Today we continue with the letter that constitutes the opening which the Rebbe established for the sefer "Hayom Yom". First we will provide a bit of background to the letter, and afterwards we will read it from within.
Background to the letter:
In the year 5652 the Rebbe Rashab was not in his regular place in Lubavitch, since he had to travel on communal matters to Moscow. The chassidim were accustomed to the Rebbe being with them in Lubavitch on 19 Kislev, the festival of redemption, and this time he was not there. Therefore the Rebbe Rashab sought to give the chassidim a special empowerment, and he sent them a letter from Moscow to Lubavitch, a few days before 19 Kislev - on 16 Kislev - in which he explains to them what 19 Kislev is. That is to say, a farbrengen in advance, in writing. We left the content of this letter for last, in a quotation with several omissions, and the Rebbe chose to bring it as the opening of the sefer.
It is worth prefacing that the letter aroused very great excitement at the time. It was sent to all the gatherings of chassidim throughout Russia, and since the mail was slow in those days, there were places where the letter reached them only in the month of Shevat and not in Kislev. In the letters of the previous Rebbe there are descriptions of how the letter was received, and he brings examples from several places - in Petersburg, in Vilna, in Kremenchug and in Brisk. He describes how chassidim received it some two months later, and there were those who held three days of farbrengens in the month of Shevat just in honor of receiving the letter, saying: now we have received it, and now we will make something of it. This is a letter that aroused very great excitement, and it tells us the meaning of the day of 19 Kislev.
The wording of the letter as the Rebbe brings it:
The letter is addressed to the previous Rebbe, since the Rebbe Rashab wrote it to his son. Therefore in the opening of the letter, which the Rebbe does not quote, it says "my son, may he live", and thus it begins: "My son, may he live, you shall gather on 19 Kislev". The Rebbe skipped the first words, and even the letter beis in the word "behatchil", and moves directly to the matter - "19 Kislev, the festival on which our soul was redeemed in peace". Here too there is a skipping of a few words from the original letter.
Even in this sentence there is a certain novelty: the Alter Rebbe himself, when he came out of his imprisonment, describes in a letter that he wrote, that at the moment he received the tidings of the redemption he was saying chapter 55 in Tehillim, and when he reached the verse "He redeemed my soul in peace" he received the tidings - in the singular. Whereas here it becomes something for all the chassidim: "who redeemed our soul in peace" - all of us, all of the Jewish people, all the chassidim; we are in a state in which our soul was redeemed through this redemption.
"And the light and vitality of our soul was given to us" - this day is the day on which the light and vitality of our soul were given to us. In his sichos the Rebbe emphasizes the wording that was chosen - "light and vitality" - and says: chassidus did not introduce anything new in Yiddishkeit, rather it is like light or like vitality. What is light? When a room is dark and one turns on the light, one does not add items to the room; all the items that were there remain as they were, only that now the room is illuminated and one sees what is going on in it. So too chassidus did not add anything, but rather illuminated what exists. And likewise with vitality: a person, Heaven forbid, who has 248 limbs and 365 sinews and is whole - but he is not alive; and when there is vitality in him, no limb was added to him, rather all the 248 limbs and 365 sinews that were in him began to live. This is chassidus - light and vitality. These two expressions emphasize that there is no addition of something new here, but rather an illumination of what exists.
"This day is the Rosh Hashanah for the words of the living G-d" - here there is a very interesting novelty. In the original, when the Rebbe Rashab wrote the letter, there were three more words here, and the Rebbe omitted them and thereby changed the meaning entirely. In the original the Rebbe Rashab wrote: "and it is close to say that this day is the Rosh Hashanah" - in a style of a certain reservation, that it is close to say that 19 Kislev is Rosh Hashanah. The Rebbe omits the three words "and it is close that", and he does not even mark three dots of omission, but writes it in continuous flow and in a clear and unequivocal manner: 19 Kislev is Rosh Hashanah.
This can be understood on the basis of an interesting story that occurred between the previous Rebbe and his father, the Rebbe Rashab. Once the previous Rebbe repeated before his father-in-law a maamar of chassidus that he had heard from his father, and when he returned to his father, his father asked him: tell me what you said and how you repeated it? The son repeated the words before his father word for word. His father said to him: "You repeated a maamar, and in a certain passage which I said in the style of 'possibly', 'perhaps' - I hear that you say it in a definitive manner". He answered him: "Father, what by you is 'perhaps', by me becomes certain". Along these lines here as well: the Rebbe Rashab wrote "it is close to say", and the Rebbe wrote it in a definitive manner - this day is the Rosh Hashanah for the words of the living G-d. The letter was written by the Rebbe Rashab, but the words "it is close" were removed by the Rebbe.
"Which our holy fathers bequeathed to us, may the memory of the righteous and holy ones be for the life of the World to Come, their souls in Eden, may their merit protect us" - our holy fathers bequeathed this day to us. In writing "our holy fathers" the Rebbe Rashab means the Alter Rebbe, the Mitteler Rebbe, and in fact all the Rebbeim before that, who bequeathed to us the words of the living G-d. "And it is the very Torah of the Baal Shem Tov" - meaning, the redemption of this day, the words of the living G-d that our Rebbeim, the Rebbeim of Chabad, taught, is the Torah of the Baal Shem Tov: this is what the Baal Shem Tov revealed to the world, and it came down through our Rebbeim, our leaders.
