The flow of the Alter Rebbe's words is this: when a Jew sits down to learn Torah, accepts upon himself ol malchus shomayim (the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven) and resolves to study, at that very moment he is going out of Mitzrayim. Every single day a Jew is handed the opportunity to leave Mitzrayim, to connect with the King, and to merit the «embrace and the kiss» with Him. This is not an event that happened three thousand years ago; it is happening now. It is exactly like the blessings over the Torah, where we do not say «Who gave the Torah» but «Who gives the Torah», in the present tense, at every moment.
[A question was raised here: why does the Alter Rebbe open specifically with the wording that in every generation and every day a person is obligated to see himself as though he had gone out of Mitzrayim, that is, the inner avodah a person does on himself, and only afterwards the practical matter of learning Torah? The explanation: the main emphasis is placed on the inner avodah of every day, that a person bring himself to a state of going out of the meitzar, the straits in which he is held, suffering and imprisoned, and from there he draws on Torah as the means to reach that point of freedom and to become one with Hashem. This is the Alter Rebbe's way in many places: to open with the language of Chazal, and afterwards to explain the inner dimension of the matter.]
Here the Alter Rebbe offers a beautiful reading of the wording we say in the Shemoneh Esrei of yom tov: «Vetiten lanu Hashem Elokeinu be'ahavah mo'adim lesimchah», «And You gave us, Hashem our G-d, festivals for rejoicing, with love.» On a plain reading it sounds as though the weight of the sentence lies in what follows: What did You give us? Festivals and appointed times. The opening words seem to be swallowed up, mere introduction. The Alter Rebbe comes and says: Stop! The wondrous thing has already been said in the very first words, «וזהו שאומרים ותתן לנו ה' אלוקינו», «and this is what we say: And You gave us, Hashem our G-d.» What is the gift? That the Holy One gave us the ability to relate Him to ourselves and to call Him «our G-d.» That is the greatest gift of all, and it finds its expression in the mitzvos, the festivals and the Torah.
And why did He give us this? «באהבה כו'», «with love.» Because He loves us. This is the whole thrust of these chapters: out of His great love, He does not want to remain an abstract G-d who has no relationship to the created being, but to be your G-d personally, in a way that a person actually feels he belongs to the whole matter.
And in fact we do not say this only on the festivals but every single day. In Shemoneh Esrei we say: «כי באור פניך נתת לנו ה' אלקינו כו'», «for with the light of Your countenance You gave us, Hashem our G-d.» And here one must pause. What follows, «a Torah of life» and so on, is already the detail; the inner meaning lies in the giving itself: You gave us the possibility, the opportunity, the great privilege, the gift (vetiten, from the word matanah, a present), that we are able to relate the Creator to ourselves and say: He is ours, He is our G-d.
How great this gift is can be learned from a striking passage in Hayom Yom. The Alter Rebbe once came out of his room and heard the Rebbetzin speaking with one of the women; wishing to quote him, she said in Yiddish «meiner zogt», «mine says», meaning, my husband says such and such. The Alter Rebbe heard that she was relating him to herself and calling him «mine», and he immediately fell into deveikus, contemplating the greatness of the Creator, until he sank down onto the doorstep. He said: With how many mitzvos am I yours? With one mitzvah I am yours, and with how many mitzvos are we the Holy One's! So we see that the Holy One has given us the capacity to be His and for Him to be our G-d, along the lines of the relationship of a man betrothing a woman that was brought in the previous chapter. For this a Jew thanks the Creator at every opportunity: thank You for «Vetiten lanu Hashem Elokeinu.»
From here comes the conclusion at the end of the chapter: a person does not have to be Avraham Avinu, who reached his level through avodah and toil. It is enough that he is an heir, a son of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. By the very fact that he is part of the Jewish people, he received this as a gift without having done a thing for it: he received as a gift the possibility of leaving Mitzrayim at this very moment, for everyone stood at Har Sinai and received the Torah at mattan Torah, and every Jew has the ability to actualize this in practice. Had it required labor and investment merely to earn the possibility of leaving Mitzrayim, not everyone would be suited to it or capable of it. But once a person is told that he need do nothing, that it is already his as a gift, then everything depends on him alone.
«ולזה אין מונע לנו מדבקות הנפש ביחודו ואורו יתברך», «and therefore nothing prevents us from the soul's attachment to His unity and His light.» There is nothing that can stop us from connecting, right now, to the King and to the Creator, so that He be our G-d. The only thing liable to interfere and hold a person back is «אלא הרצון שאם אין האדם רוצה כלל ח"ו לדבקה בו כו'», «only the will, for if a person does not want at all, G-d forbid, to cleave to Him.» If he does not want it, no one in the world can accomplish it for him. (And this is precisely the work of the yetzer and the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul: to confuse a person and pull his will elsewhere.)
But from the other side: «אבל מיד שרוצה - ומקבל וממשיך עליו אלקותו יתברך», «but as soon as he wants, and accepts and draws down upon himself His G-dliness.» The moment a person wants, accepts and draws G-dliness upon himself, «ואומר ה' אלקינו ה' אחד הרי ממילא נכללת נפשו ביחודו יתברך», «and says Hashem our G-d, Hashem is One, his soul is automatically absorbed into His unity.» In a single moment a person can bring this about in actual fact, and all he needs is to want it.
