We have reached, in chapter 41, folio 56b (page 112), the second line from the top: «ויעמיק במחשבה זו». Let us first give a brief summary of what we have learned since the beginning of the chapter, and from there we will continue.
Chapter 41 opens with the principle that a person must constantly keep in mind the essential thing in avodas Hashem: yiras shomayim, the fear of Heaven. Every act of Torah and mitzvos, whether in matters of «turn away from evil» or in matters of «do good», must flow from that starting point of yiras shomayim. Love of Hashem alone is not enough; the foundation must be yirah (as we will see further on). We learned that every Jew has, by his very nature, an innate fear of the Creator planted within him, and all that is needed is to awaken it.
The way to awaken it is by contemplating that the Holy One supervises every single detail, and that He places His entire kingship upon each and every individual. Every Jew must know that the Holy One is looking at him and examining his innermost heart and mind, and that His whole concern, as it were, is what is happening with this person and with that person, each individual standing at the very center of His attention. Therefore a person must serve his Creator with yirah, as one who is standing literally before the king, and not as one who merely knows that there is a king who sits in his royal palace somewhere far away.
And here the Alter Rebbe continues: «ויעמיק במחשבה זו ויאריך בה כפי יכולת השגת מוחו ומחשבתו וכפי הפנאי שלו», “and he shall meditate deeply upon this thought and dwell on it at length, according to the capacity of his mind and thought to grasp it, and according to the free time at his disposal.” This is not a superficial recollection, merely letting the idea pass through one's mind, something a person can do at any moment, but a deep contemplation that requires setting aside time. And the measure of that depth differs from person to person: according to his capacity to grasp, which varies from one person to another and therefore yields a different level of understanding; and according to the free time he has, which depends on his livelihood and occupation as they were set for him by hashgacha protis, and on how much free time is left to him to contemplate deeply on this subject alone.
«לפני עסק התורה או המצוה», “before engaging in Torah or in a mitzvah.” This contemplation is called for in particular before learning Torah or performing a mitzvah. A person should pause for a moment and think about what he is about to do: he is coming to fulfill the will of the Creator, who is looking at him and examining his deeds at this very moment. The responsibility is great and the king's attention is turned upon him with full force, and from this yiras shomayim is aroused even before the performance of any mitzvah at all.
A parable to illustrate this: a person who has received an invitation from the great king for a yechidus, a private audience. The king wishes to speak with him, to draw him close, to grant him a full hour in his company. All through the time beforehand he is filled with excitement, thinking about before whom he is coming, how he will speak and what he will say. Every moment of performing a mitzvah or learning Torah is exactly such an hour with the king, and it is this very fact that one must contemplate.
«כמו לפני לבישת טלית ותפילין», “as before putting on the tallis and tefillin.” The Alter Rebbe chose the example of tallis and tefillin because these are the mitzvos with which a person opens his day. Before he wraps himself in the tallis and puts on tefillin, he should contemplate that he is coming to fulfill a mitzvah which is the will of the King, and from this a fear of the King will be aroused in him, and out of that yirah he will perform the mitzvah.
Beyond the general contemplation explained until now, that the King stands before him and looks at him, a person should also «וגם יתבונן איך שאור אין סוף ברוך הוא הסובב כל עלמין וממלא כל עלמין הוא רצון העליון, הוא מלובש באותיות וחכמת התורה או בציצית ותפילין אלו», “also contemplate how the light of the blessed Ein Sof, which encompasses all worlds and fills all worlds, which is the Supernal Will, is clothed in the letters and the wisdom of the Torah, or in these tzitzis and tefillin.” In other words: the unlimited divine power, sovev kol almin (encompassing all worlds) and memale kol almin (filling all worlds), a subject touched on briefly in the previous lesson and to be explained at length in the coming chapters, is clothed in the letters of the Torah and in the mitzvos themselves.
When a person learns a verse in Chumash, a page of Gemara, or a chapter of Tanya, within the very words he is learning lies the unlimited power of the Creator, who has drawn Himself in and contracted Himself within the framework of these letters. The same is true of tzitzis and tefillin. Tefillin are made of the hide of an animal, and the leather in itself is not the point; rather, the infinite will of the Creator is contracted and defined within four parshiyos placed inside black, squared batim, and when a person puts them on in their proper place and in the proper manner, he connects himself to the infinity of the Creator.
Who determined that the batim and the straps should be black and square? The Holy One, in a halacha given to Moshe at Sinai. In the Written Torah there is only a brief verse, «וקשרתם לאות על ידך והיו לטוטפות בין עיניך», “and you shall bind them as a sign upon your arm, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,” and in the Oral Torah the divine will is spelled out in all its details. He could just as well have commanded that they be green, yellow or red, square or rectangular; this is simply how He determined it.
