In the previous section we studied the nature of yirah tata'ah, the «lower fear». All the fear we have been speaking about until now goes by this name: an external yirah, meaning a fear that does not nullify a person's own existence. There is bittul in it, but not absolute bittul. It is like the analogy of the nation standing before the king, where the king's presence leaves room for the nation to exist as well, and the nation counts as a «yesh», a something, standing before the king, since after all it is the king who formed it and made it what it is.
Let us look at the text itself, at the opening of chapter 43. The Alter Rebbe adds here a further depth to everything we have learned about yirah tata'ah, and he is still speaking about that very same fear: «והנה על יראה תתאה זו שהיא לקיום מצותיו יתברך בבחינת סור מרע ועשה טוב אמרו אם אין יראה אין חכמה», «Now, it is concerning this lower fear, which leads to the fulfillment of His commandments in the mode of ‘turn from evil and do good', that they said: if there is no fear there is no wisdom.» This is the defining feature of yirah tata'ah: it is a fear that brings a person to actually keep the mitzvos, a fear that serves as the preface to fulfilling them, and it is about this that Pirkei Avos says «if there is no fear there is no wisdom».
This is the basic level, and without it there is simply no way to arrive at keeping Torah and mitzvos. A person with no yiras Shomayim will neither «turn from evil» nor «do good». For a Jew to turn from evil and do good, he must have yiras Shomayim.
There are several ways to arrive at this fear. At the lowest rung, one awakens the natural fear that already lies within a person, together with the awareness that there is an eye that sees and an ear that hears. At a higher rung, one contemplates the creation of something from nothing, and the way all created beings bow to their Creator («and the host of heaven bow down to You»). All of these are forms of hisbonenus that bring a person close to the fact that there is a G-d who examines him and who is right here, and this brings him to bittul. Or else a person sees the bittul of the created beings and is swept along with it, as the Alter Rebbe wrote in the gloss in the previous chapter: the analogy of a man who walks into the king's courtyard and sees all the ministers bowing to the king. Even though he has no grasp of what a king really is, the bowing crowd around him acts upon him immediately, and he is carried along into that same bowing and bittul before the king.
«ויש בה בחינת קטנות ובחינת גדלות», «and within it there is an aspect of katnus (smallness) and an aspect of gadlus (greatness).» One can arrive at yirah tata'ah on the level of katnus, and one can arrive at it on the level of gadlus. Both are forms of hisbonenus, contemplation, on different levels, but what they share is that each one leads a person to that same yirah tata'ah, to the basic level of fear:
The aspect of katnus: a person remains within the framework of the creation and the world, and from within the world he comes to a recognition of the Creator. The Alter Rebbe does not spell out here what katnus is, because he already discussed it in the previous chapter: the contemplation of «an eye that sees and an ear that hears». It is called katnus because it is something that exists in a person naturally, and all he has to do is awaken what is already there. No lofty grasp, no expansive mind and no great exertion is needed to arrive at this feeling. And even when a person contemplates on a loftier plane, the host of heaven bowing to the Creator, which is a more elevated level than the natural fear he has on his own, it is still called katnus, because even here one does not need such a high level of understanding and contemplation in order to see the bittul of created beings to their Creator. Though in its own right this is a high level of hisbonenus, relative to the next level it is called katnus.
The aspect of gadlus: «דהיינו כשנמשכת בחינת יראה זו מהתבוננות בגדולת ה'», «that is, when this fear is drawn from contemplating the greatness of G-d.» Here a person does not arrive at fear by way of the world and the tangible. The Holy One created physical, tangible means that help a person recognize the reality of the Creator, and when a person sees a physical thing that helps him draw closer to that recognition, that is katnus, because he begins from below, from within the world, from the physical and the tangible, and through that he arrives at the G-dliness within the tangible thing he saw. Gadlus is the reverse: from above downward, contemplating the greatness of G-d itself. This demands a capacity for abstraction and a grasp of matters far deeper and higher, since it is not contemplation of something tangible but of something more abstract, and that is why it is called gadlus.
