To understand what the Alter Rebbe is saying here, let us first look at the passage in the Gemara that briefly describes the stories of Hillel and of Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum.
The Gemara brings three figures whose words and deeds render every person obligated, leaving him no excuse:
Hillel: he was destitute, so poor that he did not even have the coin needed to pay the doorkeeper to get into the beis midrash. He would climb up at night onto the roof of the beis midrash to listen to the words of Torah from the outside, until it reached the point of actual danger to his life: once they found him there nearly frozen in the snow, and they revived him. Therefore, when a Jew comes before the Heavenly court and is asked, «Why did you not occupy yourself with Torah?» and he answers, «I was poor, I had nothing, I was preoccupied all day long with earning my bread», they say to him: «Were you poorer than Hillel?» Hillel renders the poor obligated. He is the proof that even a destitute man has no excuses.
Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum: he was an enormously wealthy man, and the Gemara describes the extent of his riches, and nevertheless he toiled in Torah day and night. And when a man comes and claims, «I was overwhelmed, I had so many holdings, I had to make sure everything was running properly», they say to him: «Were you wealthier than Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum?»
Yosef: the Gemara also brings the episode with the wife of Potifar. To anyone who comes and claims that it was simply too hard for him, that he could not restrain himself in the face of the tests he faced, they say: «Was your test greater than that one?»
The Rebbe raises a question here, and it bears mainly on the first two: what situation exactly are these poor and wealthy men in, such that Hillel or Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum are needed in order to render them obligated?
If we are speaking of poor and wealthy people who were in fact obligated to learn Torah and did not learn, do we need Hillel and Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum for that? There is a mitzvah from the Torah itself, «And you shall meditate in it day and night», and a man who could have learned and did not learn will be asked in the Heavenly court: why did you not learn? It is written explicitly in the Torah, and there is no need to summon Hillel and Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum to come to our aid and demand of him why he did not learn.
And if we are speaking of a situation in which the man was genuinely exempt from learning Torah, an objective exemption according to halachah, then what place is there to bring Hillel at all? He was exempt!
The Rebbe's answer: the truth is that we are speaking of a man who was exempt from learning Torah. He really was preoccupied with his livelihood, whether because of his poverty or because of his wealth, and his preoccupation was a legitimate one according to Torah. Had he come to the rav, and together they had opened a Shulchan Aruch and asked: is such a man, in such a situation, obligated to learn Torah or exempt? They would have told him: you are exempt. You are obligated to learn Torah two hours a day, and that is it; beyond that, by every rule in the Torah, you are exempt from learning.
And nevertheless they say to him: had it mattered to you, had you felt that this is your very life, you would have found the time. You were exempt, true, but you would have found the time, because it is a simple fact that for the things that touch a person he finds time. This is the meaning of «Hillel renders the poor obligated» and «Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum renders the wealthy obligated»: they create an obligation by force of the proof that even though they were under such enormous pressure, they found the time to learn Torah, and they did not say, «We are exempt, and that settles the matter.»
This is exactly the idea being expressed here: a Jew says «Nafshi ivisicha», my soul desires You, and since You are my very soul, it follows automatically that «af balailah», even at night. He does not say: at night a person has to sleep. And if you open a Shulchan Aruch, the Rambam writes that a person should sleep eight hours a night, and if someone brings a note from a doctor that he needs twelve hours of sleep, then according to Torah he is right, he is exempt and he even must sleep. But if it is «nafshi», if this is his very soul and his very life, then he does not want to lose his connection to the life of his soul, and so automatically, «even at night.»
[The special quality of learning Torah at night:
During the day a person is obligated to learn Torah, and his learning may well be nothing more than discharging an obligation («I was obligated to learn, so I learned»). Learning at night proves that he is learning because it touches him, because it is his own.
In the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, in the very first siman and its opening se'ifim, it says that whoever occupies himself with Torah at night has a thread of chesed drawn over him by day, and there are further spiritual benefits listed there. But what is relevant to our subject is that learning at night proves how much a person cares, how much the matter touches him personally.
The Rebbe notes in one place that one should indeed be careful with the eight hours of sleep that the Rambam writes about, and nobody is saying one should not keep to it. And yet: if a person had to catch a flight somewhere truly urgent, something that genuinely concerns him, what becomes of the eight hours? He will not sleep, because it matters to him. That is precisely the point: the question is how much the matter touches the person.]