It follows that when a person performs the mitzvah, «ובקריאתו או בלבישתו - הוא ממשיך אורו יתברך עליו, דהיינו על חלק אלוק ממעל שבתוך גופו», “and by his reading or by his wearing them, he draws His blessed light upon himself, that is, upon the portion of G-dliness from above that is within his body.” For in every Jew, as explained in chapter 2, there is a soul which is literally a portion of G-dliness from above; and at the moment of performing the mitzvah that portion is illuminated and expanded, and connects to an unlimited divine light, «ליכלל וליבטל באורו יתברך», “to be absorbed and nullified in His blessed light.”
The analogy for this is a candle absorbed in a torch: a great torch is burning, and when a small candle is lit beside it, the candle's flame is not seen at all and there is no indication that it even exists. It is swallowed up and absorbed into the torch and nullified within it. So too the soul of a Jew, with all its power, is absorbed and nullified at the moment of performing a mitzvah in the infinite light of the Creator.
What, then, is the feeling appropriate at the moment of performing a mitzvah? Yiras shomayim. A person is in yechidus with the King, in an inner chamber within a chamber, and the King, as it were, shines His entire self upon him within the physical act that he is doing. The very contemplation of what the mitzvah and the Torah actually mean arouses in a person an added yirah. And this is equally true of all the mitzvos: the Alter Rebbe took tzitzis and tefillin as his example, but the same applies to mezuzah, to sukkah, to eating matzah on the night of the seder. In every mitzvah a person does, he must know that this is not a merely technical, physical act, but a connection to the unlimited will of the Creator.
There are three stages in this contemplation:
The general contemplation, as we learned in the previous lesson: the Holy One is with a person everywhere and examines his innermost heart and mind, even when he is not performing a mitzvah and wherever he happens to be.
Before performing the mitzvah: he must intensify his contemplation and know what he is connecting to. The very fact that he is performing a mitzvah connects him to the divine will, and in this respect all the mitzvos are equal.
«Derech prat», in a particular way: every mitzvah has its own uniqueness, its own form and its own message, what it demands of a person, and which part of him is called upon to be nullified before the Creator and to fear Him. Therefore a further stage of contemplation is required, into the particulars of each individual mitzvah.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «ודרך פרט בתפילין - ליבטל וליכלל בבחינת חכמתו ובינתו שבנפשו האלקית בבחינת חכמתו ובינתו של אין סוף ברוך הוא», “and in a particular way, with tefillin, to nullify and absorb the aspect of chochmah and binah in his divine soul within the aspect of the chochmah and binah of the blessed Ein Sof.” With tefillin, what is asked of a person is that his chochmah and binah, that is, his mind, be nullified and absorbed in the aspect of the chochmah and binah of the Holy One.
It is well known that there are four parshiyos in the tefillin. In the order in which they are written in the Torah:
«Kadesh» and «Vehayah ki yeviacha», both in the book of Shemos, in parshas Bo, one after the other.
«Shema», in the book of Devarim, in parshas Va'eschanan.
«Vehayah im shamoa», in the book of Devarim, in parshas Eikev.
In the tefillin of the head the four parshiyos are separated, each parshah in its own separate bayis; in the tefillin of the arm they are all written on one long piece of parchment and placed in a single bayis. And why specifically four parshiyos?
The mitzvah of tefillin is one of the few mitzvos where the Shulchan Aruch itself spells out the kavanah a person should have while performing it (ordinarily the Shulchan Aruch does not detail kavanos, and special works were written for that purpose). It states there that one putting on tefillin should have in mind that the Holy One is the Master of the world, that He took us out of Egypt and performed miracles and wonders for us, all of which testify to His control over the entire creation. And why are they placed on the arm and on the head? The arm is opposite the heart and the head is opposite the brain, for a person must subjugate his heart and his mind to the Holy One.
And the mind, although in general we call it by a single name, contains distinct aspects and stages (not in the technical sense of four compartments): the faculty of chochmah, the faculty of binah, and the faculty of daas, and the faculty of daas itself divides into two. So we have here four stages within the mind, corresponding to the four parshiyos of the tefillin.
To summarize: in this section we learned that a person must contemplate deeply and at length on yiras shomayim, according to his capacity to grasp and according to his free time, and especially before learning Torah and performing a mitzvah, like one summoned to a yechidus with the King. We saw that the contemplation is that the light of the blessed Ein Sof, which encompasses all worlds and fills all worlds, is clothed in the letters of the Torah and in the tzitzis and tefillin; and that when a person reads or wears them he draws His blessed light upon the portion of G-dliness from above within him, so that it is absorbed and nullified in it like a candle in a torch. We set out the three stages of contemplation, the general one, the one before performing a mitzvah, and the «derech prat» of each particular mitzvah, and we began with the «derech prat» of tefillin: the bittul of chochmah and binah, the four parshiyos, the kavanah of tefillin as given in the Shulchan Aruch regarding the subjugation of the heart and the mind, and the four stages within the mind.
In the next section we will expand on the explanation of the four faculties of the mind and what they correspond to in the four parshiyos, and we will go on to the «derech prat» of the mitzvah of tzitzis.