We left off in the final portion of chapter 49, on daf 70 (page 139), at the fourth line from the top, with the words «והנה כאשר ישים המשכיל». Let us begin with a brief review of what we have learned so far, and from there continue onward.
In these chapters the Alter Rebbe maps out a process meant to bring a person to an awakening of love for the Almighty, the love called «כמים הפנים לפנים» (as water reflects a face back to a face): a contemplation that leads a person to the conclusion that he must give up his own personal concerns, or in the language of the Tanya, to surrender everything for the sake of G-d's will. And why is he obligated to go so far as to surrender everything? Because that is precisely what the Almighty does for him. We spoke about this at length in the discussion of the tzimtzumim, and before that in the discussion of the exodus from Egypt, whose entire content is that the Almighty constricts Himself, as it were, toward us; and the response this is meant to awaken from the other side is that a person too should give up everything for the sake of the Almighty.
This is the language of the verse in Shema: «ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודך», «And you shall love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might»:
«בכל לבבך», with all your heart: the things a person is bound to with his heart, even his wife and children.
«ובכל נפשך», with all your soul: his very life.
«ובכל מאודך», with all your might: his money, his livelihood, his food and his finances.
When all of these come into conflict with matters of Torah and mitzvos and with G-d's will, a person must keep before his eyes the goal and the purpose, which is G-d's will and not his own personal affairs.
It is for this reason that the blessings before Shema were instituted, for their entire purpose is contemplation of this very theme:
In the first blessing, a person contemplates the great angels, the seraphim and the ofanim, and the fact that they themselves sense how distant they are and declare «קדוש קדוש קדוש» (holy, holy, holy), meaning that He is separate and removed from them, and they search out where the Creator's revelation is to be found: «מלוא כל הארץ כבודו», the whole earth is filled with His glory.
In the second blessing this stands out even more sharply: although there exists so vast a world with angels and so on, with «אהבת עולם», an eternal love, the Almighty loved the Jewish people, and therefore constricted Himself, as it were, within the world, and all of it is for the sake of the Jewish people.
«והנה כאשר ישים המשכיל אלה הדברים אל לבו ומוחו», «And when the thoughtful person places these matters in his heart and mind». The lines that follow sum up everything said until now, together with the practical side of «ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך». The maskil, the one who understands all that has been explained in the first and second blessings of Shema, and takes these matters into the depth of his heart and the depth of his mind, what is the result?
«אזי ממילא כמים הפנים לפנים תתלהט נפשו», «then of itself, as water reflects a face back to a face, his soul will be set aflame». Just as fire catches hold of a wick and blazes up, so too a person who contemplates the great love that the Creator extends to him and acts upon with him, and who grasps this and connects to it in the depth of his heart and the depth of his mind, immediately says: just tell me what He wants me to do, and I am ready to do anything. He gives up all the pleasures of the world, his own thoughts, and all those personal concerns that had seemed to him so necessary.
«ותתלבש ברוח נדיבה», «and it will be clothed in a spirit of generosity»: a spirit of holiness and of giving, to donate oneself, to give oneself over, and «להתנדב, להניח ולעזוב כל אשר לו מנגד», «to volunteer, to set aside and abandon everything he has». All his affairs, needs and desires he places «מנגד», off to the side, at a distance. And then a person asks himself: what is the goal and the purpose, and what is it that I really want? And the answer is «ורק לדבקה בו יתברך, וליכלל באורו», «only to cleave to Him, may He be blessed, and to be absorbed in His light», to be included in the divine light, «בדביקה חשיקה וכו'», «in attachment and longing», to cleave to the Creator and to yearn for that very cleaving.
This movement of the soul is called in chassidus «ratzo», running outward. A person wants to escape the state he is in, because he understands that the reality in which he finds himself, the environment in which he lives and the desires that plague him are all obstacles, whereas Torah, mitzvos and G-d's will are the true purpose, for the sake of which he is prepared to do anything in order to connect to it.
The cleaving a person seeks is «בבחינת נשיקין והתדבקות רוחא ברוחא כנôל», «in the aspect of kisses, the attachment of spirit to spirit, as mentioned above». Just as a person who loves another with a great love expresses it with a kiss, which is an expression of connection and love, so it is with the Jew's relationship to the Almighty. And what is the true meaning of the kiss? The attachment of spirit to spirit: the inner spirit of the giver seeks to cleave to the spirit of the receiver, and both of them desire to be bound up with one another. The genuine bond between them is an inner bond, a bond of spirit, and the act of kissing is no more than an outer expression of something far more inward taking place between them.
As has been explained many times: when love and connection are of a limited measure, a person expresses them in speech; and when the love grows and intensifies until speech can no longer contain it, it finds expression in a kiss. So too Shir HaShirim says by way of metaphor: «ישקני מנשיקות פיהו», «Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth». The meaning of «ואהבת את ה' אלוקיך» is therefore that the Jew should want to be attached to the Creator with the loftiest attachment there can possibly be. Further on we will expand on the explanation of the metaphor of the kisses and their meaning in spiritual terms, as the Alter Rebbe will bring from the Eitz Chaim.
With this the explanation of «כמים הפנים לפנים» essentially comes to a close: the contemplation that began in chapter 46 and that leads us to this conclusion, to this kiss and to this cleaving.
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From here until the end of the chapter the Alter Rebbe comes to explain how a Jew's love for the Almighty is to find its proper expression, and in particular how this is expressed in the continuation of the verses of Shema. For in the course of the discussion we explained the blessings of Shema, and we explained «ואהבת... בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודך», which is the climax; and what comes next? «והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנוכי מצווך היום על לבבך. ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם», «And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them», and after that «וקשרתם» and so on. What is the link and connection between this continuation and what was said before it?
The question becomes sharper in light of the preceding lines: when a Jew loves with a fierce and yearning love, and understands that the Almighty does everything for his sake, this is a soul movement of «ratzo», leaving everything behind and setting everything aside, as if to say: I am not interested in anything, only that I be able to learn and to pray; my surroundings do not interest me and nothing interests me. On the face of it, the conclusion that follows is a total flight from everything, to seclude oneself on some distant island and be bound up with the Creator, for that is what he wants.
To this the Torah comes and teaches that after the great movement of the soul of «ואהבת», to the point of «בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודך», which means giving up everything, the things called «your heart», the things called «your soul» and the things called «your might», a person should not think that the conclusion to be drawn from all this is «ratzo», an elevation and a flight from the reality of the world and from one's surroundings, remaining in a kind of soulful uplift that has no grip on reality at all, pure ascent and nothing else. That is indeed how it would seem at first glance.
In summary: in this section we completed the explanation of the love of «כמים הפנים לפנים»: the thoughtful person who brings the contemplation of the blessings of Shema into the depths of his heart and mind, his soul is set aflame, is clothed in a spirit of generosity, sets aside and abandons all that is his, and seeks only to cleave to the Creator and be absorbed in His light, in the aspect of kisses and the attachment of spirit to spirit, which is an inner bond of which the kiss is merely the expression. We noted that this movement of the soul is «ratzo», and we opened with the question of how the continuation of the verses of Shema, «והיו הדברים האלה... ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם», fits after the climax of «ואהבת».
In the next section we will take up the danger of fleeing from reality, and we will see how the Torah teaches that this love must find its expression specifically in Torah and mitzvos within the reality of the world.