We stopped in the middle of chapter 46, on page 65b, in the last three lines of the page, at the passage that begins «וזהו שכתוב אשר קידשנו במצוותיו» (And this is the meaning of the verse, «who has sanctified us with His mitzvos»). Before we continue, let us briefly review what we have learned in this chapter so far.
A reminder of what we learned in chapter 46: here the Alter Rebbe explains to a Jew how he can arouse his love for the Almighty with ease. As he stated at the opening of the chapter, his intention is to give us a straight path, one that is equal for every soul, a path of which it is said that it is very, very close, the closest of all.
And what was the point we dwelled on at length in the previous lesson? That a person should take to heart the nature that the Almighty implanted in the heart of every single person, in the words of King Shlomo: «כמים הפנים לפנים כן לב האדם אל האדם» (As water reflects a face back to a face, so does the heart of one man to another). The meaning of this natural response: when a person notices that someone else is doing for him, loves him and exerts himself on his behalf, his reaction will naturally be measure for measure. A love for that person will awaken in him, an arousal of the soul to the point of כלות הנפש, the soul expiring in longing. And all this is when we are speaking of two people standing on the same level, where one does for his fellow and takes trouble for him, and the recipient responds in kind.
And what happens when the distance between the two is immeasurably great?
Here the Alter Rebbe paints a striking picture: the one who arouses and gives is a «מלך גדול ורב» (a great and mighty king), while the recipient is not merely an ordinary person but «נבזה ושפל אנשים ומנוול המוטל באשפה» (a despised and lowly man, a wretch lying in a refuse heap). When the great king leaves the palace of his kingship and descends to that one lying below, and draws him close with a wondrous closeness, what will the recipient's reaction be, if he is a human being of flesh and blood? His heart will melt from the greatness of the kindness the king has done with him. And even if he is cold by nature, a «לב האבן» (heart of stone), as the Tanya puts it, it will melt.
And the nimshal, the lesson it illustrates: in the nimshal exactly this takes place. The Alter Rebbe went to length in describing the greatness of the King, the Almighty, while the man lying in the refuse heap is the Jewish people in Egypt. And as the Haggadah says, in the words he quotes: not through an angel and not through a seraph, but the Almighty Himself, in His own glory, descends into Egypt to draw the Jewish people close, and brings the people in to Him, chamber within chamber, through the fulfillment of Torah and mitzvos. In detail:
Fulfilling mitzvos: when a Jew performs a mitzvah, it is as though the King embraces him.
Studying Torah: when a Jew learns Torah, it is as though the King kisses him, for He places the word of G-d literally into his mouth. This is the cleaving of «רוחא ברוחא» (spirit within spirit) that the Tanya speaks of.
From this point until the end of the chapter, the Alter Rebbe is not coming to add a new point beyond what has been explained and summarized until now. Rather, he is coming to expand, to emphasize, and to add sources, illustrations and explanations, and above all to deepen our appreciation of the intensity of the bond with which the King binds the Jew to Himself: that very cleaving, that embrace and that kiss, through which the King grants the Jew the opportunity to connect with Him.
Before we read the words inside, and in order that the coming passage should be better understood, let us pause briefly on an idea the Rebbe explained at the farbrengen of Shabbos Parshas Yisro in the year 5751, where he also explained this very passage in the Tanya. The farbrengen is fascinating and very fundamental, and it is worthwhile to look it up and see the matter at length.
Shabbos Parshas Yisro is about the Ten Commandments and the giving of the Torah, and regarding this there is the well known teaching of our Sages, «אחת דיבר אלוקים שתיים זו שמעתי» (G-d spoke one thing; two things I heard). The Almighty said all ten of the commandments simultaneously, as the verse says, «וידבר אלוקים את כל הדברים האלה לאמור» (And G-d spoke all these words, saying), and only afterwards did He spell them out in detail. Along the same lines our Sages say that «אנוכי» and «לא יהיה לך» were said in a single utterance, and likewise «זכור» and «שמור» were said in a single utterance. And a question is raised there: if the detailed spelling out was necessary because created beings cannot contain the matter when it is compressed into one, so that it had to descend in a way that the ear could hear, then why was it «אחת דיבר אלוקים» to begin with, only afterwards coming down into particulars? Several further precise questions are addressed there as well.
