In the previous section we learned how a person must awaken yiras Shamayim within himself, both a general yirah and a particular yirah before performing each mitzvah. Now we come to the root of the matter: why love alone is not enough, and why it is specifically yirah that is the foundation of avodah.
The Alter Rebbe continues: «מה שאין כן אם לומד ומקיים המצוה באהבה לבדה כדי לדבקה בו על ידי תורתו ומצותיו» - but if he studies and fulfills the mitzvah out of love alone, in order to cleave to Him through His Torah and mitzvos. Picture a Jew who keeps the mitzvos because he loves them and enjoys them: Shabbos is pleasant to him, he feels closeness and connection to the King in it, and he even knows that keeping Shabbos binds him to his Creator. The one thing missing is that he gives no thought at all to the fact that there is a King who is commanding him, and that he is obligated to obey His word.
Let us picture two Jews performing the very same mitzvah:
The first does it out of the awareness that there is a Master of the house: the King has commanded, and he feels yirah of Him and of the fact that the King is watching him at this very moment and examining his deeds. (He too has joy; he is not depressed in the least.)
The second performs the identical act out of love and out of joy, but gives no thought whatsoever to any point of yirah of the King.
Which of the two is more aligned with what the Creator truly wants?
The answer is that yirah is preferable, as the Alter Rebbe concludes: «אינה נקראת בשם עבודת העבד, והתורה אמרה 'ועבדתם את ה' אלקיכם' וגו' 'ואותו תעבודו' וגו'» - it is not called by the name «the service of a servant,» and the Torah said: «And you shall serve Hashem your G-d,» «And Him shall you serve.» One of the maamarim of Chassidus explains this at length, and even puts it sharply: one who serves Hashem out of love alone and has no yirah is serving himself.
Both yirah and love have two sides to them. Reuven fears Shimon: there is the one who fears and the one who is feared. Reuven loves Shimon: there is the one who loves and the one who is loved. But the difference between them is fundamental:
In yirah the emphasis is not on the one who fears but on the one who is feared, because the very nature of yirah is contraction and tzimtzum: a person senses that he is nothing next to the greatness of the one he fears. That is bittul, self-nullification.
In love it is the opposite: love is expansion, and the existence of the lover is present and prominent within it. «I love» - and the source is the person himself.
And the Holy One, blessed be He, wants a person to be nullified to Him and to serve Him. That is why it says «And you shall serve Hashem your G-d» - service like a servant to his master. And in the relationship between a servant and a master, who is the main one? The master, and the servant is nullified before him.
Therefore, a Jew who has love alone - this is not avodah. True, he fulfills the mitzvah, and the mitzvah is wondrous and will undoubtedly accomplish what it accomplishes, but a fundamental component is missing in his bond with the Holy One, blessed be He: Hashem wants a person's bittul to Him, not that he should do things out of his own ego. One who says «this is pleasant and this is good» is thereby preserving himself and his ego, which also happens to agree with what he is doing. And Hashem wants bittul, and bittul is yirah.
From here we can also understand why the Alter Rebbe opened the chapter with the subject of love as well, and as will be explained later in the chapter itself, that there is no contradiction between yirah and joy: a person feels yirah of the King, and together with that he rejoices over the opportunity that has fallen to his lot, to be in awe of the King. This is not, G-d forbid, a yirah of depression, but a yirah that comes from great joy over the privilege the King has given him to be one of His servants.
It is like a great tzaddik toward whom everyone conducts himself with tremendous reverence, and he asks a few people to do something for him. They feel yirah of him, and at the same time they feel an extraordinary joy at the privilege of being even like the nail in his shoe. There is no greater joy than this, and it is a joy that flows from bittul to the King. The joy of love, by contrast, flows from the person's own enjoyment, and what Hashem wants is bittul to Him.
The Alter Rebbe brings the words of the Zohar, «וכמו שכתוב בזהר פרשת בהר» - as is written in the Zohar, Parshas Behar, which comes to illustrate how one must serve the Creator: «כהאי תורא דיהבין עליה עול בקדמיתא בגין לאפקא מיניה טב לעלמא כו'» - like that ox upon which one first places a yoke, in order to bring forth from it good for the world.