This level of «Nafshi ivisicha af balailah» contains both aspects together, both ahavah rabbah and ahavas olam. And although each of them has an advantage and a drawback, as we learned earlier, this love has both advantages at once:
On one hand, his love is very well defined: he wants to learn Torah. That is the advantage of ahavas olam, that it is a defined, directed love.
On the other hand, it carries tremendous power, since it is something he received as an inheritance from our forefathers and did not generate himself. That is the advantage of ahavah rabbah, and that is why this love is equally accessible to every soul; each and every person receives it.
«And a love greater and higher than this» Now the Alter Rebbe tells us that there is a level above the previous one: a Jew's sense of being drawn to the Creator, which is also called love, but which stands far above the previous level. This too includes both aspects, only with vastly greater intensity and on far more exalted levels, and it too is «mesuteres gam kein bechol nefesh miYisrael biyerushah me'avoseinu», concealed likewise in every Jewish soul as an inheritance from our forefathers, meaning that it exists as an inheritance in every single person. And in the last line of the page the Alter Rebbe says that even regarding this lofty level, «karov hadavar me'od», the matter is exceedingly close, and every person can reach it.
At first glance the level of «Nafshi ivisicha» has no drawback at all: a person feels that the Holy One is his soul and his life, and out of that he is drawn to Him and wants to learn by day and by night. What could be higher than that? But in the end, why «ivisicha», why do I desire You? Because «nafshi», because this is my life. Now, thank G-d, the things that interest him and draw him are not food or music or other physical pleasures, but rather G-dliness draws him. But why does G-dliness draw him? Because it is «nafshi», because he feels that it is good for him and that it fills him. That is very fine indeed, but there is a level higher than it.
The same applies even to mesirus nefesh: at the level of «Nafshi ivisicha» a person may be ready even to give up his life, because he understands that doing so brings him to a higher life of the soul. Even then he remains within the framework of preserving his own soul; it is only that he understands that a spiritual state of the soul is higher than a physical one.
What, then, is that higher level? «It is what is written in Raaya Mehemna», that section of the Zohar which describes the matters bound up with Moshe Rabbeinu (Raaya Mehemna translates as «the faithful shepherd», which is Moshe Rabbeinu), the part that describes his level and his particular avodah. And at what level of love for the Creator did Moshe Rabbeinu stand? «Kivra de'ishtadel basar avui ve'imei derachim lon yatir migarmei venafshei veruchei», like a son who exerts himself, strains and labors for his father and mother, and loves them more than his own body, more than his nefesh and his ruach: he does not think about himself at all, only about his parents.
There was once a Jew whose two parents were both imprisoned in the United States for financial offenses and money laundering. Anyone familiar with the matter knows that prison there is far from a hotel, and that being there is extremely hard, and they were there for a long stretch of time, having been sentenced to a lengthy term. Their son once wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking for a brachah for his parents, that the Holy One should arouse mercy and that they should already come out of their situation, and he wrote in this vein: «I can no longer bear that my parents are suffering so much.»
The Rebbe answered him: you write about how hard it is for you, and you do not mention at all how hard it is for your parents. You ask that they be released, and why? Because you cannot bear it. Why not ask because it is hard for them, rather than because it is hard for you? They are the ones to think of first.
That man was not standing at the level we are about to discuss; he was at the level of «Nafshi ivisicha»: his parents are his life and his soul, and he can no longer bear their situation, and therefore he wanted them back. In the final analysis, he was thinking about himself.
To sum up: In this section we learned the passage of the Gemara about Hillel and Rabbi Elazar ben Charsum (and about Yosef and the wife of Potifar), and the Rebbe's explanation that we are speaking of a man who was genuinely exempt from learning Torah according to halachah, and nevertheless they render him obligated, since for whatever truly touches a person, he finds the time. This is the meaning of «Nafshi ivisicha af balailah», a level that contains both the advantage of ahavas olam (a defined, directed love) and the advantage of ahavah rabbah (the power we received as an inheritance from our forefathers), and we dwelt on the special quality of learning Torah at night. We also saw the drawback of this level, that in the end it rests on «nafshi», and we were introduced to the level above it, «and a love greater and higher than this», the level of Moshe Rabbeinu's love as described in Raaya Mehemna: «like a son who exerts himself for his father and mother.»
In the next section we will go deeper into this level of ahavah rabbah, and see how the Alter Rebbe says of it too that «the matter is exceedingly close» to every single one of us.