In the previous part we looked at the Alter Rebbe's demand that yirah (awe of Heaven) be «בהתגלות לבו או מוחו על כל פנים», revealed in one's heart, or at the very least in one's mind. In this part we will explain these two levels, and then we will study what a person is meant to contemplate in order to awaken yirah within himself.
Yirah «בהתגלות ליבו», revealed in the heart, is a level at which a person actually feels the awe openly. Picture someone standing next to a lion's cage: if the lion breaks out and starts chasing him, nobody needs to tell him anything, his heart will begin to pound with tremendous force. That is yirah revealed in the heart, and what is asked of a Jew is to feel awe of Heaven in that revealed way, with every single detail of his conduct accompanied by it.
And if he is incapable of that, then at least «או מוחו על כל פנים», in his mind: that in his mind, in his intellect and in his contemplation there be a constant awareness of awe of Heaven, that he know and understand why he must stand in awe of the Almighty.
It is worth noting that this work rests on parents as well. A child must be educated in awe of Heaven from a young age, and one must labor to awaken the matter in the mind too and to internalize it. A person who does not invest in this will not find yirah awakening in him on its own.
So how does one awaken yirah? First one has to know the goal: yirah revealed in the heart, and at the very least an awareness in the mind that one must stand in awe of the King. And how does one arrive there? The Alter Rebbe gives us material to think about and spells out a number of stages that a person should contemplate, and it is this contemplation that will connect him and awaken yirah within him.
In his words: «דהיינו להתבונן במחשבתו על כל פנים», that is, to contemplate, at least in one's thought. Hisbonenus (contemplation) means focus in the mind and the intellect, being wholly immersed in one single matter with nothing disturbing him, and not every person is capable of that. So the Alter Rebbe adds «במחשבתו על כל פנים»: if concentration and contemplation are hard, let him at least think about it, for any person can think about whatever he wishes. True, thought can be superficial, a person thinks about the matter but does not go deep into it and does not set everything else aside in order to be immersed in it alone, which is a higher depth, but at least let there be thought.
The contemplation begins with «גדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא ומלכותו», the greatness of the Infinite One and His kingship: the greatness of the Almighty and His sovereignty, that He rules and governs and leads and watches over and enlivens and brings into being, and His kingship «אשר היא מלכות כל עולמים», is the kingship over all worlds. The Almighty created everything, watches over everything, leads and reigns over all the worlds, upper and lower: the spiritual worlds and the lower worlds, down to this lowest physical world, down to the snail in the sea and the tiny ant. Over every last detail the Almighty reigns.
First one contemplates the sheer, staggering multiplicity, «מה גדלו מעשיך» and «מה רבו מעשיך», how great and how numerous are Your works, that the Almighty created all of this, leads it all and reigns over it all. And from there one contemplates in what manner He enlivens and reigns over all these details with His divine light, in two ways:
«ואיהו ממלא כל עלמין», He fills all worlds: the Almighty contracts His life-force and introduces it in an inner way into each and every creature according to its measure. This creature receives this much and that one more, to this one this quality and to that one another. This is a personal, individual involvement with every last detail, for each one differs from the next in its qualities. Even within the inanimate alone there are many categories: stones, earth, metals and water, and within each of them a multitude of details, ordinary stones, precious stones and pearls, bright stones and so on. Each individual thing has its own energy, its own capacities, its own size, qualities and character, and so on through an infinite multitude of details, each one receiving completely personal attention. «Memale», filling, means within it, in its inner being and in what it feels.
«וסובב כל עלמין», He encompasses all worlds: together with the contraction and the inner investment into each and every detail, the Almighty also surrounds and encompasses them all equally. This is a higher level, above the contraction into individual details, in which all created beings are equal relative to Him: the same power, the same life-force.
With a king of flesh and blood none of this exists, but if we use it as a parable: there is the king as he sits on his throne knowing that there are ten million subjects in his country and that he reigns over them all. As far as he is concerned they are all the same, and he does not go into the details of who is cleverer and who is foolish, who is wealthy and who is poor. They are all under the same great encompassing scope of his rule, and that is in the category of «sovev». «Memale kol almin», by contrast, is personal relating to every individual. A king of flesh and blood cannot be both at once, but the Almighty is both sovev kol almin and memale kol almin, «וכמו שכתוב הלא את השמים ואת הארץ אני מלא», as it is written: Do I not fill the heavens and the earth? He fills, and He also equalizes everything in the manner of sovev, both heaven and earth.
