In the previous section we dealt with ahavah rabbah, the great love, and we learned that it is not every person's portion; it depends on whether a person has made himself a fit vessel to receive it. Here, by contrast, the Alter Rebbe speaks of a different level, about which he writes: «והיא שוה לכל נפש מישראל וירושה לנו מאבותינו» (and it is equally shared by every soul of Israel, an inheritance to us from our forefathers).
In that phrase lies the key to the whole question, and the explanation of how the two things fit together: every Jew, simply by being a child of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, received a love for the Creator as an inheritance from our forefathers. One could say it is built into his Jewish «genes»: he was born a Jew, and so it is already there within him.
Now, to which of the two categories does this love belong, ahavah rabbah or ahavas olam (the love a person builds through his own avodah)?
On one hand, this love is present without the person having invested anything to earn it, a gift given from Above. In that respect it is ahavah rabbah.
On the other hand, if he does not labor himself to fan it and arouse it, it will stay buried and nothing will come of it. And since it does demand avodah, in that respect it resembles ahavas olam.
It emerges that this love, at its root, contains both levels at once: there is the gift from Above, but its actual arousal depends on the person. And here the Alter Rebbe brings, in broad terms, two levels within it.
The first level, «נפשי אויתיך» (my soul, I desire You): this level is founded on what the Alter Rebbe writes, «והיינו מה שכתב הזוהר על הפסוק נפשי אויתיך בלילה וגו'» (and this is what the Zohar writes on the verse «My soul, I desired You at night»). On the plain level of the verse, the Jew is saying: Master of the world, my soul craves and yearns for You, and specifically at night. Two precise questions arise in the verse:
Why specifically «at night»? If he loves, surely his love is the same by day and by night.
The first two words do not join together grammatically. «נפשי» (my soul) is third person, while «אויתיך» (I desired You) is first person. He should have said simply «I desired You at night», or else continued throughout in the third person. As the verse stands, it reads: «my soul, I love You», and one word does not connect to the next.
The Zohar explains that the word «נפשי» is not to be taken on the plain level, «my soul», but rather as an address to the Holy One, blessed be He: You are my soul, and therefore «I desired You».
In the language of the Zohar: «דירחים לקודשא בריך הוא רחימותא דנפשא ורוחא» («rechimu» means love), that a person should love the Holy One, blessed be He, with the same love he has for his own nefesh and ruach, «כמה דאתדבקו אילין בגופא וגופא רחים לון וכו'», just as the nefesh and ruach are bound up with the body, and the body loves them dearly.
A person loves to live and will do anything in order to live, and he takes pleasure in life with the highest pleasure of all pleasures. The body loves the soul intensely and does everything so that it will not part from it: it eats, it takes care of itself, it even swallows bitter medicines, all to extend the continued existence of soul and body together. So too a person must contemplate that his life is the Holy One, blessed be He: He is the one who enlivens him, He is the one who gives him everything, and so He Himself is his life. And just as a person loves his own life, so he should arouse a love for the Holy One, blessed be He, for «You are my soul».
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «וזהו שכתוב נפשי אויתיך» (and this is the meaning of «my soul, I desired You»), this is the connection between the two words: «כלומר מפני שאתה ה' נפשי וחיי האמיתיים, לכך אויתיך» (that is to say: because You, Hashem, are my soul and my true life, therefore I desire You). All of a person's energy comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, his livelihood comes from Him, his home comes from Him. He must contemplate that his entire being, everything he has and everything he lacks, all of it is from the Holy One, blessed be He, and that his whole essence and existence is G-dliness. And because of this he falls in love with Him and wants to be bound to Him: «פירוש שאני מתאוה ותאב לך כאדם המתאוה לחיי נפשו» (meaning that I crave and yearn for You as a person craves the life of his soul).
Why specifically «at night»? There is a concept mentioned in chassidus: «a constant pleasure is no pleasure», and so it is in real life as well. A person who loves a certain food and eats it day after day loses the pleasure in it. The same is true of loftier things, right up to the craving for life itself, which is the loftiest craving of all. When does a person actually feel his craving to live? When he is lacking, when he is on the edge. When everything is good and flowing smoothly, he simply lives his day and does not feel the craving for life. Not that he does not have it, for it is always present within him, but it is not felt. The moment there is a dip in the ordinary flow of life, the craving to live awakens in him.
