In the previous section we learned that when a Jew performs a mitzvah, the very performance reveals the Divine will, while dechilu urechimu (fear and love) raise the mitzvah up to the place where that Divine will is actually revealed. The will is present in the mitzvah even without any feeling, but it is not in a state of revelation; and in order for the Divine will to be revealed in the mitzvah a person performs, he has to invest feeling into it. Then the mitzvah ascends to Yetzirah or to Beriah, the worlds where the Divine will and unity shine openly.
Clearly we cannot take the extreme position that the deed alone is what counts. True, in chapter 37 we learned that the main thing is the deed, and by that logic what difference does it make whether there is feeling or not? As we mentioned, a bird without wings is still kosher, and the essential thing is the act. Yet on the other hand we were told that the feeling is the soul of the deed, while a soul, if you remove it from the bird, the bird is still kosher. How, then, do the two statements fit together?
To understand this, let us go back a step. At the end of chapter 39 we learned that there are three possible states in performing mitzvos and in learning Torah:
The highest state: a person does these things out of genuine feeling for the Aibershter, and this is Torah study lishmah, for its own sake.
The neutral state: a person performs the mitzvah or learns in a plain, mechanical way, without investing effort, thought or feeling.
The worst state: a person does invest feeling, but a negative, inverted feeling. He learns only in order to gain something from it, or even worse, in order to provoke, so that he will have material to argue with those who keep the Torah and show them that they are wrong.
The highest state is of course the best of all. Regarding the other two, the question arises: a Jew comes and says, «I am going to learn in that neutral state, with no feeling for the mitzvos and no feeling for the Aibershter, but also not with any inverted feeling. Should I learn or not?» We tell him to learn, for «a person should always learn even not lishmah». And even someone who comes and says he is going to learn in order to provoke, the Shulchan Aruch states explicitly in the laws of Talmud Torah that he should learn.
What is the reason given for telling such a person to learn? The wording is: «a person should always learn even not lishmah», and the reason: «for out of not lishmah he comes to lishmah». Now on the face of it, if the main thing is the deed, as we learned in chapter 37, why is this reason needed at all? It should have said simply that he should learn in any case, even if he will never arrive at lishmah, since the bottom line is the deed, and if so it makes no difference whether there is feeling or not.
From this wording the opposite conclusion emerges: if we knew with complete certainty that no feeling would ever grow out of it, he should not learn; it is only because we know that he will eventually arrive at feeling that we tell him to learn. It turns out that the place of feeling is critically important, and one cannot say that the deed is the essential thing while the feeling is irrelevant, a nice extra which is wonderful if it is there and no loss if it is not. All that was said is that he should do the deed even when he has no feeling, because in the end he will come to it. And this is true both of Torah study and of the performance of mitzvos.
Chassidus offers a parable for this. The whole point, as we learned in chapter 34, is to make a dirah betachtonim, a dwelling place for the Aibershter in the lower worlds. Picture a person bringing the king into a residence. On the one hand, the intent is that the king should not be left outside, in the street or in the desert, but that he should have a residence: four walls, beauty and splendor, an open and revealed place where the king can feel at home. On the other hand, suppose he brought the king into the residence but neglected one thing: he never called the electric company, so there is no light and the place is pitch dark, and still he says to the king, «I have built you a palace, come inside.» Can the king dwell in such a residence? It is simply not possible. So it turns out that the light is essential too.
So the king's desire for a residence contains two things that cannot exist one without the other: the king wants a lit residence. These are not two separate wishes, such that the king could say he will manage with either one of them, and if he gets both, so much the better. There is no such thing. One without the other is worth nothing. He wants a residence, and he wants it illuminated.
And so in the nimshal: a Jew who comes to learn Torah or to perform a mitzvah has, by the very act, built a residence for the king, but the residence cannot be left dark. He has to put a soul into it, vitality, force, inwardness, and with that he lights up the residence. And from the opposite extreme: if someone comes along and says that he only illuminates the residence, he brings in light but does not actually perform the mitzvos, that too is not right. There must be actual performance, and the performance must come from feeling. It has to be an illuminated residence.
In this light we understand what we mean when we tell a Jew to perform the mitzvah even without feeling: build the king a residence, because in the end the electric company will arrive, «out of not lishmah he will come to lishmah», and the residence will be illuminated. This does not mean that it makes no difference if the king dwells in a dark place. Rather, the king says: build me the house, and since I know that eventually the electricity will come, I am prepared to walk in. This is how the two matters join together.
[It is worth noting that all of this is described in physical imagery, since the Torah speaks in the language of human beings, and a spiritual matter cannot be described as it truly is. Without the physical imagery the student would have no idea what is being spoken about.]
A Jew has to come to the mitzvah with feeling, and the question arises: when he comes to put on tefillin, or to make a brachah on tzitzis and fulfill the mitzvah, is the feeling required at that moment of the brachah and the performance, or throughout the entire davening? With Torah study it is straightforward, since the feeling is required throughout the learning. With the performance of a mitzvah, the feeling is what brings a person to perform it in the first place, except that feeling tends to cool off, and therefore a person must keep reawakening it: he comes to put on tefillin with feeling, afterwards it cools, and when he comes to daven he has to arouse the feeling anew.
With this we have finished explaining why love and fear are called gadfin, wings. What exactly does the feeling accomplish? When a Jew performs the mitzvos out of love and fear, he brings it about that the mitzvah he is performing, which is the will of Hashem, should be in a state of revelation. For as long as the mitzvah is carried out in a physical act, physicality is tzimtzum, constriction, and in something constricted the unlimited Divine light cannot be revealed. But when he performs it with feeling, he steps out of the constriction and is filled with force and soul, and everything is lifted up: with natural feeling, to the world of Yetzirah, and with intellectually generated feeling, to the world of Beriah.
It is worth defining what this feeling is: we do not mean mere attentiveness, but genuine excitement and love. It is like a person doing something for someone he loves deeply, as we learned earlier: when he goes to do for his beloved friend what was asked of him, he does not go about it dryly. You see him practically floating, entirely alive, all force and all intent, so much so that you do not even see his feet touching the ground. That is the soul that lives inside the deed, and so it must be with a Jew who carries out the will of Hashem: life should be visible in the deed itself.
In summary: in this section we worked out the resolution between the two extremes, between the rule that the deed is the essential thing and the statement that the feeling is the soul of the deed. From a careful reading of the reason «out of not lishmah he comes to lishmah» we saw that the place of feeling is critically important, and that one cannot say the deed alone suffices. The parable for this is the illuminated residence: the king wants a residence and he wants it lit, and neither one is worth anything without the other. That is why we tell a Jew to perform the mitzvah even without feeling, since in the end the light will arrive. We also learned that feeling tends to cool off and must constantly be reawakened, and we clarified the role of love and fear as gadfin, wings that lift the mitzvah out of physical tzimtzum into the world of Yetzirah or the world of Beriah, as well as the definition of feeling as the living soul within the deed.
In the next section we will take up the new point that the Alter Rebbe adds in the final gloss at the end of the chapter, a point different from everything explained until now, since up to this point we have been speaking about the feeling as that which elevates the mitzvah and the deed upward.