In the previous section we worked through one way of explaining the verse. Now the Alter Rebbe offers a second explanation. He is not rejecting the first one, which is certainly correct; he is adding to it a fundamental point, one that the Alter Rebbe returns to and stresses again and again.
Assaf was not a prophet, but ruach hakodesh (divine inspiration) rested upon him. Ruach hakodesh is a different level from prophecy, and a lower one, yet even so things about the future can be said through it, even by someone who is not a prophet. Since Assaf had ruach hakodesh, he was not speaking only about his own era, but also about the era yet to come.
And this is what the Alter Rebbe emphasizes: Assaf is not speaking about himself alone, as one might have understood from the plain reading of the chapter, but in the name of all of Knesses Yisrael; and he is not speaking only about his own time, the time of the Beis HaMikdash, but about Knesses Yisrael in exile.
What is the difference between the time of the Beis HaMikdash and the time of exile? When the Beis HaMikdash stands, a Jew sees and feels: one sees G-dliness, one senses these things, and they are close to him. In exile there is a state of opacity, a numbness; one neither sees nor feels.
About this Assaf says, with ruach hakodesh: in exile a Jew will perform a mitzvah and will not know a thing and not feel a thing, and even at the very moment he is doing the mitzvah he will be like an animal, inside the whole matter and sensing nothing of it. And because of that he will not be with the Holy One, blessed be He? Because he is missing the feeling, is he therefore missing the connection? To this Assaf comes to say: even though he does not know and does not feel, “ואני תמיד עמך” (“yet I am always with You”), a Jew is always with the Holy One, blessed be He, and whenever he is doing His will he is with Him.
And in detail, following the words of the verse:
“ואני בער ולא אדע” (“I was brutish and did not know”), even before he performs the mitzvah he does not know.
“בהמות הייתי עמך” (“I was like an animal with You”), even at the moment that I am with You, my head is in animality and in nature: I am with You, but like an animal.
“ואני תמיד עמך” (“yet I am always with You”), and nevertheless I am together with You.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "כלומר שאף על פי שאני כבהמה בהיותי עמך, ולא אדע ולא ארגיש בנפשי יחוד זה" (“that is, even though I am like an animal while being with You, and I neither know nor feel this union in my soul”). A person feels nothing at all of this connection, that at that very moment the King is uniting with him. The King brings him in close and embraces him, and he feels like someone out for a stroll in the street.
Were he to feel it, his soul would be such "שתפול עליה אימה ופחד תחלה, ואחר כך אהבה רבה בתענוגים כרשפי אש, כמדת הצדיקים שנזדכך חומרם" (“that dread and fear would first fall upon it, and afterwards a great love of delights like flames of fire, as is the way of the tzaddikim whose material has been refined”). First he would recoil and tremble at the fact that the King has come to him, and then he would be filled with love: this King is embracing me, how I love Him, and every single moment would be full of kelos hanefesh, the soul expiring out of yearning. So it is with the tzaddikim whose material has been refined; but when a person does not feel, he is like an animal.
And this is the meaning of “ולא אדע”: “אדע” is from the word da'as, "וכנודע שדעת הוא לשון הרגשה בנפש" (“and as is known, da'as is an expression of feeling in the soul”). Chochmah and binah are knowing, understanding and learning, whereas da'as belongs to attachment and to feeling, "והוא כולל חסד וגבורה" (“and it includes chesed and gevurah”). And this is “ואני בער ולא אדע”: he feels nothing. He puts on tefillin, he learns Torah, and he senses nothing, like an animal.
"ואף על פי כן" (“and nevertheless”), Assaf comes and says, "אני תמיד עמך" (“I am always with You”). There are two purposes in this: to give a Jew encouragement, and to reveal this wondrous secret. He is not speaking about himself, but in the name of all of Israel in exile: know this, even though you are like an animal and feel nothing, you are with the King, and the King is holding you together with Him.