The point that is relevant to our subject is that there are two modes within mitzvos:
Positive mitzvos: a mitzvah in which the person performs an active deed, and through performing that deed he sanctifies himself, the object and the matter at hand, and draws holiness down into the place.
Prohibitions: simply understood, that a person must hold back and not stumble and not fall, G-d forbid, into the hands of the kelipos and the sitra achra, which seek to bring him down in this matter or that. According to this, their whole content is nothing but restraint and negation, and at first glance, in refraining and not stumbling he is not drawing anything down upon himself, for it is a non-act, with no active deed at all.
But it is explained there at length, with proofs and sources, that the truth is that every mitzvah draws something down, including a prohibition. The very fact that it is called a «mitzvah» proves this, for «mitzvah» comes from the word tzavsa, meaning togetherness and connection. It emerges that every mitzvah is a connection, whether it is a positive mitzvah or a prohibition.
Let us bring one of the proofs for this. It is written concerning the Torah that this Torah will not be exchanged, and this is one of the thirteen principles of faith, meaning that in the time to come as well, even after the coming of Moshiach, it is the same Torah. On the other hand, in the time to come there will be no yetzer hara and no temptations, as the Gemara puts it in a vivid image, that the Almighty slaughters the yetzer hara. Now, the prohibitions outnumber the positive mitzvos: there are 248 positive mitzvos and 365 prohibitions. If we were to say that the entire content of a prohibition is only to guard oneself from matters of evil, it would emerge that in the time to come, once there is no longer any matter of evil, the content of three hundred and sixty five mitzvos would be nullified. And that cannot be right.
The point explained there is this: a prohibition too draws down holiness, except that the holiness it draws down is higher than the holiness drawn down by a positive mitzvah. And precisely because the level of holiness that is meant to be drawn down through it is higher, a person is therefore unable to perform an active deed in order to reach it.
There are things that are defined and bounded, where a person is told: do such and such and you will arrive at such and such. This is something a person reaches through orderly action; he carries it out and arrives at the goal. From the outset it is something doable and attainable, and it has a limit. But there are things in which the holiness and light being drawn down are so high and so lofty that a person cannot do anything to draw them down. Rather, it is precisely through his not acting that they are drawn down, and this is a far loftier level.
In the time to come there will be nothing but this. In our present time, when we still have dealings with the affairs of the yetzer hara, when a person is careful with a prohibition two things are included in it: both that he is guarding himself from evil things, and also that he is drawing down the supernal light. And in the time to come, when there will be no yetzer hara, the true content of the prohibitions will be revealed: that their purpose is not merely to refrain from evil, but to reveal and draw down a great and lofty supernal light.
What emerges from all this for our subject: in every mitzvah there is a drawing down. In a positive mitzvah, a drawing down of holiness within a certain limit, according to a person's capacity to act and to be a vessel for it, where he is told do this and the mitzvah will reside in this vessel and in this limb. In a prohibition, however, the drawing down of a far higher holiness, for which a person is not, as it were, a vessel, and therefore all he can do is guard himself and not spoil it.
To summarize: in this section we reviewed the foundation of chapter 46: the nature expressed in «כמים הפנים לפנים כן לב האדם אל האדם», the parable of the great king who descends from the palace of his kingship to the lowly one lying in the refuse heap, and its nimshal, the Almighty who descended in His own glory into Egypt, not through an angel and not through a seraph, and brings the Jew in to Him chamber within chamber: the embrace of the mitzvos and the kiss of Torah, the cleaving of rucha b'rucha. We also prefaced the Rebbe's explanation from the farbrengen of Shabbos Yisro: that a prohibition too draws down holiness, and even a higher holiness than that of a positive mitzvah, which is why it is drawn down precisely through a person's non-action, and in the time to come its true content will be revealed.
In the next section, on the basis of this introduction, we will read the continuation of the Alter Rebbe's words inside, the passage that begins «וזהו שכתוב אשר קידשנו במצוותיו».