In the previous section we examined the two forms of love that are built into the nature of every Jewish soul: «nafshi ivisicha» (my soul desires You) and «kivra d'ishtadel basar avuhi» (like a son who exerts himself after his father). Now the Alter Rebbe explains the advantage that a love born out of contemplation in the mind has over both of these.
When a person does not work to arrive at a love achieved through his own thinking, but instead leans on the love already present in him by nature, then as soon as the pressures of parnassah and the rest of worldly affairs arrive, he tells himself: no harm done, for the moment things have quieted down, and tomorrow I will arouse it again, since the love is already inside me and all I need to do is speak about it. Living that way, a person will never have the strength and the intensity to remain in that love consistently.
[At this point an obvious question presents itself:
The mind is «cold» and the heart is «warm»: they are two different vessels, and seemingly there is a contradiction between emotional love and intellectual love, so that the two need to be joined. But the intention here is not a «love of the intellect», since the intellect does not love, it understands. The intention is a love that is born out of the intellect. And once a love has been born out of the intellect, it stands on a level incomparably higher than love that comes naturally. As was explained at length in the earlier chapters: an emotion that comes simply because it is part of a person's nature, as opposed to an emotion generated by a hisbonenus that has worked on him, these are two entirely different intensities.
This is explained in the maamarim of Chassidus in the difference between a human being and an animal: an animal's middos are natural middos, whereas a person's middos, when he conducts himself as a human being, are intellectual middos, middos upon which the mind acts and over which it rules. As a result one can see in his middos, in his conduct and in his feelings, that they are on an altogether higher level.]
Of this love it is said that even «mayim rabim lo yuchlu l'chabos, v'neharos lo yishtefuha» (many waters cannot extinguish it, nor can rivers wash it away). In the Alter Rebbe's words: «כי יש יתרון ומעלה לבחינת האהבה כרשפי אש ושלהבת עזה וכו' הבאה מהתבונה והדעת בגדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא, על שתי בחינות האהבה הנ"ל כאשר אינן כרשפי אש ושלהבת כו'», meaning: there is a superiority and an advantage to the aspect of love that burns like fiery coals and a mighty flame, which comes from understanding and knowledge of the greatness of the Ein Sof, over the two aspects of love mentioned above when they are not like fiery coals and flame.
A greater quality and a fiercer fire are found in an emotion that comes from a person's own contemplation. And what is he contemplating? The utter beyondness of the Creator: how far removed He is, how incapable a person is of grasping Him, and how badly he wants to grasp what is beyond his reach. And when a person wants to attain something that he feels is missing from him, the emotion comes with fire and with thirst.
Fire and thirst share a single root: fire dries out everything, and thirst too is dryness. And when does a person feel thirst? When something is lacking. Someone traveling through the desert with no water, the search and the thirst give him no rest; but someone carrying a pack with liters of water in it can walk another few kilometers and not feel thirsty at all, because the water is right there with him, and precisely for that reason he feels no craving and no thirst.
The same is true in our case. Someone who feels that love of Hashem is already present in him by nature, and that all he has to do is awaken what is already there, even when he does awaken it, it will not be a love of thirst but a calm love, and any distraction that gets in the way is liable to put it out. But for someone who feels thirst and yearning, the opposite is true: a multitude of disturbances does not break him, it intensifies his search and raises the value of the water in his eyes.
«כיתרון ומעלת הזהב על הכסף» (like the superiority and advantage of gold over silver). The advantage of gold over silver is not merely in its value. If its whole advantage were a matter of value, one could simply add more silver until it reached the value of gold and even surpassed it. The advantage of gold is one of quality: because it is rare in nature, and because of its shine, its beauty and its properties. Gold is of high quality even when there is only a little of it, and every speck of gold is still gold.
So too in the nimshal. If a person arouses the natural love, it comes with great intensity, since this is a nature that the Holy One implanted within him; whereas the intellectual love that he will create by the power of his own contemplation, what level will he reach, how much will he understand and how much will be drawn down? Quantitatively, there may well be a greater advantage in the natural love of «nafshi ivisicha» and «kivra d'ishtadel», which is a natural, G-dly force, while what a person generates on his own is small. But this is exactly the advantage of gold over silver: a lot of silver is indeed worth a lot in quantitative terms, yet the small amount of gold loses none of its quality because it is small, since gold is gold. The same here: a love like fire as against a calm love. Even if the calm love is exceedingly great, the superiority of the love that burns like fiery coals over it is a superiority of quality, just like the superiority of gold over silver.
It is worth noting that it is within a person's power, if he works at it, to arouse even the levels of «nafshi ivisicha» and «kivra d'ishtadel» in the manner of fiery coals: when he feels that the Holy One is a father, not in a way that He is readily available and close by, but with such a sense of His being beyond him that he longs to reach Him. It is only that, as a rule, the loves discussed earlier come from a feeling that the thing is already present within him, and therefore they are not like fire.
