We are in chapter 44 of Likkutei Amarim, on page 63b (page 126), right at the first line. Since we are in the middle of a subject, let us first review briefly what we learned in the previous chapters and in the last lesson, and from there we will continue.
We are dealing with the subject of ahavas Hashem, love of G-d: that a Jew has to awaken love in his heart, a love that will move him to keep Torah and mitzvos. We learned that there are different levels in love of G-d, and among them two main levels:
Ahavas olam, literally «love of the world» - a love that is produced by a person's own contemplation of the world: of creation, and of how every single detail of the world is brought into being by the Creator. These lines of contemplation were explained at length in chapters 42 and 43, and they awaken love for the Holy One in his heart. This love is called ahavas olam precisely because it was generated out of the world, out of contemplating the things of the world.
Ahavah rabbah, «great love» - a love a person receives as a gift from Above: the Holy One gives him the arousal, the pull toward G-dliness. This gift is given only to one who has first perfected his own avodah, his own work.
Which is higher, ahavas olam or ahavah rabbah?
We mentioned in the previous lesson that each has an advantage the other lacks:
The advantage of ahavah rabbah: its intensity is enormous, almost without limit. Once a person has received a gift from Above, the pull that comes from the arousal he was given is of unlimited force.
The advantage of ahavas olam: the person understands and knows exactly what he is drawn to. In ahavah rabbah, by contrast, he is in a state of arousal and excitement, but he has nothing to grasp it by, since it does not come from him but from an illumination he received from Above. Whereas when he contemplates and understands with his own faculties and arrives at love that way, he knows exactly what he is drawn to and what he wants. True, it has the drawback of being limited, since it is his own creation, but with the limitation comes an advantage: it is something ordered and defined.
In chapter 44 the Alter Rebbe opens and explains that there is a love which includes both kinds together: it resembles ahavah rabbah and it resembles ahavas olam. And within this love itself there are two levels.
The Alter Rebbe brings the verse «נַפְשִׁי אִוִּיתִיךָ בַּלַּיְלָה», «My soul, I desire You at night.» The meaning: Master of the world, You are my soul, You give me life and give me everything I have, and because You are my soul, therefore «I desire You», I have a craving for You and I am drawn to You.
Where does a Jew get the capacity to arrive at the feeling that the Creator is his very soul? It is an inheritance in his hand, a gift he received from Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Every Jew is born a Jew, and receives within his soul the inner power that exists in the Jewish nature within him: the capacity to awaken love for the Creator because He is his soul.
But if he does not awaken it and does nothing toward it, this love will remain buried in the depths of his heart alone, and he will not even be aware that it exists. For it to be revealed in him he must contemplate the matter and arouse it (and we will yet see that contemplation is not the only way, and there are easier ways as well).
And when this love is awakened, what does it resemble? On the one hand, it was his own contemplation that awakened it, and in that it resembles ahavas olam. On the other hand, he is not creating anything; he is only awakening something that already exists within him as a gift from Above, and in that it resembles ahavah rabbah. So it has both advantages: great intensity, since it exists by virtue of his Jewish nature; and alongside that, a clear definition of what he is drawn to, since he is the one who aroused and revealed the feeling.
How does that «I desire You» actually express itself in practice?
The expression is «אוֹרַיְיתָא וְקוּדְשָׁא בְּרִיךְ הוּא כּוּלָּא חַד», the Torah and the Holy One are entirely one: the Holy One is found in the Torah. Therefore, if a person truly has a craving for the Creator and wants to connect to Him, let him learn Torah, for learning Torah is what connects a person to the Holy One.
The rest of the verse is precise about the time as well: «at night.» Take, for example, the feeling a person has that he loves his own life and loves to live. When does he feel it most? In a time of difficulty, when he is ill, G-d forbid, or when he sees the business shrinking and he does not know what will be. Then the will to live awakens in him with full force, whereas on ordinary days he does not sense it at all.
So too in avodas Hashem: if the Creator is literally his soul, and he craves Him and seeks to connect to Him, then consider that night is the time for sleep, and he could seemingly wait until dawn or sunrise, get up, daven and go to learn. But because he feels that this is «my soul», he cannot hold himself back, and he gets up in the middle of the night and goes to learn. One who does not feel this way has a time for learning and a time for sleeping. But when this is his soul, then even at night, even at an hour when he is technically exempt and halachically permitted to sleep, he will do everything to run toward it.
In this connection there is a story of a young man who came in to the Rebbe for yechidus, and the Rebbe spoke to him about learning Chassidus. The Rebbe explained to him that when a Jew learns Chassidus, the inner dimension of Torah, such as our learning of Tanya, it awakens him to the learning of Torah. The Rebbe compared it to an only son who has not seen his father for a long time, and suddenly word reaches him that in a short while he will have the opportunity to meet him. He longs for the moment when he will be able to meet his father and embrace him, and he is not looking to receive anything from him; he has no personal angle, no interest at all. He wants one thing: to embrace his father and be with him. A Jew who feels that the Holy One is his very life, that is how his longing for learning Torah should be, like someone going to meet his father. And this is what a Jew receives from learning the inner dimension of Torah, the teachings of Chassidus.
That young man asked the Rebbe: and is learning Chassidus enough? (After all, a person can learn Chassidus and still not arrive at this feeling.) The Rebbe answered him: I have seen Jews on whom learning Chassidus worked in exactly this way. In other words, it is indeed possible for a person to learn Chassidus and not arrive at this automatically if he does not internalize what he learns; but the Rebbe said explicitly that he had seen how learning Chassidus brings a person to this inner feeling.
This is the first level, the level of «נפשי אויתיך בלילה»: a love a person reaches by virtue of the G-dly nature he received as an inheritance from the Avos, and which he reveals by arousing within himself the contemplation that the Creator is his very soul.
The second level is «כִּבְרָא דְּאִשְׁתַּדַּל בָּתַר אֲבוּהִי וְאִימֵּיהּ», «like a son who exerts himself for the sake of his father and mother.» This level is higher and more powerful than the level of «nafshi avisicha», and it too we received as an inheritance and it exists in the nature of every Jew: like a son who exerts himself for his father and mother, who wants to do for his parents and is prepared to do for them more than he thinks about himself, literal mesirus nefesh, self-sacrifice.
The difference between the two: when a person thinks «my soul», he is saying: I love You because You are my soul, You protect me, You fill me, You are my life. This love builds and completes his own existence. But there is a higher level than this, in which he is ready even to give up his soul, like a son who gives himself over entirely for his father and mother.
This level too a Jew can and must awaken in his heart, and when he succeeds in awakening it, on the one hand it resembles ahavas olam, since he arrived at it through his own contemplation; and on the other hand it is like ahavah rabbah, since it is an inheritance we received from Above.
To summarize: in this section we reviewed the two levels we learned in chapter 43: ahavas olam, which is generated by contemplating the world and whose advantage is that it is defined and ordered, and ahavah rabbah, which comes as a gift from Above and whose advantage is its unlimited intensity. From there we moved to chapter 44, where the Alter Rebbe explains a love that includes both, because it is an inheritance from the Avos which a person awakens through his own contemplation: the level of «nafshi avisicha balailah», which expresses itself in learning Torah and running toward it even at night; and the level of «kivra de'ishtadal basar avuhi ve'imei», the self-sacrifice of a son for the sake of his parents.
In the next section we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words and see that contemplation is not the only way to awaken this love; there are easier ways as well.