We stopped in chapter 42 at the end of folio 59b (page 118). Before we continue, let us briefly review the flow of the chapter until now.
A summary of the chapter so far:
The chapter opens with the Gemara's discussion of the verse «What does Hashem your G-d ask of you, but to fear» - that this is the sum total of what the Holy One asks of a person. The Gemara asks: is fear of Heaven really such a small thing, such a minor matter? And it answers that for Moshe Rabbeinu, fear of Heaven is indeed a small thing.
On this answer the Alter Rebbe raises a difficulty: granted that for Moshe Rabbeinu it is a small matter, but the verse is not speaking about Moshe Rabbeinu. It is speaking to every single person.
And here the explanation begins: every Jew receives a special empowerment from Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu is called the «faithful shepherd» because he grants every single Jew the quality of daas in G-dliness, the capacity to connect and to be in an inner bond with the Holy One, and to genuinely care about anything that has to do with holiness. Therefore, the moment a person awakens within his heart the aspect of Moshe Rabbeinu that is in him, he sees that the fear of Heaven being asked of him really is an easy thing.
In the last passage we learned, it was explained that in order to awaken this connection that Moshe Rabbeinu grants to every Jew, effort is sometimes required, and it comes in two forms:
Toil of the flesh - when there are obstructions and blockages caused by sins, which stand in a person's way.
Toil of the soul - a person who is not accustomed to meditation, for whom the very act of contemplating is itself a great exertion.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «ומכל מקום בקושי ובחזקה שתתחזק מאד מחשבתו באומץ ויגיעה רבה ואומץ גדול להעמיק בגדולת ה' שעה גדולה» - «Nevertheless, with difficulty and with force, his thought being greatly strengthened with vigor and much toil and great vigor, to immerse himself deeply in the greatness of G-d for a long while» - a person who exerts himself and toils to immerse himself in the greatness of G-d for a long while, for an extended time, then «בודאי תגיע אליו על כל פנים היראה תתאה הנ"ל» - «he will certainly attain at the very least the lower-level fear mentioned above.»
And which fear is this? As the Alter Rebbe will specify further on in the chapter: at the very least a fear that will move the person to actually fulfill Torah and mitzvos in practice. Even if it will not be a fear on a high emotional level, at the very least it will act upon him so that he is careful in thought, in speech and in deed, in actual practice.
The Alter Rebbe continues: «וכמו שאמרו רז"ל יגעתי ומצאתי תאמין» - «as our Sages said: I toiled and I found, believe it.» This saying of the Sages has three parts: «I did not toil and I found - do not believe it»; «I toiled and I did not find - do not believe it»; and finally «I toiled and I found - believe it.» In other words, a person who toils and exerts himself will certainly arrive and attain the goal.
The Rebbe points out in one place that the wording is not «I toiled and I achieved» but specifically «I toiled and I found.» What is the precision in the word «found»? A find is generally something a person never thought about and never planned for, and it bears no proportion whatsoever to the effort he invested - for a find costs him no effort at all, and it makes no sense to say that a person exerts himself in order to stumble upon a find.
So too here: a person who toils and exerts himself does not, in the end, receive merely in proportion to what he invested. For if he were to receive only in accordance with his investment, it could not be called a «find» at all, but rather compensation in proportion to the investment. On this it says «I toiled and I found» - the result he arrives at is incomparably greater than the investment, to the point that it deserves to be called a find. And it all depends on the toil.
Until here the Alter Rebbe has brought a general saying of the Sages, one that applies to anything in the realm of holiness. Now he continues «כדכתיב» - «as it is written» - and brings a verse that speaks specifically about fear of Heaven: «אם תבקשנה ככסף וכמטמונים תחפשנה אז תבין יראת ה'» - «If you seek it as silver, and search for it as hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of G-d.»
The verse instructs us to relate to fear of Heaven like money and like a buried treasure that a person searches for with the certain knowledge that it exists and that it is his. Just as a person who knows clearly that in a drawer in his home there is a sum of money he placed there in the past - even though he does not see it at the moment, it is obvious to him that it is there, and therefore he is not searching in the hope that he might find something, but searching for something certain. And for that very reason, when he does not find it he does not despair, but keeps searching and searching.
It is like a person who once tossed a large check he received into a big box, to be dealt with when the time came, and the box is filled with thousands of other papers. He pulls out paper after paper, and he has already pulled out hundreds of papers and still has not found it. The more he searches and does not find it, the less he despairs and the less he stops searching - because he knows he is getting closer to his goal.