Love that comes from hisbonenus has many advantages, and this is one of them. But the Alter Rebbe adds a further reason why a person must contemplate: not only because of the powerful love that will emerge from it, but even before any love has emerged, the very fact that a Jew is contemplating the greatness of Hashem is already the gain, and the love that will be born from it is a bonus. In his words: «וגם כי זה כל האדם ותכליתו» (and also because this is the whole of man and his purpose). Everything for which man was created in this world, and all the intellect the Holy One gave him with which to understand, is «למען דעת את כבוד ה' ויקר תפארת גדולתו איש איש כפי אשר יוכל שאת»: in order to know the glory of Hashem and the preciousness of the splendor of His greatness, each person according to what he is able to bear. The Holy One wants a Jew to sit and contemplate and know his Creator, and to recognize the preciousness of His greatness, each one according to his capacity.
Therefore, even if a person's level of contemplation is low and he arrives only at small comprehensions, that is what he is capable of, and that is his gold, and that is what the Holy One is asking of him. And even if no love at all emerges from it, because there is a block between his brain and his heart and the understanding does not filter down into feeling but remains understanding alone, this too is a great thing, and this too is a gain.
«כמ"ש בר"מ פ' בא בגין דישתמודעון ליה וכו' וכנודע» (as it is written in the Raaya Mehemna, parshas Bo: «so that they may know Him», etc., and as is known). Here is the proof from the Zohar in parshas Bo. One of the questions people have wrestled with since the creation of the world is: why was the world created? Various answers have been given, in the Zohar, in the writings of Kabbalah, in Midrash and in the teachings of Chassidus, as is brought at the beginning of the well known Hemshech Ayin Beis era work, Hemshech 5666. And the Zohar's answer is: «begin d'yishtamodun leih», so that they may know Him. The Holy One wants to be known; His will is that there be small, lowly creatures, and that they should know their Creator. For had He not created the world, He would be alone with Himself, whereas His will was that there be separate beings who would know Him. It follows, then, that when a person knows the Creator through understanding and study, he is fulfilling, in actual practice, the very purpose of his creation.
With this the Alter Rebbe closes the chapter. After all the levels described in its first part, the levels of love that exist in everyone's nature, and even though very great qualities were ascribed to them, greater than all of them is that a person should contemplate on his own. And even if he reaches only low levels, and even if he reaches nothing at all, the act of contemplation itself fulfills the purpose. In the Alter Rebbe's own phrase, «to toil with his intellect» is a goal in its own right.
Summary of the overall theme:
At this point an important and lengthy subject, spread over quite a number of chapters, comes to a close, and it is worth summarizing. Sefer HaTanya is built on the verse «ki karov eilecha hadavar me'od, b'ficha u'vilvavcha laasoso» (for the matter is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it). One of the questions the Alter Rebbe raises in one of the chapters is that the order of the words in the verse is puzzling: «b'ficha» is speech, «u'vilvavcha» is thought and feeling, and «laasoso» is action, the three garments of a person: thought, speech and action. Seemingly the order should run either from above downward («bilvavcha», «b'ficha», «laasoso»), or from below upward («laasoso», «b'ficha», «u'vilvavcha»). Why does the verse use this particular order?
One of the explanations in Tanya is that the Torah is telling us that a Jew must reach a level of «u'vilvavcha» that will bring him to «laasoso», a level that will move him to actual deeds. For reaching a lofty level of feeling is not within everyone's close reach, and the verse wants to tell us what is close to every person: at the very least «b'ficha», speech, which everyone is capable of; and from «u'vilvavcha», at the very least that measure of it which leads to «laasoso», that the feeling be strong enough to rouse a person and get him started in action.
And why is it important that feeling accompany the deed? Surely the deed alone should suffice? As was explained at length in the earlier chapters, a deed without feeling is a deed without a soul, and it lacks the element of «lishmah». Torah has to be «Torah lishmah», for the sake of Hashem, and lishmah means with vitality and with inner life.
And what sort of feeling is required? In the order of the middos of the soul, chesed comes first and gevurah after it: love belongs to the world of chesed, and fear to gevurah. Therefore a person must arouse within himself both ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem, and that is why we dealt at length with the various levels of love and the various levels of fear: ahavah zuta and ahavah rabbah, yirah tataah and yirah ilaah, and natural love.
In summary: in this section we learned that love born of the toil of the mind surpasses natural love, since one who relies on what is already in his nature has no power to sustain it, and every distraction extinguishes it; whereas a love that comes from contemplating how utterly beyond us the Creator is comes out of thirst, and of it is said that «many waters cannot extinguish the love». This is like the advantage of gold over silver: an advantage of quality, not of quantity. We also learned that contemplation itself is a gain in its own right, even if no love is born from it, since «this is the whole of man and his purpose, in order to know the glory of Hashem», and as the Zohar puts it, «begin d'yishtamodun leih». Finally we summarized the broader theme that runs through many chapters: the precision of the order «b'ficha u'vilvavcha laasoso», the need for feeling that gives life to the deed, and the levels of love and fear that were explained.
In the next section we will continue with this subject, which is further explained in the chapter that follows.