The Rebbe's father, the mekubal Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, draws many precise inferences from the Tanya, including along the lines of Kabbalah and the inner dimension of Torah, showing how much a whole world is contained in a single expression or even in the precise letters. Here he examines the three terms the Alter Rebbe uses, «wants», «accepts», «draws down», and specifically in that order. What is the difference between them? «Wants» is still only in the realm of desire and waiting; «draws down» means he is drawing it, but it is not yet with him; «accepts» means he has already received it, in thought and in speech, and the thing is already his.
By rights the order should have been: wants, draws down, and then accepts. But the terms correspond to the order of the verse that the Alter Rebbe brings immediately afterwards, «Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad»:
«Hashem» corresponds to «wants»: the person's desire that the Name of Hashem be drawn to him.
«Elokeinu» corresponds to «accepts»: He is already our G-d, already ours.
«Hashem Echad» corresponds to «draws down».
So we see that even the order of the terms in Tanya is wondrously precise, aligned with the order of the words of the verse.
And so, at the very moment a person accepts upon himself ol malchus shomayim, his soul is absorbed into His unity, along the lines of «דרוח אייתי רוח ואמשיך רוח», «for spirit brings forth spirit and draws down spirit»: the Jew's spirit brings and draws down upon him the Divine spirit and unites him with it. «והיא בחינת יציאת מצרים», «and this is the aspect of the exodus from Mitzrayim.» This is not an event of three thousand years ago or two thousand years ago; it is happening at this very moment: a person sitting and learning a shiur in Tanya is right now going out of Mitzrayim.
«ולכן תקנו פרשת יציאת מצרים בשעת קריאת שמע דווקא», «and this is why they established the passage of the exodus from Mitzrayim specifically at the time of Krias Shema.» Why was the third paragraph, the passage of the exodus, placed specifically within Krias Shema? If the whole point is to recall the exodus each day, there are other remembrances that we recall daily which are not attached to Krias Shema. So what is the unique connection between Krias Shema and the exodus from Mitzrayim? The answer is that when a person recites Krias Shema and accepts upon himself the oneness of the Creator, by that very act he is going out of Mitzrayim. They are one and the same matter.
«אף שהיא מצוה בפני עצמה ולא ממצות קריאת שמע, כדאיתא בגמרא ופוסקים», «even though it is a mitzvah in its own right and not part of the mitzvah of Krias Shema, as is stated in the Gemara and the poskim.» The Gemara in Berachos and the Shulchan Aruch establish that these are two separate matters and not a single unit, as is evident from the language of the poskim in the case of one who is in doubt whether he recited it and whether he must go back and recite it again. Nevertheless the two were joined together, «אלא מפני שהן דבר אחד ממש», «but because they are literally one and the same thing»: going out of the straits and limitations of the body is itself the acceptance of the King's yoke and the acceptance of His unity, and by that very act a person leaves his own narrow straits and connects to the Infinite.
This entire matter rests on the expression «Elokeinu», which is higher than «the G-d of Avraham». And it is striking to see that Krias Shema opens with «Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu», «וכן בסוף פרשת יציאת מצרים מסיים גם כן אני ה' אלוקיכם», «and likewise at the end of the passage of the exodus it concludes as well: I am Hashem your G-d.» It is one and the same matter: in order for there to be «your G-d», the G-d who is yours, we begin with the acceptance of the yoke, «Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu», and conclude with «I am Hashem your G-d»: once you have gone out of Mitzrayim, He is your G-d. «והיינו גם כן כמו שנתבאר לעיל», «and this too is as was explained above», as explained in chapter 46.
It is worth emphasizing: from chapter 46 on its own, which describes how the King comes down to lift each and every person out of his lowliness, one might have thought we were dealing with stories of history. Therefore the Alter Rebbe immediately added chapter 47 and taught that this is not history but current events, happening at every single moment. (All the more so when we learn this on the night of Rosh Chodesh Nissan, in the days leading up to Pesach: the matter is unfolding right now.)
In summary: in this chapter we learned that Torah study and the acceptance of ol malchus shomayim are the exodus from Mitzrayim of this very moment, «nosein haTorah», in the present tense. We saw the Alter Rebbe's beautiful reading of «Vetiten lanu Hashem Elokeinu be'ahavah», that the essence of the gift is the ability to relate the Creator to ourselves and to say «Elokeinu», just as we say every day «for with the light of Your countenance You gave us, Hashem our G-d.» We saw the account from Hayom Yom about the Alter Rebbe and the Rebbetzin, and the conclusion that one need not be Avraham Avinu; it is enough to be an heir who received everything as a gift. We learned that «nothing prevents us from the soul's attachment to His unity and His light» except the will, and that as soon as a person wants, he accepts and draws down and his soul is absorbed into His unity. We saw Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's precise reading of the order of the terms «wants, accepts, draws down» as corresponding to «Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad», and the reason the passage of the exodus is joined to Krias Shema: because they are literally one and the same thing.
In the coming sections, in chapter 48 and the first half of chapter 49, we will take up the explanation of the great descent: how the King comes down and contracts Himself in order to raise up each and every one of us.