In the previous part we studied the hagahah (the Alter Rebbe's own note) to chapter 40, and we learned how a mitzvah that a person performs is raised and elevated upward when it has within it an inner soul and vitality. Now the Alter Rebbe adds a point from the opposite direction: how far down the yichud (the divine unity) and the Ohr Ein Sof extend in each of the parts of Torah.
Torah has four levels: Mikra (Scripture), Mishnah, Talmud and Kabbalah. All of them are God's Torah and His wisdom as it is revealed in the world. Why, then, are there parts a person grasps and parts that are hard for him to grasp? Why do we teach Mikra to a five year old beginning Chumash, Mishnayos after that, Gemara when he is older, and Kabbalah not at all? Seemingly we could begin with Kabbalah the moment a child starts to speak. And if the answer is that he will not understand it, well, even at forty there is no guarantee that he will understand Kabbalah, whereas Gemara he will already understand at seven, eight or ten, and still we do not start him on Gemara at five, but with Chumash, then Mishnayos, then Gemara. What is the logic of this order? The hagahah before us will give us an understanding of this question as well.
The Alter Rebbe first adds a point about the mitzvos. In the body of the Tanya he spoke of Yetzirah and Beriah: «והדחילו ורחימו הם מעלים אותן למקום שיתגלה בו הרצון אור אין סוף ברוך הוא והיחוד שהן יצירה ובריאה» (the fear and love elevate them to the place where the will, the Ohr Ein Sof, and the unity are revealed, which are Yetzirah and Beriah). In the hagahah he adds: «או אפילו בעשיה, ביו״ד ספירות דקדושה, מקום מצות מעשיות» (or even in Asiyah, in the ten sefiros of holiness, the place of the practical mitzvos), meaning that the practical mitzvos a person performs have their place in the world of Asiyah. The body of the Tanya spoke about Torah; this addition is about mitzvah.
And from here on, about Torah itself:
Mikra belongs to the world of Asiyah.
«אבל במשנה - מתגלה היחוד ואור אין סוף ברוך הוא ביצירה» (but in Mishnah, the unity and the Ohr Ein Sof are revealed in Yetzirah).
«ובתלמוד - בבריאה» (and in Talmud, in Beriah).
If we stop here, it would seem to come out that Talmud, which is in Beriah, is the loftiest of them all, with Mishnah below it, and Mikra the lowest of the three. But that cannot be, and the Rebbe calls attention to this: according to halachah one may place a Chumash on top of Mishnayos, but one may not place Mishnayos on top of a Chumash, because the Chumash is holier than the Mishnah and must be above it, and Mishnayos are holier than Gemara. The halachic order, then, is precisely the reverse of the order here.
The explanation: the entirety of Torah, in all its layers and all its parts, is in truth in the world of Atzilus, the highest of all. The difference is not in where they come from, but in how far down they extend, and this follows the rule that whatever is highest descends lowest:
Mikra is so lofty that it descends all the way into the world of Asiyah, and therefore even a five year old can learn it.
Mishnah is lofty too, but not like Mikra, and therefore it descends only as far as Yetzirah.
Talmud descends only as far as Beriah.
Kabbalah remains in Atzilus, and therefore a person does not internalize it the way he understands a Gemara.
In the words of the hagahah: «דהיינו שבלימוד מקרא מתפשט האיחוד ואור אין סוף ב״ה מאצילות עד העשיה, ובמשנה עד היצירה לבדה, ובתלמוד עד הבריאה לבדה - כי כולן באצילות» (that is, in the study of Mikra the unity and the Ohr Ein Sof extend from Atzilus down to Asiyah, in Mishnah only as far as Yetzirah, and in Talmud only as far as Beriah, for all of them are in Atzilus). The measure is how far down they come. «אבל קבלה אינה מתפשטת כלל מאצילות לבי״ע כמו שכתוב בפרי עץ חיים» (but Kabbalah does not extend at all from Atzilus into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, as is written in Pri Etz Chaim).
This is tangibly evident in how the parts of Torah correspond to the worlds. Beriah is the world of comprehension, hence Talmud, whose entire character is understanding. Yetzirah is the world of the middos (the emotive attributes), hence Mishnah, where one learns kosher and pasul and treif, which are of the nature of chesed and gevurah. And Asiyah corresponds to Mikra.
Beyond the explanation that a small child can grasp Mikra, the point can be approached from another angle. A Jew comes to shul and is honored with an aliyah to the Torah, and an aliyah is Mikra. He recites «ברכו את ה' המבורך», says the blessing, and then reads the words along with the baal koreh, and it is entirely possible that he did not understand a single word of what he read. Even so, his blessing is not a berachah levatalah, a blessing said in vain. Because in Mikra, even if he did not understand, he brought the words out of his mouth, and that is perfectly fine, since Mikra is present in the world of Asiyah.