Why does one place a yoke on the ox, when the yoke restricts it? There are two ways to understand this:
The yoke prevents damage: the ox is harnessed and contained, it cannot run off wherever it wishes and it cannot gore.
And more than that: one wants to lead it out into the field so that it should plow and do its work, to draw benefit from it and bring forth good for the world, so that people should enjoy its plowing. The yoke not only prevents goring; it leads to the positive accomplishment.
So too with a Jew: yiras Shamayim is not only so that he should not transgress, but is needed for the mitzvos he performs as well. The positive action too must come from yiras Shamayim. This is what the chapter opened with: that yirah is not only for «turn away from evil» but also for «do good.»
And the Zohar concludes: «הכי נמי אצטריך לבר נש לקבלא עליה עול מלכות שמים בקדמיתא» - so too a person must accept upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven first, before he begins any action at all. And in sharp language: «ואי האי לא אשתכח גביה לא שריא ביה קדושה כו'» - and if this is not found with him, holiness does not rest within him.
These words contain no negation, G-d forbid, of mitzvos done out of love. They come to illustrate how crucial yirah and bittul are: when a person has yirah, the King rests with him, and the person exists for the King; when he has love alone, he himself is the one resting there, and the King, as it were, exists for him. That is an enormous difference.
«וברעיא מהימנא שם דף קיא עמוד ב» - in the Raya Mehemna it is brought «שכל אדם צריך להיות בשתי בחינות ומדרגות והן בחינת עבד ובחינת בן» - that every person must be in two aspects and levels, the aspect of a servant and the aspect of a son. On the one hand he must feel that he is the Creator's servant, and on the other hand that he is a son with his father. With a son the main thing is love of the father, and with a servant the main thing is yirah of the master, and a person must maintain both aspects at all times and not give up on either one, as we say in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: «whether as sons, whether as servants.»
«ואף דיש בן שהוא גם כן עבד» - it is indeed explained in Kabbalah that there is a level of «son» that already includes within it the matter of «servant,» and for such a person the servitude is not an avodah unto itself. But that is a very lofty level, and «הרי אי אפשר לבוא אליה בלי קדימת היראה עילאה, כידוע ליודעים» - it is impossible to arrive at it without the higher yirah coming first, as is known to those who know. In the ordinary way, a person cannot serve Hashem unless he also has this movement of yirah as a thing unto itself, in the sense of «the beginning of wisdom is the fear of Hashem.»
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Until now we have learned how a person must awaken a general yiras Shamayim and also a particular yirah before a mitzvah, and that one who contemplates and arouses yirah in his thought but does not have it awaken in the feeling of his heart is missing the completeness of avodah. Even so, the yirah has at least penetrated his mind and his awareness: he contemplated the fact that the King is watching him, and as a result he constantly feels in his mind a bittul to the King.
And now: «והנה אף מי שגם במוחו ובמחשבתו אינו מרגיש שום יראה ובושה» - what will be with a person on so low a level that even in his mind, even after contemplating all of this, he feels no shame at all: the King is watching him, and it makes no impression on him whatsoever. Of this the Alter Rebbe says that it is «מפני פחיתות ערך נפשו, ממקור חוצבה ממדרגות תחתונות דיו"ד ספירות דעשיה» - because of the lowliness of his soul, whose source was hewn from the lower levels of the ten sefiros of the world of Asiyah. His soul was hewn from a low level to begin with, and therefore he does not manage to be aroused by anything. (And he has nothing to be proud of in this.)
Is such a Jew lost, with no ability to arrive at yiras Shamayim? Says the Alter Rebbe: «אף על פי כן, מאחר שמתכוין בעבודתו כדי לעבוד את המלך - הרי זו עבודה גמורה» - nevertheless, since he intends in his avodah to serve the King, this is a complete avodah. It is not a whole, perfected avodah, and the completeness of avodah is missing from it, but it is called avodah. And why? «כי היראה והעבודה נחשבות לשתי מצות במנין תרי"ג, ואינן מעכבות זו את זו» - because yirah and avodah are counted as two separate mitzvos among the 613, and they do not hold each other back.
