In the previous section we learned how a Jew arrives at yiras Shomayim, awe of Heaven: through hisbonenus, through contemplation, depth and practice. If a person contemplates and goes deep, he will reach it; if he does not contemplate and does not go deep, he will not. On this foundation rests a question that the Alter Rebbe does not ask outright, yet it lies hidden in his words.
We do not have to travel as far as chapter 43 to find it, because the matter is spelled out in this very chapter, on the previous page (page 120, in the line beginning העריכו חכמי האמת בספריהם): כל ישראל מאמינים בני מאמינים בלי שום חקירת שכל אנושי, “all Jews are believers, the children of believers, without any investigation of the human intellect.” Every Jew is a believer, the son of believers, and he needs no philosophical inquiry at all: he believes that the Creator exists and that there is no change in Him. If so, what room is there for practice and for training the mind, when the emunah is already there in him on its own?
The Alter Rebbe immediately makes clear that there is no contradiction between innate emunah and the need for practice, and in doing so he reveals a fascinating reading of the word emunah: וזה נכלל גם כן בלשון אמונה, שהוא לשון רגילות, שמרגיל האדם את עצמו כמו אומן המאמן ידיו וכו', “this too is included in the term emunah, which denotes habituation, that a person accustoms himself, like a craftsman who trains his hands.” Emunah is from the root imun, training: a language of habit, of a person accustoming himself and drilling himself.
The analogy is drawn from the craftsman: a painter who has a feel for painting, a singer who has an ear for music, any professional with a natural sense for his craft. If he has not used that sense for a long time, the ability grows weak and he has to train his skills all over again. But the training does not create new senses. Someone with no ear for music can sing from today until tomorrow and he will still be off key; he will not become a singer. Training helps only where the sense already exists, and then it strengthens it, intensifies it and sharpens it. The same is true of every other faculty.
And this is the nimshal. When we tell a Jew to accustom his thought and to practice the way he looks at the world, the practice works precisely because the emunah is already in him by virtue of his true essence. A Jew, being a child of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov, carries that inner emunah within his very being: he is a chelek Eloka mimaal, a part of G-d above, he believes in the existence of the Creator and believes that the world did not create itself. That is his reality and his essence, whether he wants it or not.
The problem is that he also has a nefesh habahamis, an animal soul, which confuses his mind, makes him forget the emunah, cools him off and pushes him away. That is why the solution is “like a craftsman who trains his hands”: to accustom himself and to think about it again and again, and thereby to strengthen the Jewish faculties that are already there, until he reaches a state where, when he looks at the world, he sees Elokus revealed.
But one must not lean on hisbonenus alone. Immediately after instructing us to contemplate with the understanding of the mind, the Alter Rebbe turns to the opposite extreme and warns against building all of one's yiras Shomayim on intellectual understanding by itself, for several reasons:
If all of one's yiras Shomayim is built according to the measure of one's understanding, then since the understanding is limited, the yiras Shomayim will be limited as well.
Even when a person does understand, there is no guarantee that his understanding will rule over his drives. He may grasp the truth perfectly well and still not manage to get his intellect to govern his desires.
There are days when a person wakes up in a mood that simply does not allow him to contemplate, and he has no strength for hisbonenus. What happens then?
Therefore the Alter Rebbe says: וגם להיות לזכרון תמיד לשון חז"ל קבלת עול מלכות שמים, “and also that the expression of our Sages, accepting the yoke of the kingship of Heaven, should always be remembered.” A person must always keep in mind the phrase of Chazal, kabbolas ol malchus Shomayim: to take the yoke of the King upon himself even when he does not understand, even when he does not want to, even when he feels nothing and even when he has no appetite for it. There is a King, the King said to do it, and so he does it and accepts it as a yoke.