And the reason is: "כי אין החומר מונע יחוד הנפש בבורא עולם אין סוף ברוך הוא הממלא כל עלמין" (“for the material does not prevent the union of the soul with the Creator of the world, the blessed Ein Sof, who fills all worlds”). The coarse material does not interfere with the union itself; it is only a thick screen that blocks the feeling. The person senses nothing, yet the King is embracing him and he is together with Him, "וכמו שנאמר גם חושך לא יחשיך ממך" (“as it is said, even darkness is not dark for You”). From our side it is darkness, for we are in exile and we do not feel; from His side He is with us at every moment, and He sees in us something wondrous, something worth His descending for from His place of glory, to lift us out of the dust heaps and bring us in to Him.
"ובזה יובן חומר עונש איסור מלאכה בשבתות ואיסור חמץ בפסח השוה לכל נפש" (“and with this one can understand the severity of the punishment for the prohibition of work on Shabbos and the prohibition of chametz on Pesach, which is the same for every soul”). One who desecrates Shabbos where there are no witnesses, his punishment is kares; and if there were witnesses and a warning, his punishment is stoning. And one who eats chametz on Pesach, his punishment is kares. The reason for the severity is simple: the person took the most precious thing there is and ruined it. The Creator dwells within him and is with him, and he comes along and wrecks that; and whoever ruins and destroys the most precious thing of all has to answer for it.
By human logic there should have been a sliding scale of levels, according to who committed the transgression: if the one who transgressed is a great tzaddik, his punishment should be more severe, since he ruined a great holiness; and if the one who transgressed is a boor and an ignoramus who knows nothing on his own, and does not even know that work on Shabbos is forbidden, there would be room to be lenient with him, and even not to punish him at all, since apparently there is no holiness in him, he does not understand and does not know.
But the halachah in practice rules that the punishment is “the same for every soul.” A beis din makes no distinction whatsoever as to the level of the one standing before it, whether he is a tzaddik or a simple Jew. And from here the Alter Rebbe proves that even the simple Jew is not simple: in the most simple person there rests that very same holiness that rests in the tzaddik. Just as the great tzaddik who sinned ruined the lofty holiness that rests upon him, so too that very same lofty holiness rests also upon the simplest of the simple, "לפי שאף בנפש בור ועם הארץ גמור מאיר אור קדושת שבת ויום טוב" (“because even in the soul of a boor and a complete ignoramus there shines the light of the holiness of Shabbos and Yom Tov”). The moment Shabbos comes in, the moment Pesach comes in, a holiness descends into the world and rests upon the entire Jewish people, whether a person feels it or does not feel it. The holiness is there, and therefore it is upon him to guard it.
A parable: a man is holding a note worth a fortune, and he says “I do not understand what this is,” tears it up and throws it in the trash. Because he did not understand, was no damage done? The damage was done, and it makes no difference whether he understood or not.
Therefore "ונידון בנפשו בכרת ובסקילה על חילול קדושה זו" (“and he is judged with his life, with kares and with stoning, for the desecration of this holiness”). And this is the proof for the explanation of “בהמות הייתי עמך ואני תמיד עמך”: every Jew, whoever he may be, stands at the same level of holiness as Moshe Rabbeinu, and the same guarding of the holiness that rests on Shabbos and Yom Tov is demanded of him as was demanded of Moshe Rabbeinu. The difference between Moshe Rabbeinu and the simple person is in the feeling, in the seeing, in how tangible it is, but not in the thing itself; in the thing itself the holiness is equal in all of them.
And all of this is not only with Torah prohibitions, chametz on Pesach and desecrating Shabbos, which are mid'Oraisa, but even with rabbinic prohibitions: "וגם משהו חמץ" (“and even the smallest amount of chametz”), for if on Pesach a tiny grain of chametz became mixed into a large pot, the Sages were strict and forbade it to be eaten, and it is not nullified in sixty; and likewise "או טלטול מוקצה" (“or moving muktzeh”) on Shabbos, for alongside the thirty nine labors forbidden mid'Oraisa, the Sages forbade handling and touching certain objects (and an entire siman in Shulchan Aruch is devoted to the different categories of muktzeh), because of safeguards they established for various reasons. And in these too there is no difference between a simple person and a great one, and one who stumbles "פוגם בקדושה שעל נפשו כמו בקדושת נפש הצדיק כי תורה אחת לכולנה" (“blemishes the holiness upon his soul just as in the holiness of the soul of the tzaddik, for there is one Torah for them all”).
