"Cheder" three hundred and four in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Monday, 27 Elul 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Haazinu, Sheni, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, on the 27th of the month, recite from chapter 119 through chapter 134, along with the three additional chapters for the month of Elul — 79, 80, and 81.
Tanya: we continue studying Iggeret 19 in Iggeret HaKodesh. The daily lesson begins on page 148 with the words "vehineh bechinat," and concludes on page 256 with the word "beseichel."
The source of the daily teaching is a note written by the Rebbe Rayatz, which served as an introduction to a pamphlet published by the Rebbe Rashab, called "Kuntres Umaayan Mibeis Hashem". This kuntres was written by the Rebbe Rashab not specifically for the Temimim — as with other kuntreisim he wrote, "Kuntres HaTefillah" and the like — but for all of Israel; a kuntres that comes to describe how a Jew's way of life should be, according to Torah and mitzvos, in daily living.
As an introduction to this pamphlet, the Rebbe Rayatz sought to describe the general state of communal activism during the period of the Rebbe Rashab's leadership. He begins with a very broad overview of the Torah-related and moral condition of the Jewish people, and of the manner of avodah and communal work of all our Rebbeim, the leaders of our generations, and proceeds in order, bringing the entire chain of development up to the Rebbe Rashab, as an introduction to the purpose of the kuntres.
There, in that same note, he begins and explains the approach to communal work that was initiated by the Alter Rebbe — the first who founded the path of Chassidus. What is his approach to communal work? Here the daily teaching appears as the definition of the Alter Rebbe's approach, and thus it states: "From the holy words of our Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe: 'Israel is one nation in the land.'"
There is a verse that appears twice in Tanach with a slight difference: in the Book of Shmuel II (chapter 7, verse 23) it is written "and who is like Your people, keYisrael, one nation in the land," and in the Book of Divrei Hayamim I (chapter 17, verse 21) it is written "and who is like Your people Yisrael, one nation in the land." Here the Rebbe Rayatz quotes the words as they appear in Divrei Hayamim: "Yisrael, one nation in the land."
The simple meaning is that the Jewish people are unique in that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose them; but here he brings the inner meaning, "the Jewish people, even when immersed in the physicality of the world, remain bound with the One G-d." This is the meaning of being "one in the land"—that they instill within consciousness and within the world the awareness of the "One."
And the mission of the Jewish people in the world is expressed in a single sentence: "Hashem transforms the spiritual into the physical, and the Jewish people transform the physical into the spiritual." The Holy One, blessed be He, transforms the spiritual into the physical — He created the world, taking from the spiritual power and turning it into a physical world; and what is the mission of the Jewish people in the world? The Jewish people must take the physical and transform it into the spiritual.
The idea that the Jewish people reveal the One even within the earthly realm can be found in the Tanya, in the ninth letter of Iggeret HaKodesh. And the idea that the Jewish people transform the physical into the spiritual — while the Holy One, blessed be He, makes the spiritual into the physical, and the Jewish people do the reverse — appears also in Hayom Yom: we already had it in the saying of 27 Tevet, and afterward in the saying of 29 Adar Sheni, so that this same idea has already appeared twice, and here it appears a third time. This is the guiding line in the communal work of our Rebbeim, our Nesi'im — that one must instill Godliness in every place in the world, which is the matter of making the physical into a vessel for the spiritual.