So it is in our case: fear of Heaven is something that exists in every Jew, something he was born with, lying within his heart. All he has to do is awaken it. Therefore he must seek it as silver and as a buried treasure - something that someone has hidden away and that certainly exists, and one need only exert oneself to uncover it.
This is how the Alter Rebbe explains the analogy: «פירוש כדרך שמחפש אדם מטמון ואוצר הטמון בתחתית הארץ שחופר אחריו ביגיעה עצומה» - «Meaning, just as a person searches for a hidden treasure buried deep in the earth, digging after it with tremendous toil» - he digs with tremendous toil and does not despair over the difficulty, because he knows he is not laboring in vain. «כך צריך לחפור ביגיעה עצומה לגלות אוצר של יראת שמים הצפון ומוסתר בבינת הלב של כל אדם מישראל» - «so must one dig with tremendous toil to uncover the treasure of fear of Heaven that is concealed and hidden in the understanding of the heart of every Jew.»
This term will come up again several times in the course of the chapter. «Binas halev», the understanding of the heart, is the innermost point within the heart of a Jew, and that is where fear of Heaven resides. It exists in every single person - even in someone who does not keep Torah and mitzvos and who says of himself that he has no fear of Heaven at all and that the whole subject does not interest him. And if one day he wakes up and decides that he wants to awaken fear of Heaven in his heart, then even though he has not reached it yet, let him make the effort and he will see that he arrives there, because it exists in every single person.
And should a person say: perhaps this treasure can only be uncovered on Shabbos, or only during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, or only in the years when the Beis Hamikdash stood, or only in Eretz Yisrael, or only in shul? To this the Alter Rebbe says «שהיא בחינה ומדרגה שלמעלה מהזמן» - «for it is an aspect and a level that transcends time» - its power and the certainty of its existence are not dependent on time. It is not here today and gone tomorrow; it is a fact, true and eternal.
It is worth noting that we are not necessarily speaking about arousing the yechida of the soul. There is no need to reach all the way to the yechida; rather, this is a point of illumination that a person can awaken with his revealed faculties, with a lesser effort.
«והיא היראה הטבעית המסותרת הנ"ל» - «and this is the natural, hidden fear mentioned above» - as we learned in chapter 18, that this illumination comes to us as an inheritance from our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, and as was mentioned in the earlier chapters regarding the hidden illumination and the hidden love that exists within every single Jew.
But although the illumination exists in everyone, it is not active. When a person actually faces a test in practice - in thought, in speech and in deed, in seeing and in hearing things that are forbidden - then even though someone who has fear of Heaven is in awe of the King who is watching him and knows he must always conduct himself accordingly, it does not always work and he does not always manage to overcome. The effort required, then, is to bring the hidden illumination out into revelation.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «רק שכדי שתבא לידי מעשה בבחינת יראת חטא להיות סור מרע במעשה דבור ומחשבה» - «except that in order for it to come into actual practice, in the form of fear of sin, to turn away from evil in deed, speech and thought» - so that it will not remain merely a hidden natural fear, but will become a fear of sin through which he will in actual fact not stumble and not transgress the will of G-d, not in thought, not in speech and not in deed - for this, «צריך לגלותה ממצפוני בינת הלב» - «he must reveal it from the hidden recesses of the understanding of the heart,» from that very level of binas halev in which it is embedded and buried, and bring it out into revelation.
As the chapter continues we will examine the precision of the Alter Rebbe's words regarding «binas halev», and the manner in which fear operates in actual practice.
In summary: In this section we reviewed the flow of the chapter until now: the Gemara's question on «What does Hashem your G-d ask of you, but to fear» and the answer that for Moshe it is a small thing, and the Alter Rebbe's explanation that every Jew receives from Moshe Rabbeinu, the faithful shepherd, the daas and the bond with G-dliness, and that to awaken this, toil of the flesh and toil of the soul are required. We learned that one who toils with difficulty and with force to immerse himself deeply in the greatness of G-d for a long while will certainly attain the lower-level fear, at the very least the kind that produces carefulness in thought, speech and deed, on the basis of «I toiled and I found, believe it» - and we noted the precision of «I found» specifically, that the result is incomparably greater than the investment. We also saw the verse «If you seek it as silver, and search for it as hidden treasures» - like a person digging after a treasure with tremendous toil who does not despair because he knows with certainty that the treasure is there; for fear of Heaven lies concealed and hidden in the binas halev of every Jew, on a level that transcends time, and it is the natural hidden fear we inherited from our forefathers. But in order for it to come into actual fear of sin, turning away from evil in deed, speech and thought, one must reveal it from the hidden recesses of the understanding of the heart.