Let us return to our subject, the combinations of the letters. In a four letter Name there are twenty four possible combinations. So, for example, in the Name Ad-nay, which is made up of four letters (alef, dalet, nun, yud), there are twenty four combinations.
It is written in Kabbalah that during the twelve hours of the night only twelve of those twenty four combinations shine, and during the twelve hours of the day the other twelve combinations of the Name Havayah shine, and even the vowelization changes from Name to Name.
On this subject the Rebbe writes a lengthy analysis in the way of Kabbalah, and we will bring one point to think about: how many combinations are there in the Name Havayah? Seemingly twenty four, yet if you actually work it out on paper you arrive at only twelve, since two of the letters in the Name are identical, the two hei's, and so the combinations do not add up to twenty four.
The core of the Rebbe's explanation: even though the two hei's are identical, so that on paper you will never produce more than twelve combinations, each hei represents a different G-dly idea, one is binah and the other is malchus, two entirely different matters. Therefore, once we take into account the content of the combinations, there genuinely are twenty four combinations here. The Alter Rebbe does not enter into any of this; it has been brought here only in passing.
What the Alter Rebbe is saying here is that in every hour a different combination reigns, and in passing, in every month as well a different combination of the Name Havayah reigns, as is brought in certain siddurim.
He does not mean an hour of sixty minutes, for the Alter Rebbe uses the phrase «the twelve hours of the day», and on a winter day there are fewer than twelve such hours from the start of the day until its end. The intention is to sha'os zemaniyos, proportional hours: you take the span from the beginning of the day until its end and divide it into twelve parts. Accordingly, sometimes the hour is fifty minutes and sometimes seventy, but there are always twelve hours, in summer and in winter alike. This division has halachic consequences in many areas: the latest time for Krias Shema, the latest time for davening and the like, where the times given are calculated according to proportional hours.
In any case, in each of the twelve hours of the day a different combination reigns, and therefore every hour a person should stop and think: what am I doing here? What am I learning here? It is G-d's Torah that I am learning. The goal is to connect the Torah and my mind to the Holy One blessed be He, and this is his mesiras nefesh to Hashem.
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Let us recall what we learned in the previous section and mentioned at the beginning of this lesson: in a Jew's love for his Creator there is a level of ordinary people and a level of tzaddikim. Ordinary people seek their own closeness and their own nachas, whereas great tzaddikim are not thinking of themselves at all but of all of Israel, because that is the nachas of the Holy One blessed be He.
At the close of the chapter the Alter Rebbe introduces a new point: even a person who is thinking of himself, who truly cannot feel all of Israel and cannot feel the thirst to give pleasure to his Creator but only the thirst to connect his own soul, even he can elevate his intention somewhat and ask himself: why do I want to connect to the Creator? Not because it will be good for me, but because through this nachas ruach will be given to the Creator. A person who seeks the connection only because it will make him feel good remains within the framework of egoism, a spiritual and G-dly egoism, but egoism nonetheless. And what is the nachas that is given to the Creator? Any father who sees his son coming home surely has joy from it.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «והנה כל כוונתו במסירת נפשו לה' על ידי התורה והתפלה להעלות ניצוץ אלקות שבתוכה למקורו» («Now, his entire intention in giving over his soul to Hashem through Torah and tefillah, to elevate the spark of G-dliness within it to its source»), his whole intention during Torah and tefillah is about his own private spark, which he wishes to connect to his Creator. Let him not think only of himself and of the good that will come to him from it, but rather «תהא רק כדי לעשות נחת רוח לפניו יתברך» («should be only in order to give nachas ruach before Him, blessed be He»). Even when a person is thinking about his own connection, he should do so because he wants thereby to cause nachas to the Creator.
«כמשל שמחת המלך בבוא אליו בנו יחידו בצאתו מן השביה ובית האסורים כנ"ל» («like the analogy of the king's joy when his only son comes to him upon being released from captivity and prison, as above»). A prince who has come out of prison after a long time, if he is a true son, rejoices more at the sight of his father's beaming face than he rejoices at his own release. He sees the joy his father has from finally seeing him, and that gives him greater pleasure than his own freedom.
This is how a Jew too must feel: I was in the prison of the yetzer hara with all its nonsense, and I managed to rise above it; certainly I am happy that I succeeded, but I should be thinking more about the joy I am giving the King whose son has come out of prison. Here the Alter Rebbe is demanding that even one who remains within the framework of himself and does not stand at the level of «all of Israel» should lift himself a little, and not think of himself alone but think about what the King gets out of this. Every person can relate to this, since in the end everyone is always thinking about where he himself stands in the picture.
