We stopped in chapter 41, on folio 58b (page 116), at the line that begins והנה בהכנה זו (“And with this preparation”). Before we continue, let us briefly review the main points that were explained in the previous lesson.
In the first part of the chapter the Alter Rebbe dealt mainly with yiras Hashem, fear of Heaven, without which there is no avodah at all, and holiness simply cannot rest in a Jew's heart without it. In the second part of the chapter he added that ahavas Hashem, love of G-d, is needed as well, and he brought the analogy of a bird that cannot fly upward except with both of its wings, the right and the left, both of which are indispensable to it. So too with a Jew: he needs both fear and love together.
And what is ahavas Hashem? That a Jew loves the Holy One, wants to attach himself to Him, and knows that this attachment comes about through keeping Torah and mitzvos. Within this there are different levels:
The basic level: the ordinary level that every Jew can reach, where he loves the Holy One and, out of that love, wants to bind his soul to the Creator. There is a thirst in him to be connected, like a son who wants to be close to his father, and he knows that the connection is made only through Torah and mitzvos.
A higher level: found mainly among great tzaddikim, where he is not asking to bind his own soul alone, but all of Israel, to the Holy One. He knows that the true nachas of the Holy One is when the entire Jewish people are bound to Him, and he is not seeking his own private connection but his Father's nachas, the nachas of the Creator.
On this basis we explained at length the formula לשם יחוד קודשא בריך הוא ושכינתיה (“for the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah”), which closes with the words בשם כל ישראל (“in the name of all Israel”): when a Jew asks that this union take place now (and we explained the levels of that union in the previous lesson), he is not thinking of himself alone but of all Israel.
The Alter Rebbe immediately noted that such a level, where a person genuinely cares what will be with all of Israel, is the level of the great tzaddikim and of the bnei aliyah, and is not within everyone's reach. And since the לשם יחוד formula is said by every person, the Alter Rebbe therefore said that every person should accustom himself to this thought, even though on his own terms this is not the level he belongs to. And he immediately emphasized again that to think about himself, that he wants to be connected to the Creator, that certainly belongs to every Jew. [The question is not whether the thing is true and written, but where a person's inner feeling actually is: are all his yearnings aimed at this point, or does he merely know that this is what is written?]
At the end of the previous lesson we explained that a Jew's desire to attach himself to the Creator is called handing his soul over to the Creator, mesirus nefesh. Mesirus nefesh does not necessarily mean the opposite of life, G-d forbid; mesirus nefesh is meant to be precisely within life, within the soul as it is in the body, to hand one's soul over to the Holy One while he is alive.
From where does a Jew draw the awareness and the strength to hand his soul over to G-d? From the words he says every single day in the blessing אלוקי נשמה: the soul, even before it was created and formed, טהורה היא (“it is pure”), above all of creation; and likewise regarding the future, ואתה עתיד ליטלה ממני (“and You will take it from me”), meaning that its very essence remains outside of creation. It emerges that the neshamah is above creation, both before it and after it. So every morning a Jew says to himself: my soul, in its essence, does not belong here, it belongs to holiness and to G-dliness. And from here it follows that he must do everything in his power, at every single moment, to connect it to G-dliness, and in every moment that he connects it to G-dliness he has, in that moment, handed his soul over to the Holy One.
To round out the matter, let us add something interesting along exactly the same line. The Gemara relates that when the yetzer hara confronts a person and begins to confuse him with all sorts of things, there are several pieces of advice, one after another: let him try this and it will not work, let him try that and it will not work, and finally, יזכיר לו יום המיתה (“let him remind it of the day of death”).
On the level of pshat: those who learn the Gemara explain that it is speaking in the language of mussar. After a person dies, a judgment and an accounting await him, Gehinnom and kaf hakela, and therefore he should say to the yetzer hara: what are you getting out of this? In the end you will pay the price.
The Rebbe's explanation: in one of the sichos the Rebbe brought this Gemara and explained its inner meaning according to the very principle explained here in Tanya. יזכיר לו יום המיתה, let him remind his yetzer that he does not belong to this world, that in his essence he is there. A day will come when it will be revealed where he truly belongs: to Gan Eden, to the G-dly matter. And therefore he should say to it: do not confuse me and do not drag me into things I have no connection to. This is not a mere rebuke, it is a living statement of where he truly belongs.
This is also what we explained here: אלוקי, נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא... ואתה עתיד ליטלה ממני (“My G-d, the soul You placed within me is pure... and You will take it from me”). From here it follows that the intermediate stage is nothing more than an intermediate stage, and it must be connected to the truth of the neshamah and not to other things.