[A clarification is in order: between an unintentional act and a deliberate one there is a difference in punishment, but within the punishment for the unintentional act there is no difference from person to person, and likewise within the punishment for the deliberate act there is no difference from person to person. The blemish is made even unintentionally, like the parable of a man who jumped off a roof unknowingly, thinking the roof continued, and fell: he did not know and he is not to blame, but his bones are broken, and the outcome is one and the same. There is one Torah for all of us.]
At the close of the chapter the Alter Rebbe explains why the verse says “בהמות” in the plural, when the whole verse is in the singular: “ואני בער”, “ולא אדע”, “ואני תמיד עמך”. It should have said “בהמה הייתי עמך”.
And this is the allusion: "ומה שכתוב בהמות לשון רבים, לרמז כי לפניו יתברך גם בחינת דעת העליון הכולל חסד וגבורה נדמה כבהמות ועשייה גופנית לגבי אור אין סוף" (“and that it is written behemos, in the plural, is to allude that before Him, may He be blessed, even the level of the supernal da'as, which includes chesed and gevurah, is considered like animals and like physical action relative to the Ein Sof light”). That is to say, there is an animality that comes from not knowing, the animality of one who knows nothing at all; and there is the animality of one who knows a great deal, who relative to the Ein Sof is also like an animal. Hence “בהמות” in the plural: always “בהמות הייתי עמך”, whether I know nothing or whether I do know. And "כמו שכתוב כולם בחכמה עשית" (“as it is written, You made them all with chochmah”), for even chochmah is called “asiyah,” action, relative to the Ein Sof light: relative to us, asiyah is something low and chochmah something lofty, but relative to the Creator, chochmah and asiyah are equal. And this level "ונקראת בהמה רבה כמו שכתוב במקום אחר" (“is called behemah rabbah, as is written elsewhere”), an animal on a lofty level, and the matter is explained at length in Torah Or and Likkutei Torah.
"והוא שם ב"ן בגימ' בהמ"ה שלפני האצילות" (“and this is the name Ban, whose numerical value is behemah, which is before Atzilus”). This is alluded to in Kabbalah through one of the ways of spelling out the name Havayah in its milui, its filled-out form. The letters themselves, yud-hey-vav-hey, add up to twenty six; but in the milui, for example the letter yud, which is written and pronounced “yud”, adds up to twenty rather than ten. There are several ways of filling out the Name, and in one of them the numerical value comes to fifty two, and that is what Kabbalah calls “shem Ban.” And it is striking that “behemah” also has the numerical value of fifty two, and this is no coincidence: shem Ban alludes to a level that is before Atzilus, a very lofty level, and even so, relative to the Ein Sof that is above it, it is like an animal.
In summary: in this section we learned the Alter Rebbe's additional explanation of Assaf's words, which were said with ruach hakodesh in the name of all of Knesses Yisrael in exile: “ואני בער ולא אדע, בהמות הייתי עמך, ואני תמיד עמך”. Even though a Jew does not know and does not feel the union, and does not have the dread and the love that belong to the way of the tzaddikim, the material does not prevent the union of the soul with the Creator. From here we also understand the severity of the punishment for work on Shabbos and for chametz on Pesach, which is the same for every soul, since the light of the holiness of Shabbos and Yom Tov shines even in the soul of a boor and an ignoramus; and one who stumbles even in a rabbinic prohibition blemishes the holiness of his soul just as the soul of a tzaddik is blemished. And finally we learned the allusion in “בהמות” in the plural, that even the supernal da'as is considered like animals and like physical action relative to the Ein Sof light. The essential point: in the performance of a mitzvah a connection takes place with the lofty holiness and even with the holiness above it, the aspect of “havdalah,” and this exists whether a person understands and feels or does not understand and does not feel.
In the next section we will move on to chapter 47 and delve further into the Alter Rebbe's words.