In the earlier installments, in chapters 39 and 40, we dealt with the importance of feeling in the performance of Torah and mitzvos. Before we continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in chapter 44, let us briefly review the question he raises in chapter 40.
The question in chapter 40: on the face of it, the Torah a person learns is not his own wisdom but the wisdom of the Creator, and the mitzvah he performs is not his own will but the will of the Creator. If so, what difference can a person's private feeling make, whether it is there or not? By strict law the mitzvah has been performed: the Holy One wanted the mitzvah to be done, and in fact it was done. Why then did they say that Torah and mitzvos without feeling are like a body without a soul? Even if a man performs mitzvos his whole life as «mitzvos anashim melumadah», a matter of rote habit, the thing has still been accomplished. The deed is what it is in its own right, so what can a person change about it, that the very same act should be considered dead or alive?
The Alter Rebbe's answer: we will not repeat the whole length of it, only the main point. Anything that exists in this physical world, even if it is a mitzvah and even if it is the will of the Creator, is physical, and therefore the divine vitality invested in it is contracted to the extreme. When a person puts feeling and vitality into it, the deed is lifted up.
Two parables illustrate how vitality and elevation diminish the grip of the physical:
A living person and a dead one: the Gemara in Gittin says that a living person is lighter than a dead one, and so it is in actual fact. The dead body has no vitality, and so its weight is fully felt; the vitality in a living person causes the physical, bodily part of him to lose its weight and its prominence.
The table in the exhibition: a person walks into an exhibition and sees twenty plain, bulky tables, and beside them one table that is large and heavy, but fashioned with striking beauty and fine carving. That beautiful table may well be heavier and larger than all the rest and take up more room, yet because of its beauty he pays no attention at all to its bulk, its weight or its heaviness, only to its beauty.
Everyday experience proves the point: the more a thing is elevated above the physical matter it is made of, the less its coarseness is felt.
From here: when a person performs a mitzvah without feeling and carries out only its physical side, the deed remains physical. True, it is a divine will, but a contracted one. The moment he invests feeling into it, love and fear, the deed is lifted up and becomes spiritual, and it ascends to the world of Yetzirah or to the world of Beriah, as was explained at length in chapter 39, and as the Alter Rebbe recalls again at the end of our chapter.
Now take a person who trains his mind to dwell on the thought that the Holy One is our Father, who lets this sink into his soul and performs mitzvos as a result of that contemplation. If he asks himself whether there was actual feeling here, it will turn out that he did not feel anything, he only thought about it. If so, it would seem that the deed done as a result of that thought was not elevated, since thought does not elevate; it is feeling that elevates.
To this the Alter Rebbe continues and says: «ועל זה אמרו מחשבה טובה הקב"ה מצרפה למעשה» (and concerning this they said: a good thought, the Holy One joins it to the deed), a concept that appears in the Gemara and was already cited in Tanya in chapter 27.
The simple reading of this statement of Chazal is this: a person intended to do a mitzvah and was prevented by circumstances beyond his control, and the Holy One credits him as though he had done it. But if that is the meaning, the wording is imprecise; it should have said «he thought and did not do, it is reckoned for him as though he did». The inner meaning follows the precise expression «metzarfah lema'aseh», joins it to the deed, which indicates that there was a thought here and there was also a deed, and what is missing is the link, the joining of the two.
And that is exactly the case of the Jew we are speaking about: he had the deed, and he had the good thought, that the Holy One is our Father and he is his son, and that he wishes to act for His sake. He simply did not manage to bring the matter down into his heart. And where there is no feeling, there is nothing to elevate the deed. About this Chazal say that the Holy One Himself makes the join: He connects the good thought to the deed, and the deed becomes a living deed.
What exactly is this «nachas ruach», this pleasure, that a person seeks to give to the Creator?
The king's joy in his son: «והנחת רוח הוא כמשל שמחת המלך מבנו שבא אליו בצאתו מבית האסורים כנ"ל» (and the nachas ruach is like the parable of the king's joy in his son who comes to him on his release from prison, as above). The soul within the body is held in prison the entire time, for the body, the yetzer hara and the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul, keep it in chains and do not let it rise. And when a Jew succeeds, at a given moment, in performing a mitzvah or learning Torah, the Holy One looks at him as at a son walking out of prison right now, and that is joy, and that is nachas ruach.
«או להיות לו דירה בתחתונים כנ"ל» (or to have for Himself a dwelling in the lower realms, as above): as was explained at length in chapter 36, the Holy One desires that this lowest world be a dwelling for Him, a dirah betachtonim. And the world becomes that dwelling through Jews performing one more mitzvah and one more deed. So a person says: I want to perform mitzvos in order to give pleasure to my Father, for it is His desire to have a dwelling here, and I will build Him the dwelling.
So we have explained that there are two loves that are part of the nature of every Jew:
«Nafshi ivisicha»: the Holy One is the very soul and life of a person, and therefore he yearns for Him.
The love of a son for his father: a higher love, that the Holy One is my Father, to the point of being ready to give up one's life for Him.
Regarding the second love it was explained how one reaches it when it is not revealed: speak about it, let your ears hear it, contemplate the matter, and perform mitzvos on that basis, and the Holy One will join the good thought to the deed.
And what about the first level, «nafshi ivisicha»?
