The forty-ninth "cheder" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Shabbos, 26 Menachem Av, 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Eikev, Shevii, with Rashi's commentary — end of the parsha.
Tehillim, on the 26th of the month, one recites from chapter 97 through chapter 103 inclusive.
Tanya: On this day we conclude the fifth letter of Iggeret HaKodesh. The daily portion begins on page 216 with the word "ach," continuing until the end of the letter with the words "vehamaskilim yavinu."
The daily teaching is a summary of the first letter of the maamar beginning "Taamu ur'u ki tov Hashem" (Taste and see that Hashem is good), which the Rebbe Rayatz delivered on Shabbat Parashat Ki-Tisa in the year 5694, while he was in Riga. In the maamar, the Rebbe Rayatz opens with a question on the verse "Taamu ur'u ki tov Hashem": "taste" and "sight" are two things that pertain only to tangible, physical things — to taste something one must taste it with the palate, and likewise one can only see physical things. If so, how can it be said "Taamu ur'u ki tov Hashem"? How can one speak of G-dliness in terms of "taste" or "sight"? This is his question.
The Rebbe Rayatz explains this there at length, citing the Sforno, that even in intellectual perception there is something that acts in a tangible manner. To clarify this, he brings an example from a practical mitzvah — tefillin — and from it, as an analogy, to the love of Hashem and the fear of Hashem, which can be tangible and very intense.
Let us examine the wording as the Rebbe cites the passages that summarize the chapter. "Just as the mitzvah of tefillin, by way of analogy, has a fixed place on the head and on the arm" — when a person dons tefillin, there is a bayit for the head and a bayit for the hand, and each of them is in a fixed place on the body, on the head or on the arm. Moreover, the presence of the tefillin upon the body is felt in a tangible way: a person "feels the weight of the tefillin of the head" — for their weight is felt, and during prayer you sense that there are tefillin of the head upon you; and likewise "the tightness of the tefillin of the hand" — for the mitzvah is "and you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand," to tighten them — and you feel that the tefillin are bound tightly upon your hand. It emerges that this mitzvah is felt in the physical limbs of a person, in the hand and in the head. This is the analogy.
And what is the analogue? "So it is with the mitzvos of love and awe" — so too with the mitzvos of love of Hashem and awe of Hashem, they must be in a manner that is truly felt in physicality, "and as the Rambam writes (Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, chapter 2, halacha 1): "This honored and awesome G-d — it is a mitzvah to love Him and to fear Him" — the Holy One, blessed be He, the honored and awesome, it is a mitzvah to love Him and to be in awe of Him — and he brings the verses, "as it is stated 'And you shall love Hashem your G-d,' and it is stated 'Hashem your G-d you shall fear'".
The Rebbe Rayatz explains that these mitzvot of love and awe are not merely a matter of intellectual thought — that a person thinks in his mind "this is how I love" and that suffices; this is not called love. Love must be in a manner that affects the person and is felt by him in a tangible way. As he states: "Behold, the measure of these mitzvot is that they be felt with physical sensation in the very flesh of the heart" — what is the measure and degree of these mitzvot by which one can say the mitzvah has been fulfilled properly? That the love and awe be so strong that the physical heart itself actually feels them.
How is this expressed? We are speaking of love of G-d or fear of Heaven, and in order to make it understood, the Rebbe Rayatz brings an example from something tangible — a person who loves his fellow or fears his fellow. In the maamar the Rebbe Rayatz expands upon various examples, and here he brings it briefly: "and just like a person who meets his faithful friend" — when you meet a person who is your dear friend, and your love for him is very strong. It may be that a person is preoccupied with the concerns of life and with matters that trouble him, absorbed in them all day long, and when he happens by chance to meet someone for whom his love is immense and whom he has not seen for a long time, suddenly a powerful feeling of love toward him is aroused within him.
What does this feeling accomplish in you? "And not only this" — not only that at the moment of the encounter "he feels good from it" and he forgets for a moment all the things that weigh upon him and trouble him in life, because you are now caught up in the great love for that person — but even more than this: "an inner vitality is aroused in him, with a good hope." Not only is he no longer troubled by the things that had troubled him, but on the contrary, he finds himself in joy and elevation, and there is within him a good hope; he tangibly and completely abandons the not-good feelings he had, and the matter also elevates him to something very qualitative — "for his heart is good within him," because you felt good. This is the example from an encounter with a deeply beloved person.
Now he brings an example from the other side, "and so too with the attribute of fear (yirah)," and here too he elaborates in the maamar. There are various people whom one encounters, and correspondingly there is one's reaction to them: sometimes one meets a great sage, and there awakens within him a feeling of yirat ha-romemut (awe of exaltedness); sometimes one meets an officer or a person of high standing — and at each and every level, in accordance with the stature of the person he has met, a feeling awakens within him, either fear of punishment or awe, and this feeling affects him. As he specifies: "a great dread and fear falls upon him" — if this is a person of whom he is afraid, lest he make a mistake and be punished, dread falls upon him; and if this is a great sage or a great tzaddik, there awakens within him a feeling of nothingness and smallness before the greatness of that person.
"For at that time" — now, if we are speaking of the nimshal, of the Holy One blessed be He, and you are contemplating fear of Heaven, why does it produce in you a contraction or fear? "He recalls all his not-good matters" — a person says, "I am not so perfect, there are things in which I have failed, and the Holy One blessed be He does not desire what I have done" — whether in thought, in speech, or in deed, he recalls his shortcomings in one of them. "And his heart aches with a palpable pain" — he feels a certain pressure from the situation. And from what is this pressure caused? "From fear of punishment, out of fear of Heaven"; and not fear of punishment on the low level, where a person is simply afraid of being punished and fears for himself, but rather punishment in the positive sense, that it will rectify him and remove from him the "filth" — and even this itself he feels as distress.
"And at times it is with a feeling of the awe of shame, or also the awe of exaltedness" — that he is ashamed: as in the well-known expression "the clipped-winged ones before the great eagle," how can I, who have committed such and such a sin, stand before the Divine greatness? And this brings about within him a contraction, and likewise the awe of exaltedness in the various levels within yirah.
It emerges that the Rebbe's intent here is that these mitzvos of fear and love are actually felt in the physicality of the body, and are not an abstract mitzvah. On this basis the Rebbe also explains the wording "taste and see that Hashem is good": this matter of "Hashem is good" has an expression of taste and sight, for it has a bodily effect, and therefore the verse uses expressions that pertain only to physical things.
Simply put, this teaching relates to Parshas Eikev — for on Shabbos we conclude the entire Parshas Eikev — since in Parshas Eikev the expression "to love Hashem" appears, and the mitzvah of tefillin also appears in it. The saying thus joins these two matters together into one content, and this is its meaning.