One should not go to the extreme of yoke alone either. A person should make every effort to understand and to contemplate; he simply must not rely on understanding by itself, because there are times when the understanding does not work. So he remembers that there is a King, and even if he did not understand and has no desire for it, the King has spoken. This is the point the Alter Rebbe raised regarding שום תשים עליך מלך, “you shall surely set a king over yourself”: the mere existence of the King is not enough. It falls upon the person actually to accept His kingship over himself, and to compel himself to live with kabbolas ol.
And even when it seems to a person that this avodah is producing nothing, that it is dry, he should carry on doing it, for it is better to do than not to do. To do means to refrain from aveiros and to fulfill mitzvos, even if he does not understand and does not feel anything, because that is what the King said. A person should come and learn Tanya in order to know how to understand and how to feel, but none of that may remove from him the basic point of kabbolas ol.
The Alter Rebbe continues: כמו שכתוב במ"א וכו', “as is written elsewhere,” meaning as is written in chapter 41, the previous chapter, where it was explained כי הקב"ה מניח את העליונים ואת התחתונים ומייחד מלכותו עלינו וכו', “that the Holy One, blessed be He, sets aside the upper worlds and the lower worlds and centers His kingship upon us.” The Holy One, as it were, puts aside the whole of creation and says: My kingship depends on you, it is over you that I will be King, ואנו מקבלים וכו', “and we accept” His kingship upon ourselves.
וזהו ענין ההשתחוואות שבתפלת י"ח אחר קבלת עול מלכות שמים בדבור בק"ש לחזור ולקבל בפועל ממש במעשה וכו' כמ"ש במ"א, “and this is the matter of the bowings in the Shemoneh Esreh, after the acceptance of the yoke of the kingship of Heaven in speech during Krias Shema: to accept it again in actual deed, as is written elsewhere.” In Krias Shema a person accepts malchus Shomayim in speech: when he says Shema Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echod, he articulates with his mouth that he is accepting the King as his Master. Afterwards, in Shemoneh Esreh, he is not satisfied with saying it; his body performs the act of bowing, four times in the tefillah, in order to accept the kingship again in actual practice, in deed.
Obviously the bowing has to be accompanied by awareness of what one is doing, and not like that description in the Gemara, where the well trained body bends by itself when it reaches Modim anachnu loch while the one praying has his head somewhere else entirely. The bowing of Shemoneh Esreh is a higher level than the acceptance of kingship in speech, because now it is not only his speech that accepts the kingship but his body and his actual deed.
With this, the question we opened the lesson with is resolved: אין לו גוף ואין לו דמות הגוף, “He has no body and no bodily form,” so how can a person connect to Him? To this the Holy One revealed and said: look at the world, and out of the world you are meant to see Me. Through proper hisbonenus, Elokus is revealed from within creation itself.
[It is worth noting the power of habit here. The fact that the Rambam established thirteen principles of faith, and the fact that people are accustomed to recite them every day after davening, works precisely through this power of habit. True, sometimes one gets used to saying them and does not even register what he is saying; but the very fact that a person obliges himself to say it day after day has an effect, and at the very least one should think about what he is saying. And note the Alter Rebbe's precise wording: להרגיל דעתו ומחשבתו, to accustom his mind and his thought. To train the thought, to set aside a time when a person stops and says: right now I am thinking about this and connecting to it. Not only to say it, but to feel it.]
In summary: in this section we learned that there is no contradiction between the natural emunah present in every Jew, כל ישראל מאמינים בני מאמינים, “all Jews are believers, the children of believers,” and the need for training and habit, since emunah is a term of imun, training and habituation. Like the craftsman who trains his hands, the practice does not create a new sense; it strengthens and reveals the sense that is already there. We also learned that one may not build yiras Shomayim on hisbonenus alone, because understanding is limited, because understanding does not necessarily rule over one's drives, and because there are days when one has no strength to contemplate. Therefore one must always remember kabbolas ol malchus Shomayim: that the Holy One sets aside the upper and lower worlds and centers His kingship upon us. This kingship is accepted in speech at Krias Shema, and in actual deed in the bowings of Shemoneh Esreh.
In the next section we will continue with the coming chapters of the Tanya.