Which, you would think, is easier to arouse in the heart by means of speech and voice: the level of «nafshi ivisicha» or the sense of a son toward his father? We learned that a son's love for his father is the higher of the two, and by simple logic it should be easier to arouse specifically the lower level, «nafshi ivisicha».
Yet in Tanya the order is reversed. The Alter Rebbe opens by saying that through speaking aloud a person will arouse the feeling that the Holy One is our Father, and only afterward does he write, in the language of a novel insight: «והנה גם לבחינת נפשי אויתיך נראה לי שקרוב הדבר מאוד להוציאה מההעלם אל הגילוי על ידי ההרגל תמיד בפיו ולבו שוין» (and behold, as for the level of «nafshi ivisicha» as well, it seems to me that it is very close at hand to bring it out from concealment into revelation, through constant habit, with his mouth and heart as one). The very same technique, only here it is presented as a novelty: this level too can be reached, and it is simple, easy and accessible.
And not only that, but he immediately adds a qualification: «אך אם אינו יכול להוציאה אל הגילוי בלבו, אף על פי כן יוכל לעסוק בתורה ומצות לשמן על ידי ציור ענין אהבה זו במחשבה שבמוחו, ומחשבה טובה הקב"ה מצרפה כו'» (but if he cannot bring it out into revelation in his heart, he can nevertheless engage in Torah and mitzvos for their own sake by picturing this love in the thought of his mind, and a good thought the Holy One joins, etc.). That is: if he does not manage to arouse the feeling, let him at least picture the matter in his mind, and that is enough. Whereas when he spoke of the feeling of a son toward his father he gave no qualification at all, but simply stated that one should contemplate it and it will come.
This seems to be a strong question in the style of the passage: why is it specifically the lower level that is harder to arouse?
The Rebbe wrote a short note on this, and in it explained the matter very simply: the sense of being a son to one's father is a spiritual sensation, whereas the sense that the soul enlivens the body is a bodily sensation. A person feels in his body that he is alive, he feels it when his head aches and he wants his clarity back, and all the sensations bound up with wanting the soul to rest in the body are literally bodily sensations.
And therefore: arousing a spiritual feeling is easier; it is enough that he speak about the matter, think about it and connect to it. But to arouse a genuinely bodily sensation, to feel that the Holy One is giving him life and that he wants to be bound to Him with the same intensity with which he wants to go on living and not to have pain in his hand or his head, to the point that he feels «I am going now to learn Torah, because without it I am losing a part of my life», that is a far higher level and far harder. A person can feel all sorts of spiritual sensations, but to feel this in his body itself is something else entirely.
Thus, in terms of the level itself, «nafshi ivisicha» is lower than a son's love for his father, since in «nafshi ivisicha» a person is still preserving himself, while a son's love for his father is mesirus nefesh, self-sacrifice. But in terms of arousal, it is easier to reach the spiritual feeling than the bodily sensation, and that is why the Alter Rebbe presented the first matter as the simpler one and the second as the harder one.
*
With this we have finished explaining the levels that exist within the natural makeup of every Jew: the level called «nafshi ivisicha» and the level of a son toward his father. Both are present in his nature, and all he has to do is arouse them. The best and fullest way is contemplation; and one who did not succeed in contemplating should at the very least train his voice and his speech.
And the power of habit is great. A person accustomed to saying «baruch Hashem» and «im yirtzeh Hashem» about everything strengthens his faith and his connection to the matter, and when something happens he knows at once to whom to turn, for the speech itself trains the person, and habit becomes second nature. So too one who accustoms himself to say «this is our Father», «for the sake of our Father», will find that over time it works on him.
This thought gives a person the strength to overcome difficulties: to get up in the middle of the night and learn Torah, to go and do a mitzvah or to daven with a minyan. Even when he says «I have no desire for it», still, this is my Father, and for my Father's sake I will do anything to give Him nachas ruach. And so too in the texts of the tefillah where we say «to give nachas ruach to our Maker», the very saying of it awakens the matter.
And as is stated in the line above, «vekolo le'orer kavanas libo», his voice to arouse the intent of his heart: speech and voice arouse. We see this in real life. The mussar sefarim write that a person who is angry and wants to calm his anger is advised to keep silent and not to speak, for once he begins to talk about what is angering him his anger only grows and turns into a blazing fire. This shows that speech arouses feeling. And just as it is with anger, so it is with love, and so it is with every matter; even a good word works in the same direction. When a person speaks words of love and arouses the matter with his voice, the voice awakens the kavanah and connects him to the matter in a far truer way.
In summary: in this installment we reviewed the Alter Rebbe's question in chapter 40, what a person's private feeling adds to a mitzvah that is the Creator's will, and his answer, that the physical deed remains contracted and it is feeling that elevates it. We saw that one who contemplated yet did not succeed in bringing it down into his heart is covered by «machshavah tovah haKadosh Baruch Hu metzarfah lema'aseh»: the Holy One joins the good thought to the deed and turns it into a living deed. We looked at two aspects of nachas ruach (the king's joy in the son coming out of prison, and the dirah betachtonim, the dwelling in the lower realms), at the two natural loves, «nafshi ivisicha» and the love of a son for his father, and at the Rebbe's explanation of why specifically «nafshi ivisicha», the lower of the two, is harder to arouse: because it is a bodily sensation and not a spiritual one. Finally we learned about the power of habit, speech and voice to arouse the intent of the heart.
In the next installment we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words in the remainder of the chapter.