And one does not need to reach a crisis to see this; it appears in a perfectly natural, daily phenomenon: a person who goes to sleep at night hopes to rise the next morning and wake up («בידך אפקיד רוחי», into Your hand I entrust my spirit). In the words of the Tanya: «וכשהוא חלש ומעונה מתאוה ותאב שתשוב נפשו אליו» (and when he is weak and afflicted, he craves and yearns that his soul return to him). A sick person, weak or in pain, suddenly feels how good it is to be alive and how much he longs to get up and walk about, something he does not experience as a pleasure at all in the routine of his day. «וכן כשהולך לישן מתאוה וחפץ שתשוב נפשו אליו כשיעור משנתו» (and likewise when he goes to sleep, he craves and desires that his soul return to him when he awakens from his sleep). So it is in physical matters: when something is lacking, the desire for its continuation awakens.
And so the Jew says: «כך אני מתאוה ותאב לאור אין סוף ברוך הוא חיי החיים האמיתיים» (so do I crave and yearn for the Or Ein Sof, blessed be He, the true life of life). I have a craving for the Divine light that is my true life, and therefore «להמשיכו בקרבי» (to draw it within me): I want this Divine life to be drawn to me and brought inside me, and to be connected to Him always. And this connection is not words in the air; it has practical resolutions and results. It comes about «על ידי עסק התורה בהקציתי משנתי בלילה» (through engaging in Torah when I awaken from my sleep at night), for «דאורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא כולא חד», the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are entirely one. And therefore «when I awaken from my sleep at night»: he gets up at night and occupies himself with Torah, stealing, as it were, from the hours that belong to him and giving them to Torah study. Night is the time when a person naturally goes to sleep; but since the Holy One, blessed be He, is his very soul, he takes from his sleeping hours and engages in Torah.
And as the Zohar continues there: «כמו שכתב הזהר שם דבעי בר נש למיקם בכל ליליא מרחימותא דקודשא בריך הוא לאשתדלא בפולחניה עד צפרא כו'» (as the Zohar writes there, that a person should rise every night, out of his love for the Holy One, blessed be He, to toil in His service until morning). He should rise early and dedicate his time, for He is his soul and He is his life.
This level is called in Tanya the level of «נפשי אויתיך»: a person arouses the love he received as an inheritance from our forefathers. And how does he arouse it? Through contemplation, and, as will be brought further on, through speech as well: saying, repeating and reviewing, «You, Holy One, blessed be He, are my soul and You are my life.» The very fact that a person says it and repeats it connects him to the matter and brings him to carry it out in actual practice.
In the next section we will bring a short idea that the Rebbe said at one of the farbrengens: the Gemara in tractate Yoma speaks of three tzaddikim who hold every type of person accountable, when they come to judgment in the heavenly court and are asked why they did not study Torah. Hillel holds the poor accountable, Rabbi Elazar ben Charsom holds the wealthy accountable, and Yosef HaTzaddik holds the wicked accountable.
In summary: in this section we learned about the love that is «equally shared by every soul of Israel, an inheritance to us from our forefathers», a love that contains something of a gift from Above, yet whose arousal depends on a person's own avodah, and which therefore includes both ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam together. We examined the first level within it, the level of «נפשי אויתיך», and the Zohar's explanation that «my soul» is an address to the Holy One, blessed be He: You are my soul and my life, like the body's love for the soul. We saw that lack is what arouses the craving for life («a constant pleasure is no pleasure»), and therefore specifically «at night»: a person craves to draw the Or Ein Sof within himself through engaging in Torah, and he rises at night out of love for the Holy One, blessed be He, to toil in His service until morning.
In the next section we will look at the Rebbe's words explaining the three tzaddikim who hold every type of person accountable, and we will continue with the further level that the Alter Rebbe brings within this love.