And this intention is a true one: «והנה כוונה זו היא אמיתית באמת לאמיתו לגמרי בכל נפש מישראל בכל עת ובכל שעה, מהאהבה הטבעית שירושה לנו מאבותינו» («And this intention is true, with the complete truth of truth, in every soul of Israel at every time and every hour, from the natural love that is our inheritance from our forefathers»). Planted in the inner nature of every Jew, inherited from Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, is the ability not to think of himself but of the Holy One blessed be He. If he does not feel it, that nature is simply hidden in him at the moment, and it is in his hands to awaken it, so that his love for his Creator will be greater than his love for himself.
To reach this level one apparently needs to go back and learn from chapter one through chapter forty one, forty chapters, to review them, to see the whole progression and to connect to this idea at every single moment, or at the very least at every hour. Yet the Alter Rebbe states that anyone can arrive at this state, and one need not be a complete tzaddik for it.
A person standing in a test, who thinks to himself what the Holy One blessed be He would want him to do, decides accordingly and acts: in that moment he is not thinking of himself, and in that moment he is a beinoni. As we have said many times, a person need not ask himself whether he is a beinoni for his whole life. People sometimes say: «I want all or nothing, either I am religious or I am not religious, I do not want to be in the middle.» That is an extremist outlook that the yetzer hara plants in a person, and it is not correct. There is no such thing: every single moment has its own «all» for that moment, and the next moment has the «all» of the next moment. It is a test of each moment. The moment a person succeeded, connected and withstood the test, in that moment he is a beinoni. And what will be in the next moment? With Hashem's help, the same, and so on.
The Alter Rebbe concludes that although we said this exists in everyone by nature, one must not content himself with awakening that nature alone, «רק שצריך לקבוע עתים להתבונן בגדולת ה'» («only that one must set fixed times to contemplate the greatness of Hashem»). A person should not say: it is already in my nature, so why should I learn Tanya, contemplate and work on myself? I will just awaken the nature and that is that. Rather he must set fixed times to contemplate the greatness of Hashem, and to learn the things that broaden his G-dly awareness. And the more he learns, the more he internalizes, until «להשיג דחילו ורחימו שכליים» («to attain intellectually based fear and love»), so that his emotion flows from understanding.
And even in a case where, out in the field of the test, a person does not stand up to it (suppose he learned forty one chapters and then came to a test and, G-d forbid, failed), the matter will gnaw at him afterwards and he will resolve not to repeat it, because those forty one chapters are working on him. In other words, even if he fell, the learning was not lost: it will bother him and do its work, and the next time he will have far more strength to overcome the matter. From here we see the great importance of a person setting fixed times for learning, so that things will be in the mode of dechilu urechimu sichliyim, fear and love built on intellect, where the mind understands and internalizes, and so that he will not rely on the Jewish nature within him alone.
«וכולי האי ואולי וכו' כנ"ל» («and even with all this, perhaps, etc., as above»). After all the effort and after all the avodah, perhaps something will awaken, something will stir, something will take effect. Certainly it does not happen at the push of a button; rather each person, in his own manner and along his own path, will arrive at this point.
Summary of Chapter 41:
Chapter 41 can be divided into two halves. The first half dealt at length with the importance of yiras Shomayim, and presented various levels within it: from a fear actually felt in a person's heart, through one who does not feel it but wants it, down to one who does not even want it yet at least conducts himself accordingly in practice. In the course of this the chapter brings the words of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai to his students: «May it be His will that the fear of Heaven be upon you like the fear of flesh and blood.»
The bottom line: on whatever level it may be, if a person refrains from a sin because he thinks, knows, wants, or even does not want but remembers that the Holy One blessed be He is looking at him, and that holds him back, this is yiras Shomayim. Certainly there are different levels in it, but all of these levels are yiras Shomayim, without which the entire foundation of avodas Hashem is missing. It is accurate to call it the beginning of avodah, its essence and its root: the starting point, the main part, and also the root that penetrates into every detail and every detail of a detail.
This is what all the levels of yiras Shomayim that the Alter Rebbe discussed in this chapter have in common, and as he writes at the end of page 57 in the last line, all these levels of fear are called «yirah tata'ah», the lower, basic fear; although it contains different levels, they are all included under this general name.
In summary: in this section we learned about the twenty four combinations of a four letter Name, and that in the twelve hours of the day and the twelve hours of the night a different combination shines in each proportional hour (and likewise in each month). We looked at the Rebbe's explanation regarding the two hei's in the Name Havayah, which represent binah and malchus, so that in terms of their content there genuinely are twenty four combinations. We learned the Alter Rebbe's novel point at the close of the chapter: that even one whose intention in Torah and tefillah is to elevate his own private spark should intend that nachas ruach be given thereby to the Creator, like the analogy of the prince released from prison, and that this intention is true in every soul of Israel by virtue of the natural love we inherited from our forefathers. At the same time, one must set fixed times to contemplate the greatness of Hashem and attain dechilu urechimu sichliyim, and not rely on nature alone. Finally we summarized the first half of chapter 41, which deals with the levels of yiras Shomayim that are called «yirah tata'ah».
In the next section we will take up the second half of chapter 41 and continue on to chapter 42.