Let us pause here for contemplation. The Almighty is such a great King that our minds spin just trying to think about twenty, thirty, a hundred or a thousand of the details that exist in the world, and all of it has to be in perfect harmony and wondrous precision, with everything completing everything else. This is the kingship of the Infinite.
After a person has contemplated how great and how wide His kingship is, over vast expanses and vast quantities, comes the next sentence, and it is a crucial point: «ומניח העליונים ותחתונים ומייחד מלכותו על עמו ישראל בכלל», He sets aside the upper and lower worlds and singles out His kingship over His people Israel. The Almighty says, as it were: all these worlds and all this expanse are not what make Me a King, that is not the main thing and that is not why I created it all. And who establishes Me as King and reveals My kingship in the world in an inner, true way? The Jewish people. The Jewish people are the essence, they are the purpose and they are the task of everything.
When the Jewish people say in the Rosh Hashanah prayers «מלוך על העולם כולו בכבודך», Reign over the whole world in Your glory, «ברוך אתה ה' המלך הקדוש», «המלך המשפט», and blow the shofar and crown the Almighty, they are crowning Him over all the worlds, because all the worlds are for the sake of the Jewish people.
From here a Jew will say: what responsibility, what focus and what care are demanded of me, for I am part of the Jewish people, part of the collective upon which the entire divine kingship depends. Even if we stopped here, there is enormous power in it: a person is part of that wondrous family which brings about the Creator's kingship.
But the Alter Rebbe adds a sentence that is stronger still: «ועליו בפרט», and over him in particular. A person should not look at himself merely as part of the collective, because then a thought can creep in: «If I do nothing, there are still millions of other Jews who will do it, so how could the Creator's kingship depend on me?» Therefore every person must believe and feel personally that he is the one creating the kingship of the Almighty. Do not look at another Jew, it depends on you alone.
And the proof: «כי חייב אדם לומר בשבילי נברא העולם», for a person is obligated to say: the world was created for my sake. The Gemara says that Adam was created as a single individual, and it asks why he was created alone, and answers that this comes to teach you that one person is an entire world, and therefore one who saves a single soul is as if he saved an entire world. Without this, one might have thought that when it comes to saving the life of one person the matter is not so terrible, since there are so many Jews, and one more or one less does not harm the collective. So the Torah comes and says that this is not the correct way of looking at it: this individual is the only one, there is nobody else, everything rests on him, and on him depends whether the Creator's kingship will be or not.
Therefore a person must think at every given moment: I am standing right now, in this second that I am alive, and at this very moment a divine instruction rests upon me, to learn Torah, to fulfill a mitzvah, not to transgress. Let him think that the great and wondrous King is waiting for him right now: it is in his hand to crown Him, and it is in his hand, G-d forbid, to bring His kingship down. A person who thinks this way and feels this way will have awe of Heaven awakened within him, along with the awareness that the King depends on him.
All of the above is from the side of the King, who reigns over everything and sets everything aside for the sake of this one individual. And how does a person respond from his side? «והוא גם הוא מקבל עליו מלכותו להיות מלך עליו ולעבדו ולעשות רצונו», and he too accepts His kingship upon himself, that He be King over him, to serve Him and to do His will. Every Jew as an individual says: I see that the Almighty is waiting for me and that His kingship depends on me, therefore I accept His kingship upon myself, that He be my King. And from the moment He is my King, I must obey whatever He says, for I stand before the King and I am the servant.
«ולעשות רצונו», to do His will, all of His wishes: positive commandments as well, «do good», «בכל מיני עבודת עבד», in all forms of a servant's service. And it makes no difference whether the servant received an instruction that strikes him as dignified and lofty, or the smallest possible matter: since this is the King's command, and He is your King and you are His servant and you have accepted His kingship, you obey whatever He says, in every last detail.
And here comes the completing sentence, the strongest of them all, the one for which everything above is merely an introduction: «והנה ה' נצב עליו», and behold, G-d stands over him. This verse is said in the book of Bereishis about Yaakov Avinu, and the Midrash expounds that the Almighty, as it were, «stands over him», that the Jew is the one who gives, so to speak, stability to the Creator. A statement like this, had it not been said in the Midrash, we could never have said at all.
What emerges from here is that a Jew must feel at every moment: do not think that there are so many other people, you are standing at the very center of the matter, and on you depends whether the Creator will be King, or whether you will, G-d forbid, cause His kingship not to be accepted.