The Alter Rebbe writes: «והנה בהכנה זו של מסירת נפשו להשם יתחיל ברכות השחר ברוך אתה כו'» (“And with this preparation of handing his soul over to G-d, let him begin the morning blessings, Blessed are You, etc.”). After a Jew prepares himself with the understanding and the recognition that he must hand his soul over to the Holy One, he should begin the morning blessings. The blessing אלוקי נשמה is the introduction to Birchos Hashachar, and after it come all the blessings in which a person recognizes that the opening of his eyes is a thanksgiving to G-d, that the walking of his legs is a thanksgiving to G-d, and so on. First he must prepare himself with a general preparation: what am I doing here, and what am I supposed to do in the world? To connect to the Holy One. And after this preparation he begins to say the morning blessings and to have in mind, in each individual blessing, the particular thanksgiving it contains.
And so it is through the rest of the day as well:
«וכן בהכנה זו יתחיל ללמוד שיעור קבוע מיד אחר התפלה» (“And with this preparation he should begin to learn his fixed shiur immediately after davening”). At the conclusion of davening, before he turns to his learning, he should stop and reflect: what am I about to learn? G-d's Torah. And why? Because this is the truth of my soul, and therefore I am now going to give myself over to the Holy One. This preparation he makes in his thought, and after it he begins to learn.
«וכן באמצע היום קודם שיתחיל ללמוד» (“And likewise in the middle of the day, before he begins to learn”). One who has set fixed times for Torah in the middle of the day as well, after he has finished his shiur following davening and turned to eat or to his business affairs, should pause for a moment before he opens the sefer and reflect on what he is about to learn: he is not coming to learn some beautiful piece of wisdom, like someone who takes a physics book off the shelf and in its place takes, lehavdil, a Gemara. He is coming to connect to the Holy One, to learn His wisdom and to give himself over to Him. This thought has to come before the learning.
This same principle is reflected in the very opening of the Torah. The Five Books of Moshe open with Bereishis, and its first word, בראשית, begins with the letter beis. Why does the Torah not open with an alef? The very same verse could have been written, without changing a thing except the order of the words: אלוקים ברא בראשית את השמים ואת הארץ, and that way the Torah would have opened with an alef.
This is all the more striking in light of the well known story of King Ptolemy, who gathered seventy elders into seventy separate rooms and asked each of them to translate the Torah into Greek on his own, in order to test whether there would be any agreement between them. A great miracle occurred: they all translated in exactly the same way, and they even made a number of identical changes. One of the changes brought in the Gemara: they all wrote אלוקים ברא בראשית את השמים ואת הארץ instead of בראשית ברא אלוקים. And why did they do so? Because had they written בראשית ברא אלוקים את השמים ואת הארץ, the gentile might have erred and thought that בראשית is the name of the one who created G-d, who then went on to create the heavens and the earth as well, and in order to prevent this mistake they put אלוקים ברא בראשית first.
It turns out that the Torah in Ptolemy's hands opens with an alef, with the word אלוקים, while the Torah in our hands opens with a beis, with the word בראשית. And what is the reason the Torah opens specifically with a beis? The preparation. The Torah, the intellect and the learning are in the category of the beis, the number two, and before them stands the alef: the contemplation of the Giver of the Torah, of the Holy One, of G-dliness. For the gentile the Torah opens with an alef: a beautiful intellect, and that is all there is, and he has no connection to the G-dliness that is above the Torah. For the Jewish people, by contrast, the intellect and the learning are the beis, and they are not considered the intellect of Torah unless they are connected to the alef that precedes them, which is the Holy One.
This is what the Alter Rebbe means when he writes that in the middle of the day, before he begins to learn, «צריכה הכנה זו לפחות» (“this preparation is needed, at the very least”). Why specifically before the learning, and what is to be during the learning itself? During the learning he has to think about the content he is learning. A person cannot think two thoughts at once, and it is impossible for him to be thinking at every moment «I am learning G-d's Torah» while he has to be analyzing the details of the sugya, the case it is discussing, the example and the reasoning. Therefore: before the learning he reflects on what he is about to do now, and during the learning he concentrates on the intellect of the matter itself.
In summary: in this section we reviewed the need for fear and love together, the two levels of love (binding the Jew's own soul, and binding all of Israel), and mesirus nefesh within life, which is learned from the blessing אלוקי נשמה, that the neshamah is above creation both before it and after it. We saw the Rebbe's explanation of יזכיר לו יום המיתה as a statement of one's true belonging to G-dliness, and then the Alter Rebbe's words that «with this preparation» of mesirus nefesh one is to open the morning blessings, the fixed shiur after davening, and the learning in the middle of the day. We added the hint in the Torah's opening with a beis: the intellect and the learning are the beis, and they are not the intellect of Torah unless they connect to the alef that precedes them, the Holy One.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in the remainder of chapter 41.