In the previous section we learned about the preparation required before one begins to learn Torah: a person should reflect, bind himself to the Almighty and hand over his soul to Him, before he opens his sefer. But this raises a question. How do we know that a preparation made beforehand actually helps? Before learning he did indeed think about it, but during the learning itself he is immersed in the sugya, in the cow and the donkey and all the details of the case in the Gemara, and he is not thinking about the Almighty at all. So what, in fact, does the earlier thought accomplish?
To this the Alter Rebbe answers, and he brings a proof that what a person thought before he began does help, even in a halachic sense, for what he does afterwards. In his words: «כנודע שעיקר ההכנה לשמה לעכב הוא בתחלת הלימוד בבינונים», as is known, that for beinonim the essential preparation of lishmah, the one that is indispensable, is at the beginning of the learning.
For the beinoni the preparation is at the start of the learning only; it cannot be sustained within the learning itself. Tzaddikim, whose level is far loftier, have G-dliness revealed to them even in the midst of the pilpul. But for beinonim, and certainly for us, the mind is occupied with the sugya, and one cannot hold both at once. Therefore at the very least one must think about it before beginning. And from where do we know that this helps?
The proof is from the law of lishmah in the writing of a get and in the writing of a sefer Torah. A scribe of a beis din cannot keep a drawer full of ready made gittin, so that when a man comes to divorce his wife he simply pulls one out. He must sit down and write that get. Why? Because the get has to be written out of the scribe's own intention that he is writing it for the sake of this woman, for the sake of this husband, and for the sake of this act of divorce. It cannot be printed and it cannot be automatic. There must be thought at the time the get is written, and if not, the get is invalid.
So too with a sefer Torah: for it to possess kedushah, the sofer must think, «I am hereby writing for the sake of the holiness of a sefer Torah.» If he simply wrote without any thought of what he was doing, the sefer Torah does not have that holiness.
«וכמו בגט וס״ת שצריכים לשמה לעכב ודיו שיאמר בתחלת הכתיבה הריני כותב לשם קדושת ס״ת או לשמו ולשמה כו'», just as with a get and a sefer Torah, which require lishmah indispensably, and yet it is enough that he say at the beginning of the writing, «I am hereby writing for the sake of the holiness of a sefer Torah,» or «for his sake and for her sake.» So when exactly does the scribe think, before the writing or during it? Halachah rules that lishmah is indispensable: there must be a thought for the sake of this man and this woman, or for the sake of the holiness of the sefer Torah, and without it the whole thing is held up. And nevertheless it is certain that it suffices for him to say at the beginning of the writing, «I am hereby writing for the sake of the holiness of a sefer Torah,» or «for his sake and for her sake,» meaning that he is writing this get for this particular man and this particular woman who wish to be divorced. Afterwards, during the writing itself, he may well not be thinking about that point at all, and still halachah says that the thought at the outset is enough, and it carries the entire writing.
The same applies in our matter. A person has to connect himself through his learning to the Almighty and hand over his soul to Him, yet in the middle of the learning he cannot be thinking about that, since he has to be thinking about the words on the page. Therefore it is enough that he think about it before he begins, as a preparation, and that will accomplish that all the learning that follows is called learning lishmah.
The Rebbe's father, the mekubal Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, wrote explanations on Tanya, some of them according to sod and Kabbalah, and some easier to grasp. On this point he offers a simple explanation. When a person learns Torah, the learning is meant to accomplish two things in his soul:
Sur mera, turn away from evil: to strip from him all his preconceived notions and every attachment to things that are not good, to peel away those kelipos.
Asei tov, do good: to draw down upon him holiness and the light of Torah, to refresh him, refine him and elevate him.
This is why the Alter Rebbe brings an example of each of the two kinds. A get is a matter of sur mera, since according to Torah a man divorces his wife when the Torah instructs him to do so, when he has found in her ervas davar. A sefer Torah is a matter of bringing in holiness, asei tov. In every single piece of learning there is both an aspect that is like a get and an aspect that is like a sefer Torah, and that is why both examples are brought together.
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«וכשלומד הרבה שעות רצופות», and when one learns for many hours in a row. Take a person who learns several consecutive hours, two, three or four, straight through without a break. Before he began he thought, «I am going to learn lishmah, to give over my soul to Hashem and to connect with the wisdom of the Creator,» as has been explained. Does he have to stop in the middle of his learning and remind himself of this, or is what he thought at the outset genuinely enough?
On this the Alter Rebbe says: «יש לו להתבונן בהכנה זו הנזכרת לעיל בכל שעה ושעה על כל פנים», he should contemplate this preparation mentioned above at least once every hour. At the very least, every hour he should pause and remind himself what he is engaged in here. For if he learns hour after hour without a break, he is liable to forget the Almighty entirely, to learn Torah and forget the One who gave it. So that he not forget, every hour he must stop.