Picture a master and a servant: the master demands of the servant that he carry out all his instructions, and the servant carries them out because the master said so. A servant who knows the greatness of his master feels yirah of him constantly, on one level or another, in his heart or in his awareness. But there can also be an insolent servant who deep down does not want his master at all, and nonetheless carries out every instruction - and he is a servant. So too with a Jew: it may be that he keeps the mitzvos and does not miss putting on tefillin a single day, while deep inside he says that he feels nothing. «They told me it is good, and I do it.» The mitzvah of yirah is lacking in him, and he must lift himself up and add in it, but the mitzvah of avodah he has. That is why this is called a complete avodah - not a perfected one, but a complete one.
And more than that: in truth, «ועוד שבאמת מקיים גם מצות יראה, במה שממשיך היראה במחשבתו» - he is in fact also fulfilling the mitzvah of yirah, in that he draws the yirah into his thought. For at the very moment he performs the mitzvah there is certainly some measure of yirah in him: why does he get up in the morning and put on tefillin? Because he knows, at the very least, that the King knows what he is doing, that there is an Eye watching him. And though this is a low level, it is still yirah.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «כי בשעה ורגע זו על כל פנים מורא שמים עליו, על כל פנים כמורא בשר ודם הדיוט לפחות שאינו מלך, המביט עליו, שנמנע בעבורו מלעשות דבר שאינו הגון בעיניו, שזו נקראת יראה» - because at that hour and moment, at least, the fear of Heaven is upon him; at the very least like the fear of a flesh and blood commoner, not even a king, who is watching him, on whose account he refrains from doing something that would be improper in that person's eyes, and this is called yirah.
It is like a person standing on his balcony about to toss the garbage bag down to the street, who suddenly notices the neighbor in the adjacent building looking at him from his window. Now he will not throw it. Is he afraid of him? No, he is simply uncomfortable being watched. So too a Jew who refrains from a transgression or performs a mitzvah because he is being watched: that level is already called yirah.
And from where do we know that this is called yirah? «כמו שאמר רבן יוחנן בן זכאי לתלמידיו: יהי רצון שיהא מורא שמים עליכם כמורא בשר ודם כו'» - as Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai said to his students: may it be His will that the fear of Heaven be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood. His students asked him: only that much? He said to them: «תדעו, כשאדם עובר עבירה אומר שלא יראני אדם כו'» - know that when a person transgresses he says, «may no man see me.» So even this level is yirah, though it is a very low yirah.
It emerges that even this Jew, who has no feeling and no shame but keeps the mitzvos, is on the inside: he keeps them at least because of «may no man see me,» and that too is yirah. And from here we learn that every person must work in this direction, that he should have yirah, whether on the lower level or on a higher one, and that it should be constant, for without yirah it is not avodah. And when we merit a constant yirah, then with Hashem's help our avodah is truly avodah.
In summary: in this section we learned why love alone is not enough. Love is expansion, and the person's own existence is prominent within it, whereas yirah is tzimtzum and bittul. And the Holy One, blessed be He, wants bittul to Him: «And you shall serve Hashem your G-d,» the service of a servant to his master, and therefore love alone «is not called by the name of the service of a servant.» We saw that yirah is not depression but comes together with great joy over the privilege of serving the King. From the Zohar's parable of the ox we learned that the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven is not only to avoid evil but also to bring forth good for the world, and that a person must accept it «first,» before anything else. We examined the two aspects of servant and son. And finally we learned that even one who feels no yirah in his mind and thought, since he intends in his avodah to serve the King, this is a complete avodah, and he too has yirah within him, at least like the fear of flesh and blood.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 41, and take up the further explanation of the avodah of yirah and the place of love in the service of Hashem.