But seemingly, the Almighty lacks nothing, so how can we say that something is lacking to Him, as it were? That is precisely the novelty: the Almighty, who lacks nothing, placed Himself in a situation in which you will bring it about that He be King or not be King, so that you will feel that you are creating His kingship and that it depends on you, and that the responsibility for His entire kingship rests upon you. This is how the Almighty established it and this is how He wrote it in the Torah, and this is why He created man as a single individual, so that you would feel that you are the whole world. And this is not imagination: the Almighty did not give us fantasies, and everything written in the Torah is truth, and the Almighty truly establishes His kingship in a way that it depends on a Jew.
And if we take it to the opposite extreme and suppose, G-d forbid, that the Jews do not do this, what will happen? The world will be destroyed. True, even when the two Temples were destroyed the Almighty remained in His completeness, and there is no nullification, G-d forbid, of the Creator here. What is being spoken of is the revelation of kingship, for «there is no king without a people», and the Creator's kingship cannot be revealed if the people do not accept it. That is why a person must not say «there is a great nation and I am just one individual». The Almighty placed Himself, as it were, in a situation in which we are the ones who bring the matter about.
A parable for this: a person holding his finger on a button, where if he releases the button an atom bomb will be set off, will not move his finger for a moment, because he knows that everything depends on that finger. That is how a person must feel awe of Heaven at every single moment, knowing that everything depends on what he does.
There is a further difference from a king of flesh and blood. The king sits in his palace, and the subject under his rule is at the far edge of the country. Even if he contemplates that the king's reign depends on him, in the end the king dwells in his palace, the man has never seen him, and the king is not looking and watching what he is doing right now. But with the Almighty: «ומלא כל הארץ כבודו ומביט עליו ובוחן כליות ולב אם עובדו כראוי», His glory fills the whole earth, and He looks upon him and examines his innermost heart to see whether he is serving Him properly. Even though His glory fills the whole earth, He is, as it were, looking right now at you alone, standing beside you and examining your innermost heart: what do you feel at this moment, and are you serving Him properly in every detail. Let a person not say «what difference does it make, who is looking at me now». At this very moment the Almighty is looking at him and examining exactly what he is doing.
And indeed this is how it is written in the Shulchan Aruch in the very first paragraph (and likewise in the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch): when a person wakes in the morning, what will give him the strength to get out of bed? Let him think that the King is standing over him right now and watching whether he rises for his service or goes on sleeping, for if the king were standing beside him he would jump out of bed at once. And this is how one should feel not only about getting out of bed, but in every detail and in every action.
And hence the conclusion: «ועל כן צריך לעבוד לפניו באימה וברעד כעומד לפני המלך», therefore one must serve before Him with awe and trembling, like one standing before the King. A person who thinks about this finds it helps him at every moment and in everything: he will not be embarrassed before other people, for the King is looking at him right now, so why should he take into account what others say or do not say? Anything liable to become a stumbling block and prevent a Jew from advancing in the service of G-d, if he will think about these points, that this is the King of the entire world, that the whole vast world he sees is nothing compared with the fact that all of it is for his sake, and that He is looking at him right now, it will give him different strengths altogether and connect him to the divine truth.
And that is why this is «the beginning of the service, its essence and its root». These lines must not be forgotten: they have to be put into one's head, thought about, contemplated and known by heart, and this will give the greatest soul powers to connect and to do the will of his Father in Heaven.
In summary: in this part we learned that yirah must be revealed in the heart, and at the very least present in the awareness of the mind, and that the way to awaken it is contemplation, or at the very least thought. The contemplation opens with the greatness of the Infinite One and His kingship over all the worlds, upper and lower, in the manner of «memale kol almin» (inner, individualized life-force for every creature) and «sovev kol almin» (an equal encompassing that is above the contraction into details). After that: «והוא מניח העליונים ותחתונים ומייחד מלכותו על עמו ישראל בכלל ועליו בפרט», that every Jew as an individual crowns the Creator, and «חייב אדם לומר בשבילי נברא העולם», a person is obligated to say the world was created for my sake. From man's side: accepting the kingship, serving the King and doing His will in everything, great and small alike. And from the Creator's side: «והנה ה' נצב עליו», that the Jew, as it were, gives stability to His kingship, and the Almighty looks upon him and examines his innermost heart. Hence: «צריך לעבוד לפניו באימה וברעד כעומד לפני המלך», one must serve before Him with awe and trembling like one standing before the King, and this is the beginning of the service, its essence and its root, which grants the soul powers to do the Father's will.
In the next part we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 41 and go deeper into the further paths of contemplation and into serving G-d out of yirah.