It is Rosh Hashanah to such a degree, that the Rebbe Rashab adds an interesting sentence: "This day is the beginning of Your works". This expression is familiar to us from the Rosh Hashanah prayer, and about it too a question is asked: Rosh Hashanah falls on 1 Tishrei, which is the sixth day of the creation of the world, whereas the world was created on 25 Elul - and seemingly "the beginning of Your works" should be said about 25 Elul. And nevertheless we say in the prayer "This day is the beginning of Your works" about Rosh Hashanah. And the explanation: the purpose of the creation of the world was not for the inanimate, the vegetative and the animal that were created in the first five days, but for man who was created on the sixth day. Along these lines, and on a deeper level: man was already created, and human beings have existed for thousands of years, but when the teaching of chassidus arrived - that was the purpose of everything. Consequently, about the day which is 19 Kislev we say "This day is the beginning of Your works" - the world began on the day that is the Rosh Hashanah of chassidus.
This is the day on which began "the completeness of the true intention in the creation of man upon the earth"; for this purpose man was created in the world - that he should have the acquaintance with the innerness of the Torah, "to draw down the revelation of the light of the innerness of our holy Torah in the world, which is drawn down on this day in the manner of a general drawing down for the entirety of the year". Since this is Rosh Hashanah, and just as the head includes all the limbs, so Rosh Hashanah includes all the days of the year: on 19 Kislev the revelation of the innerness of the Torah is drawn down for the entire year. The whole year, in which we have the ability to connect to the innerness of the Torah, comes from the power of the head - 19 Kislev.
"And it is upon us to illuminate our hearts on this day from the aspect of inner and essential desire and will" - on this day a Jew must arouse his innerness and his will for G-dliness. "In the truth of the point of our heart" one can arouse the true and inner part of the heart, "that it should illuminate our soul with the light of the innerness of His Torah, blessed be He". That is to say, on this day we received the power to absorb the entire essence of chassidus, and a Jew must arouse his heart and connect to this.
We will conclude with the following passage, which contains an interesting expression that is also connected to Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Teshuvah. On every day from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur we say the psalm "From the depths I called to You, Hashem", and the Rebbe Rashab uses the same wording here as well, on the Rosh Hashanah of chassidus: "From the depths I called to You, Hashem". It is known that "depths" is in the plural, and this refers both to the depth of the Jew and to the depth of the Creator, as it were. That is to say, it is within the Jew's ability to reveal the G-dly depth in the depth of his heart, through the depth of the Torah - which is the innerness of the Torah. And as he specifies: "to draw down from the aspect of the depth or the innerness of the Torah of Hashem and the mitzvos of Hashem" - this is one depth, the depth of Torah and the depth of the mitzvos; and from where is it drawn down? "From the aspect of the innerness and essence of the Ohr Ein Sof, blessed be He" - from the depth of the Creator, "that it should illuminate in the innerness of our soul" - in the depth of our soul. This is "from the depths": all the depths connect together.
"That our entire essence" - and what is "our entire essence"? "That is to say, our entire existence, the essence, the extension, etc." - our G-dly soul and our animal soul. "Should be to Him alone, blessed be He" - that all of us should be connected to one purpose alone, to the will of Hashem; this is that all our essence and substance and extension should be connected to the matter. And in order that this should be expressed also in the animal soul and not only in the G-dly soul, he brings it down to simple terms: "to banish from us every evil and unseemly trait from the natural traits" - that we be rid of the unseemly traits, which are from the animal soul. For if our entire essence and our entire existence will be connected to the matter, this will banish from us every evil trait.
Let us also recall what we spoke about in previous lessons, that the name "Hayom Yom" recalls sefiras ha'omer, in which one also begins with the words "hayom yom" ("today is day"), and there the avodah is to work on the traits. And here we see this very emphasis - that this sefer, and chassidus in general, come to work "to banish from us every evil and unseemly trait from the natural traits".
"For if all our doings and our matters" - all our occupation and all our essence - "whether in avodah", meaning the service of Hashem, prayer and Torah and mitzvos, "and whether in worldly matters that are necessary for the sustenance of the body", the things that a person requires in order to live - to eat, to drink and to sleep - all of a person's occupation, in spirituality and in physicality alike, "will be with a true intention for the sake of Heaven, which is the desire of Hashem etc.". This is that our entire essence and selfhood are connected to the matter. "And may Hashem, blessed be He, the Father of mercies, have mercy upon us and lead us in the good and straight path, the upright shall behold His countenance". "Father of mercies" too is an expression said during the Ten Days of Teshuvah: on ordinary days we say "Who is like You, merciful Father", whereas on the auspicious days of the Ten Days of Teshuvah, and likewise on Shabbos at Minchah, we say "Father of mercies", which is a higher level - and here the Rebbe Rashab mentions the deeper aspect.
An allusion to the name Havayah:
There is a matter here by way of allusion. As we will see, with G-d's help, when we study the continuation of the sayings in the coming months, one of the chassidim searched - and the Rebbe even urged him to labor and find - how the entire sefer is structured as an allusion following the order of the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam. We will see further on that the sayings follow the order: Sefer HaMada, Sefer HaAhavah, and within that itself according to certain divisions by way of allusion. That chassid wrote to the Rebbe that he had found part and had not found everything, and the Rebbe replied to him: you labored and you found. And it is interesting that the Rambam opens his sefer with an allusion to the name Havayah - "the foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms" is an allusion to the name Havayah. Here too the Rebbe opened the saying and quoted from the letter only passages, with skips, and from this there emerges an allusion to the name Havayah: the words "19 Kislev" in the first line - yud; "the festival on which our soul was redeemed in peace" - hei; "and the light and vitality of our soul was given to us" - vav; "this day is the Rosh Hashanah" - the final hei. So here we have the name Havayah by allusion, not in a prominent manner - that in this too the Rebbe alluded to opening the sefer with the name Havayah. This is not something the Rebbe wrote explicitly, but rather the stir that that chassid publicized, and apparently there is truth to it. With G-d's help we will continue further, and we will also see the sayings themselves.