The holiness of Mikra is likewise in Asiyah: one takes physical parchment and physical ink, writes a Sefer Torah with them, an act of Asiyah, and the thing is holy. So too one who says Tehillim without understanding a single word of what he is saying: he opens the sefer, says the words, and it is perfectly fine, because Mikra has come down into Asiyah. And since it has come down into Asiyah, even someone who is situated in the world of Asiyah and grasps things in the language of Asiyah, and that language is words, paper, parchment and ink, is holding on to it properly.
With Mishnah and Gemara, however, it is different. A person gets up in the morning, recites the blessings over the Torah as required, immediately goes to learn Gemara and does not understand a single word, he says the words and grasps nothing: his blessing is a berachah levatalah. So it is ruled in Shulchan Aruch, that learning without understanding «לא מקרי לימוד כלל» (is not called learning at all), for in Torah shebe'al peh one must understand. Whoever takes hold of Mishnah and Gemara in the language of Asiyah alone has taken hold of nothing; he must take hold of them in the language of a higher world.
For this reason, in the morning blessings, immediately upon concluding the blessing «נותן התורה» we say verses of Mikra: «וידבר ה' אל משה... דבר אל אהרן... יברכך ה'». The very saying of Mikra right after the blessing ensures that the blessing is not in vain, because he has learned. He may not have understood what he said, but he learned.
None of this denies the segulah (the special spiritual benefit) in simply saying the words without understanding. It is written of the Zohar that there is a great segulah in it, and so too with Mishnayos: «משנה» has the same letters as «נשמה», and there is something to that. But that is not from the angle of learning. A person who said a thousand mishnayos and did not understand a single word holds a very great segulah in his hands, but learning there is not.
And from the other side: is there no difference between one who understood the Mikra and one who did not? Of course there is a difference, and the one who understands grasps it far more deeply. The point is only that of one who brought the words out of his mouth without understanding, we cannot say that he did not learn, because in Mikra the grasp of the words need not pass through the mind, it can pass through the mouth. With Mishnah, if he did not understand, it is not called learning.
And Kabbalah is so lofty that it has remained above. Therefore, says the Alter Rebbe in one of the maamarim, even one who learns Kabbalah and understands it understands the words he is reading, but he does not understand the essence of the matter; the essence remains abstract. It is not like learning Gemara, where one studies the case of someone exchanging a cow for a donkey, or a tallis, and the student understands exactly what is being discussed. In Kabbalah, even if he has followed the sequence and can repeat the structure, he has understood the words, and that is yedias hametzius, knowledge that the thing exists, but it is not yedias hamahus, knowledge of the essence, because Kabbalah remained in Atzilus. One who wishes to internalize Kabbalah has to belong to the world of Atzilus and grasp things in the language of Atzilus; one who comes from a lower world can read the words and see what is being discussed, but he does not connect to them. This is the difference between all these parts: each one descended exactly as far as it descended.
The four parts we have mentioned, Mikra, Mishnah, Gemara and Kabbalah, generally correspond to the four levels of Pardes. Chassidus is not a fifth item in this list; it is the inner dimension, the pnimiyus, of every one of them. Sometimes a maamar of Chassidus comes and explains the pnimiyus of Mikra and Chumash, sometimes the pnimiyus of Mishnah, sometimes the pnimiyus of Gemara, and sometimes the pnimiyus of Kabbalah, exactly as we did just now, when we studied a citation from Kabbalah and explained its inner meaning. Chassidus is the pnimiyus of all these parts together.
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Until now we have divided things in two: Torah and mitzvos on one side, and love and fear on the other, which are the wings. On this the Alter Rebbe raises a question: «והנה אף דדחילו ורחימו הם גם כן מתרי״ג מצות» (now, even though fear and love are themselves also among the 613 mitzvos). There is a mitzvah to love and a mitzvah to fear, and they are part of the 613. If so, why do we say that the mitzvos are bodies and these are not? If tefillin are part of the body because they are among the mitzvos of the Torah, and Shabbos is part of the body, then love too should be part of the body. And nevertheless, «אעפ״כ נקראין גדפין» (even so they are called wings).
Here is the explanation: «להיות כי תכלית האהבה היא העבודה מאהבה» (because the purpose of love is service out of love). There is a mitzvah to love, but the content of the mitzvah is that one's service should flow from love. It is like a train's engine, especially the engines of old that made a great thundering noise: what comes of all that noise? The train moves only on condition that the engine is coupled to the cars; if it is not, it can make a great deal of noise and nothing will come of it. Love is the engine, not merely one of the cars but the engine itself, full of noise and feeling and power, yet its whole purpose is to reach the destination and bring all the passengers along with it.
