Having studied the two types of love, ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam, let us now sum up the differences between them.
A summary of the differences between ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam:
In their source: ahavah rabbah is a gift from Above, while ahavas olam comes as the result of hisbonenus (contemplation) and a person's own avodah.
In their content: ahavah rabbah is a love that is itself delight (love in delights), while ahavas olam is a love for delights, a yearning toward them.
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Earlier it was explained that the path of ahavas olam is that a person strips his love out of its material garments and clothes it instead in G-dly garments. But what about a person whose love is not clothed in anything at all, who is utterly indifferent and is moved by nothing, neither by physical things nor by spiritual ones? To this the Alter Rebbe adds: «וגם מי שאין מדת האהבה שבנפשו מלובשת כלל בשום תענוג גשמי או רוחני» (And even one in whom the attribute of love in his soul is not clothed at all in any pleasure, physical or spiritual).
[It is extremely hard to communicate with such cold people, or to live with them day to day, people who show no feeling of love toward anything at all; that is a problem in its own right.]
And nevertheless, the Alter Rebbe rules, such a person too «יכול להלהיב נפשו כרשפי אש ושלהבת עזה ולהב העולה השמימה, על ידי ההתבוננות הנ"ל כמ"ש לקמן» (can set his soul ablaze like fiery coals, a powerful flame, a blaze rising heavenward, by means of the aforementioned contemplation, as will be explained further on): contemplating memale kol almin (the Divine light that fills all worlds) and sovev kol almin (the light that encompasses all worlds), and that kula kamei kelo chashiv, everything before Him is as nothing, contemplating how the world comes into being and how it is given life at every single moment. Even someone who until today has been indifferent, once he contemplates in this way, the Divine spark within him is aroused; he grasps that here is something real, he comes to love it, and he acts accordingly. This is also the advice and the remedy for one who has failed in this area: let him begin to contemplate the greatness of G-d, and through that the love hidden in his soul will awaken.
Ahavah rabbah comes only after yirah has come first, along the lines of «it is the way of a man to pursue a woman». About ahavas olam, by contrast, the Alter Rebbe says: «והנה בחינת אהבה זו פעמים שקודמת ליראה» (This level of love sometimes precedes yirah). It may be that a person has not yet managed to awaken yiras shamayim in his heart, and it is specifically love of the Creator that he succeeds in arousing, and he reaches the Creator from that direction. There is one who comes to the Creator through yirah, and one who comes through love; and it is understood that if he loves, he will certainly fulfill the Creator's will, just as a person who loves his friend will not hold back from doing what his friend asks of him. It is only that normally one begins with yirah, and the Alter Rebbe is telling us that sometimes it can happen in the reverse order as well.
And on what does this depend? «כפי בחינת הדעת המולידה כנודע» (according to the quality of the daas that gives birth to it, as is known), for it is the contemplation of daas that gives birth to the emotion, «שהדעת כוללת חסדים וגבורות, שהם אהבה ויראה, ופעמים שהחסדים קודמים לירד ולהתגלות» (for daas includes both chassadim and gevuros, which are love and fear, and sometimes it is the chassadim that descend and are revealed first).
In a person's mind there are, in a general sense, three faculties: chochmah, binah and daas; and in a more detailed sense, four: chochmah, binah, and daas itself, which divides into chesed and gevurah. As we learned in chapter 41, this is why the tefillin of the head are divided into four parshiyos: corresponding to chochmah, binah, and the two levels within daas. Since daas contains both chesed and gevurah, during contemplation it sometimes happens that the side of chesed is aroused in a person and he is drawn toward love, and sometimes it is specifically the side of gevurah that is aroused. [Chesed and gevurah exist in every world, down to the soul of man, and here we are speaking of the chesed and gevurah within a person's soul.]
«ולכן אפשר לרשע ובעל עבירות שיעשה תשובה מאהבה» (And therefore it is possible for a wicked man, one full of transgressions, to repent out of love): it can happen that a wicked man full of sins does teshuvah specifically out of love and not out of fear, «מאהבה הנולדה בלבו בזכרו את ה' אלקיו» (out of a love born in his heart when he remembers Hashem his G-d). This does not mean that he has love alone with no yirah at all, for the Alter Rebbe immediately adds: «ומכל מקום היראה גם כן כלולה בה ממילא, רק שהיא בבחינת קטנות והעלם, דהיינו יראת חטא למרוד בו חס ושלום, והאהבה היא בהתגלות לבו ומוחו» (Nevertheless yirah too is automatically included within it, except that it is in a state of smallness and concealment, namely the fear of sinning and rebelling against Him, G-d forbid, while the love is revealed in his heart and mind).
