocks any elevation. But here there was no negative feeling, only the study of Hashem's Torah that lacked love of Hashem at the time of learning. About this the Alter Rebbe says: «רק לימודו עולה להיכלות ומדורין שהן חיצוניות העולמות שבהם עומדים המלאכים», his learning rises only to the heichalos and the dwelling chambers, which are the externality of the worlds, where the angels stand.
It is known from the Arizal, as brought in the writings of Rabbi Chaim Vital, that whenever a Jew performs a mitzvah an angel is created at that moment, and likewise from words of Torah that leave his mouth an angel is created. «וכמו שכתב הרב חיים ויטאל ז"ל בשער הנבואה פרק ב שמהתורה שלא בכוונה נבראים מלאכים בעולם היצירה ומהמצות בלי כוונה נבראים מלאכים בעולם העשייה»: as Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in Shaar HaNevuah, chapter 2, that from Torah learned without kavanah angels are created in the world of Yetzirah, and from mitzvos done without kavanah angels are created in the world of Asiyah. In other words, such Torah and mitzvos do have a connection to the worlds, but not to the Elokus that illuminates the world, only to the externality of the world, the heichalos and the chambers where the angels stand. For the angels are not the «ten sefiros» of the world, not the Elokus within the worlds. They are created beings, refined and more spiritual created beings, but in the end created beings.
[A note: there are angels that exist forever, such as the angels Michael and Gavriel, and there are angels that are absorbed back into Elokus and vanish. In any case, from every single word of Torah that a Jew learns, even if there was no feeling of love and fear in it, an angel is formed in the world of Yetzirah. And when he goes back and learns that same thing out of love of Hashem and fear of Hashem, there will be an actual revelation of Elokus in it.]
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What is lishmah? Learning by its very nature is a desire to understand, and in learning Torah a person uses his intellect; about that there is no question. The question is what brings him to learn precisely now, and precisely Torah, rather than a history book or an English book. A Jew may learn because he wants to fulfill the mitzvah, but that is still not «lishmah».
Think of a man sitting in an office. He poured himself a cup of water, and he poured a cup for his colleague too, because he is a decent person. And then there is the case where his son is sitting there, or his wife, or his closest friend, and out of the love he feels for him he goes to bring him a cup of water. The same cup of water, except that there is love in it. So it is with Torah and mitzvos: one person learns from the low level of shelo lishmah, or does not even know at all why he is learning, his father put him into this framework and here he is; and another loves the Holy One blessed be He and knows that every word he learns is Elokus, and out of sheer excitement at the opportunity to become one with the Creator he treasures every topic and every word, and that is why he learns. [And it is not that the love clouds his intellect. On the contrary, precisely because he is moved he knows that the Creator's will right now is that he learn, and learning of that kind becomes clearer and better settled in the mind.]
Even so, as we mentioned in the previous lesson, the Alter Rebbe teaches that one who is learning with a great deal of intellectual involvement has to stop from time to time and remind himself why he is learning, for without that pause he is liable to sink into the intellect and lose the Elokus in it. It is comparable to the writing of a sefer Torah, which must be done for the sake of the holiness of the sefer Torah, and therefore the sofer stops from time to time and says, «I am hereby writing for the sake of the holiness of the sefer Torah.» So too in learning Torah, except that here the point is not merely to recite a formula, but that the thing should be genuine and internal.
To summarize: In this part we reviewed the fundamentals of the end of chapter 39: that the ascent of Torah and mitzvos comes about through the intention of lishmah, and that the level of the ascent depends on whether the dechilu urechimu are natural or intellectually generated. We clarified the difference between learning shelo lishmah, which is gripped by the kelipos and whose repair is teshuvah, and plain, neutral learning, whose repair is to go back and learn the same thing again lishmah. We then learned the opening of chapter 40: that learning without kavanah does not rise at all to the ten sefiros, not in Beriah, not in Yetzirah and not even in Asiyah, since the sefiros are Elokus and within them the Ein Sof light is united, and without dechilu urechimu the learning cannot rise and stand before Hashem. And what does become of it? It rises to the heichalos and chambers of the worlds, to the externality of the worlds, and angels are created from it: from Torah in the world of Yetzirah and from mitzvos in the world of Asiyah. Finally we clarified what «lishmah» really is, learning out of love, and the need to stop from time to time and recall one's intention.
In the next part we will continue in chapter 40 and see how the Alter Rebbe addresses the question we raised, how it can be that Hashem's own Torah does not rise, along with his explanation of where Torah learned without kavanah actually belongs.