Therefore, when the Holy One commanded tefillin, He wanted there to be tefillin, and the tefillin are an end in themselves. But when He commanded love, love is not an end in itself; rather, one's service should be done with feeling. And «avodah» here means fulfilling the mitzvos, any act done in accordance with God's will, in which the Holy One is to be found. This is unlike a person taking a morning stroll for his own pleasure and looking at the birds: the Holy One is present in that act too, since He is present in everything, but it is not a mitzvah.
And what of a love that has no service with it? «ואהבה בלי עבודה היא אהבה בתענוגים - להתענג על ה' מעין עולם הבא וקבלת שכר» (a love without service is love of delights, to delight in God, a foretaste of the World to Come and the receiving of reward). And as it is written in the Torah: «והיום לעשותם כתיב» (it is written, «and today to do them»), today, in this world, is for doing, «ולמחר לקבל שכרם» (and tomorrow to receive their reward), tomorrow, in the World to Come.
Here is the difference between the two kinds of love. The love we know in this world is thirst and longing: a person loves something he does not have, he thirsts for it and wants it, and the love carries him toward it. Love of delights, by contrast, is delighting in something one already has, and that is the World to Come. There are completely righteous Jews who sometimes, perhaps always, have such a level of love, and they live in this world with a foretaste of the World to Come, a foretaste only, since in this world it is no more than an image and an example of it.
«ומי שלא הגיע למדה זו» (and one who has not reached this level), who has not yet arrived at love of delights and has not merited «לטעום מעין עולם הבא, אלא עדיין נפשו שוקקה וצמאה לה' וכלתה אליו כל היום, ואינו מרוה צמאונו במי התורה שלפניו - הרי זה כמי שעומד בנהר וצועק מים מים לשתות» (to taste a foretaste of the World to Come, but his soul still yearns and thirsts for God and pines for Him all day long, and he does not quench his thirst with the waters of the Torah before him, he is like a man standing in a river and crying out, water, water to drink!). A man stands in the middle of the whole river and shouts, water, water to drink, I am so thirsty, who will bring me water? He is surrounded by water; let him lower his head and drink. If he thirsts for the Holy One, he cannot remain stuck in the thirst; he must fill it from the wellsprings of Torah.
And about this the prophet cries out: «כמו שקובל עליו הנביא הוי כל צמא לכו למים - כי לפי פשוטו אינו מובן» (as the prophet protests, «Ho, all who thirst, go to the water!», for according to its plain meaning it is not understandable). Why does the prophet need to inform a thirsty man that he should go to water? Every child knows that. And even if we say that the reference is to Torah, «דמי שצמא ומתאווה ללמוד, פשיטא שילמוד מעצמו, ולמה לו לנביא שיצעק עליו הוי וכמו שכתוב במקום אחר באריכות» (for one who thirsts and desires to learn will obviously learn on his own, so why does he need a prophet to cry «Ho!» over him, as is explained at length elsewhere)?
The answer is that there is a person who thirsts for the Holy One, and you tell him: here, the Holy One is inside this sefer, learn. And he answers: no, I want the Holy One Himself, imagining that he will find Him in the thirst. But one who gets stuck in the thirst is looking for himself, not for the Holy One. Whoever truly wants the Holy One will find Him in the water, in the Torah. There is a person who enjoys the longing itself, and the moment his thirst is quenched his whole interest is taken from him, like those people whose entire pleasure is telling you how thirsty they are, and if you hand them a bottle of water you have ruined the whole performance for them. So too in spiritual matters: he thirsts and longs, and does not use the time to learn Torah.
The point is this: to love the Holy One is a mitzvah, and the longing itself is a mitzvah, but on condition that a person connects it to deed and translates the thirst into Torah and mitzvos. It is not the Holy One's intention that a person remain in thirst. And please God, when he comes to the World to Come he will have love of delights, not from lack and thirst, but from the fact that he already has it.
In summary: in this part we learned that all the parts of Torah have their source in the world of Atzilus, and the difference between them is how far down they extend: Mikra to Asiyah, Mishnah to Yetzirah, Talmud to Beriah, and Kabbalah remains in Atzilus. From this follows the order of a child's learning, as well as the difference between Mikra, where saying the words aloud counts as learning even without understanding, and Torah shebe'al peh, where «לימוד בלי להבין לא מקרי לימוד כלל» (learning without understanding is not called learning at all). We saw that Chassidus is the pnimiyus of all these parts. And at the close of the chapter: although love and fear are themselves among the 613 mitzvos, they are called «wings», because the purpose of love is service out of love, and one who does not quench his thirst from the wellsprings of Torah is like a man standing in a river crying «water!».
In the next part we will continue, please God, with our study of Tanya and move on to chapter 41.