Why specifically «every hour»? Not every half hour, not every quarter hour and not every two hours, but precisely every hour, because every hour the G-dly life force a person receives is renewed, and the holiness of Torah entering his mind gets a fresh flow, and he has to connect to that new flow. In the Alter Rebbe's words: «כי בכל שעה ושעה היא המשכה אחרת מעולמות עליונים להחיות התחתונים, והמשכת החיות שבשעה שלפניה חוזרת למקורה בסוד רצוא ושוב שבספר יצירה עם כל התורה ומעשים טובים של התחתונים», for every single hour there is a different drawing down from the upper worlds to give life to the lower ones, and the drawing down of life force of the previous hour returns to its source in the secret of ratzo vashov spoken of in Sefer Yetzirah, together with all the Torah and good deeds of those below.
Every hour a different flow is drawn down from the upper worlds to enliven the lower ones, and the lower world receives G-dly vitality and energy. Even though a person does not feel it, that is how it works. It parallels the other cycles of time: just as in general every month has its own message, and every week has its parshah and the message of that parshah, and every day has its own content (Chai Elul in the month, and the like), so too every single hour has its own content.
The analogy for this is the beating of the heart. The heart sends oxygenated blood to all the limbs, and they take their oxygen and their energy from it; and once they have taken it, the blood returns to the heart without oxygen, is oxygenated anew, and is sent out again. Exactly as it works physically, so it works spiritually: G-dly life force descends into the world and the world receives it, and after an hour that life force returns to its source and a new life force comes. This is the secret of ratzo vashov: ratzo, running upward, and shov, returning below.
And all the Torah a person learned in the previous hour, together with all the Torah and good deeds of those below, ascends on high, as one mass borne on wings, on gadfin, and everything returns to its source, and a new energy is received with which to carry the coming hour. Therefore a learner cannot lean on the previous hour; every hour he has to refresh himself in this matter anew.
The Alter Rebbe goes on to explain the root of what is renewed each hour: «כי בכל שעה שולט צירוף אחד מי״ב צירופי שם הוי' ב״ה בי״ב שעות היום, וצירופי שם אדנ״י בלילה, כנודע», for in every hour one of the twelve permutations of the name Havayah rules during the twelve hours of the day, and the permutations of the name Ad-nai at night, as is known.
The name Havayah is the Divine name that signifies the entire order of hishtalshelus, the chain of descent of the G-dly light into the world, and all ten sefiros are alluded to within it: the yud is chochmah, the hei is binah, the vav is the six sefiros, and the final hei is the sefirah of malchus; every letter carries its own meaning. The name Ad-nai is the parallel of the name Havayah on a lower level.
What are permutations of letters?
The rule is that you multiply the number of possible permutations by the number of the added letter:
Two letters, two permutations: alef beis, and in reverse order beis alef.
Three letters, six permutations (two times three).
Four letters, twenty four permutations (six times four).
By this reckoning, from ten letters, where each permutation uses all ten letters and only the order changes, one can make more than three and a half million permutations.
And so it is spelled out in Sefer Yetzirah: «Two stones build two houses, three stones build six houses, four stones build twenty four houses» (the «stones» are letters), and it continues that from there on «the mouth cannot tell,» since once you reach six and seven letters and beyond, the numbers climb higher and higher.
In passing, and only in a word, since we will learn this at length in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah: there the Alter Rebbe explains that the life force and energy of the Creator which sustains the whole of creation is drawn from the letters of the Ten Utterances with which the world was created, and within those Ten Utterances the whole of creation is contained, all of it, in every way.
How is all of creation contained in Ten Utterances? Every created being is found within the Ten Utterances, whether through gematrios, or through substitutions of letters, or through various permutations. Substitutions of letters means that a letter is exchanged for another, as an alef is exchanged for a hei, as guttural letters are interchanged with one another, as the letters of the tongue are, and so on; and «various permutations,» in the very wording used there in Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah.
And how many permutations can be made from all the letters of the Ten Utterances as they are written in the Torah? There is no limit to it, the numbers are literally unbounded. Every single creature has its own portion of life force written within the Ten Utterances: there is a creature whose name is written there openly, like heaven, like the sun; and there is a creature whose life force is written in one form or another, and so on without end.
To summarize: in this section we learned that the preparation made before learning carries all the learning that follows, just as with the law of lishmah in the writing of a get and of a sefer Torah, where the thought at the beginning of the writing suffices. We saw Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's explanation of why precisely these two examples were chosen, the sur mera and the asei tov within Torah study; the instruction to contemplate this preparation every single hour, because each hour brings a different drawing down from the upper worlds in the secret of ratzo vashov; the permutations of the name Havayah by day and the permutations of the name Ad-nai by night; and the permutations of the letters of the Ten Utterances, within which the whole of creation is contained.
In the next section we will continue with the explanation of the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 41.