But this is not the usual order of a Jew's avodah, which begins with yiras shamayim and from there arrives at love. Rather, «אך זהו דרך מקרה והוראת שעה בהשגחה פרטית מאת ה' לצורך שעה» (this is an exceptional case, a temporary directive by special Divine providence for a particular moment): the Holy One leads this baal teshuvah in a way that begins specifically with love. Such a thing does happen, but it is rare, «כמעשה דרבי אלעזר בן דורדייא» (as in the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya).
The Gemara tells of Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya, who was not a child but a grown man who sinned and transgressed all his life, and at the very last moment, following the episode related there in the Gemara, he was aroused and did teshuvah, wept aloud, and his soul departed. His teshuvah began specifically from love, and from that love he came to teshuvah [and afterwards there was a great yirah in him as well, to the point that he wept aloud].
The sefarim of Kabbalah relate what unfolded when his soul ascended Above. Although he had done teshuvah, he was «naked»: he had no mitzvos at all, for he had fulfilled nothing, so how could he enter Gan Eden? On the other hand, there was one who was full to overflowing with mitzvos and he too could not enter: Yochanan Kohen Gadol, who served eighty years in the High Priesthood and in the end became a Tzeduki and died a Tzeduki. And Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya was the reincarnation of Yochanan Kohen Gadol; all his life he was wicked and full of transgressions, and at the end of his days he did teshuvah. Above they joined the two of them together, the mitzvos of Yochanan Kohen Gadol with the teshuvah of Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya, and that was the tikkun, for they are in fact one single point.
A case like this is a temporary directive, «אבל סדר העבודה הקבועה ותלויה בבחירת האדם» (but the fixed order of avodah, which depends on a person's own choice), the order that is not a matter of chance and not a matter of special Divine providence but rests upon the person himself, is this: «צריך להקדים תחילה קיום התורה והמצות על ידי יראה תתאה בבחינת קטנות על כל פנים, בסור מרע ועשה טוב, להאיר נפשו האלקית באור התורה ומצותיה, ואחר כך יאיר עליה אור האהבה» (one must first put the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos in place by means of yirah tataah, at least in its lesser form, in turning away from evil and doing good, so as to illuminate his G-dly soul with the light of Torah and its mitzvos, and afterwards the light of love will shine upon it). First yiras shamayim, even at the lower level of turning from evil and doing good, and only afterwards will the light of love shine within him.
And the Alter Rebbe concludes with a fascinating point: «כי 'ואהבת' בגימטריא ב' פעמים אור» (for the word v'ahavta has the numerical value of twice or, light). Or is 207, and v'ahavta is 414, so that or is contained twice within the word v'ahavta: the light of Torah and mitzvos, «for a mitzvah is a lamp and Torah is light», and the light of love. In other words, when a person arrives at love, the first light must necessarily have come before it, yiras shamayim expressed in the keeping of Torah and mitzvos, and then comes the second light, the love of G-d, so that this love contains two lights. Only by way of exception, as a temporary directive and by special Divine providence, can a person arrive directly at the light of love without the first light preceding it; but the fixed order is yirah first, the first light, and afterwards the second light. This is the meaning of v'ahavta being numerically twice or, «כידוע ליודעי ח"ן» (as is known to those versed in the hidden wisdom).
In summary: in this section we summed up the three differences between ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. Ahavah rabbah is a love that is delight itself, a gift from Above, which comes after yirah has preceded it; ahavas olam is a love for delights, the fruit of contemplation and one's own avodah, and it sometimes even precedes yirah, depending on the quality of the daas that gives birth to it, which contains chassadim and gevuros. We learned that even one whose love is not clothed in any pleasure, physical or spiritual, can set his soul aflame through contemplating the greatness of G-d; that it is possible for a wicked man full of transgressions to do teshuvah out of love, but that this is a temporary directive by special Divine providence, as in the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya; and that the fixed order of avodah is to begin with yirah and the keeping of Torah and mitzvos, and only afterwards the light of love, as hinted in v'ahavta, twice or. The two levels of love parallel the two levels of yirah: one that grows out of the world and one's contemplation of it, and one that is above the world, a revelation that comes from Above.
In the next section we will continue with the following chapter of Tanya.