And nevertheless, even though this is contemplation of something abstract, this fear is still called yirah tata'ah, and the reason is spelled out in the continuation of his words: «דאיהו ממלא כל עלמין», «that He fills all worlds.» The contemplation is of the Creator's greatness as He fills the world: how He relates to creation, enlivens it and is present within it. The very fact that the Holy One gives the world a place, a relationship and His involvement, and the very fact that we are speaking in the language of «olmin», worlds, that He fills them, tells us that this is yirah tata'ah. For this is just like the analogy of the nation before the king: the nation is a reality, and it matters to the king that the nation's existence continue, and he deals with them, except that the nation is nullified to the king. So too this contemplation leaves room for creation and belongs to the world, and that is precisely the concept of «memale kol almin».
The Alter Rebbe presents it briefly, in two lines: «ומהארץ לרקיע מהלך ת"ק שנה וכו' ובין רקיע לרקיע וכו' רגלי החיות כנגד כולן וכו'», «and from the earth to the firmament is a journey of five hundred years, etc., and between one firmament and the next, etc., the feet of the chayos equal them all, etc.» From the repeated «etc.» it is clear that he is sending the student to look up the source in tractate Chagigah, where it is all laid out at much greater length.
The Gemara there comes to convey to a person the greatness of the Creator and the utter nothingness of the created being: how small, constricted and limited a person's grasp is, so that even within the created world itself he has no comprehension and no grasp, and how much more so that he has no comprehension of the reality of the Creator. Here is the Gemara's language in brief:
The years of a person's life: «the days of our years are seventy, and if with strength, eighty years.» That is the maximum of a created being, seventy or eighty years, even though we bless each other «until a hundred and twenty.» And we are speaking of years that a Jew would fill in the most complete way possible, with understanding, with learning, with conduct according to G-d's will, and with the maximum comprehension he is capable of reaching.
From the earth to the firmament: a journey of five hundred years. This does not mean an actual journey, something one begins and future generations continue, but rather levels. The Gemara uses language that the ear can absorb, and therefore expressed it as a figure of five hundred years, meaning five hundred levels. The G-dly level that exists in the firmament is five hundred times higher than the level found on earth, and that is something immense. Yet the very fact that the level is described by means of a number tells us that there is a certain limit here.
The thickness of the firmament: a journey of five hundred years, and likewise between each firmament and the next. And since there are seven firmaments, we have five hundred and then another five hundred, again and again.
Above all the firmaments are the chayos hakodesh, the holy chayos: a term for the angels whose manner of self-nullification before the Creator we mention in our prayers every single day. «The feet of the chayos equal them all.» They have no physical feet; rather, the lowest level within the chayos hakodesh is called «the feet of the chayos», and its magnitude equals all the levels together: the entire journey from the earth to the firmament, the thickness of the firmament, and the space between one firmament and the next, multiplied by seven firmaments, all of that equals the very lowest part of the chayos hakodesh. And from there upward: «the ankles of the chayos equal them all» (including the feet of the chayos), «the shins of the chayos equal them all», «the knees of the chayos equal them all», «the thighs of the chayos equal them all», «the bodies of the chayos equal them all», «the necks of the chayos equal them all», «the heads of the chayos», and on and on.
And nevertheless, this entire contemplation, however much we exalt and praise the Creator and occupy ourselves with His greatness, is built upon and exists upon the reality of creation: there is a creation, and we are saying that the Creator fills it and is above it. Therefore this is still a lower level, the aspect of «memale kol almin», and the fear born of it is called yirah tata'ah.
In summary: in this section we learned that all the fear spoken of until now is yirah tata'ah, an external fear that does not nullify a person's existence but rather leaves room for it, like the nation standing before the king. The Alter Rebbe opens chapter 43 by establishing that it is about this fear, the fear that brings a person to fulfill the mitzvos, that they said «if there is no fear there is no wisdom», for it is the basic level without which there is no «turn from evil» and no «do good». We also learned that it contains an aspect of katnus, contemplation from within the world and the tangible, and an aspect of gadlus, abstract contemplation of the greatness of G-d. Yet even gadlus is called yirah tata'ah, because it is in the category of «memale kol almin», as illustrated by the language of the Gemara in Chagigah about the journey from the earth to the firmament and onward to the chayos hakodesh: a description rich with levels, where the very fact that it is measured in numbers shows that it has a limit, and that it is built upon the reality of creation.
In the next section we will continue examining the language of the Gemara and the continuation of the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 43.