With good fortune and blessing we begin a new cycle of study in the Tanya. And our study begins with the very first words that the author of the sefer, the Alter Rebbe, wrote. Those words are not found in chapter one; they appear on the title page, which serves as the opening to the entire sefer. The title page contains only a few lines from the Alter Rebbe's own pen, and it seems clear that even in those lines we must weigh every word and grasp exactly what he meant, for these are the opening lines that lay out the road map for approaching the whole sefer.
The Alter Rebbe wrote the Tanya over the course of twenty years. He sat, wrote, weighed and measured, not only the content, which is of course exact and deliberate, but even the form in which it is expressed, the letters and the words themselves. Over a single word, whether it would be spelled full or defective, the Alter Rebbe would linger a long while, for the Tanya is astonishingly precise in every single letter. It follows, then, that in every word and every line there is great depth to be understood and studied. That is the starting point we need to carry with us as we enter the gates of this sefer.
It is worth noting that there exist commentaries on the Tanya written by the Rebbe's father, the mekubal Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, in which he weighs the Alter Rebbe's wording and uncovers the Kabbalistic dimension behind it. How much more so, then, on the level of the plain meaning, must the Tanya be studied with care and depth. Commentaries beyond count have been written on this sefer.
One more general point by way of preface. Among chassidim, for generations, it was accepted practice not to offer personal, novel interpretations of the Tanya, but to rely only on the explanations handed down from generation to generation, on the understanding that these reflect the author's intent. Even so, there is a saying the Rebbe repeated many times in the name of the Rebbe Rashab (the fifth Rebbe in the Chabad line): if an explanation or an idea occurs to someone that can add in matters of Torah, mitzvos and fear of Heaven, he has permission to say it, even if it is not something he heard or received. In any case, the accepted, traditional explanations are many, and through them one can delve deeply and understand the Alter Rebbe's words.
Let us turn to the title page as the Alter Rebbe wrote it:
"ספר ליקוטי אמרים", "Sefer Likutei Amarim" - this is the name given to the sefer. Already in this name we see the Alter Rebbe's profound humility: he calls his work a collection of sayings that he merely labored to gather. "Amarim," sayings that he collected, as if nothing here is his own and it is all no more than an anthology, even though it certainly contains a great many novel insights and entirely fresh perspectives.
"חלק ראשון הנקרא בשם ספר של בינונים", "Part One, called the Book of the Intermediates" - the Tanya has several parts. As it stands before us today, it comprises five:
Part one: Likutei Amarim.
Part two: Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah.
Part three: Igeres HaTeshuvah.
Part four: Igeres HaKodesh.
Part five: Kuntres Acharon.
"מלוקט מפי ספרים ומפי סופרים קדושי עליון נשמתם עדן", "Culled from books and from teachers, holy ones of the Most High, whose souls are in Eden" - whom does he have in mind here? By "books" he means the holy Shelah (author of Shnei Luchos HaBris) and the Maharal of Prague. By "teachers" he means his own masters, the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch.
"וכל זה מיוסד על פסוק 'כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאוד בפיך ובלבבך לעשותו'", "All of this is founded on the verse: 'For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it'" - the entire sefer rests on this verse from parashas Nitzavim. The Alter Rebbe states that in his sefer he comes to explain thoroughly how the thing is "very near." In what manner does he propose to explain it? He continues and writes that he will do so "בדרך ארוכה וקצרה בעזרת השם יתברך", "by way of a long, short road, with the help of G-d."
Understanding the verse itself:
The verse says, "For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." The verses just before it read: "For this mitzvah which I command you today is not beyond you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven... nor is it across the sea... for the thing is very near to you." What does the Torah mean by the words "this mitzvah"?
The commentaries on the Torah (among them the Ramban and the Abarbanel) bring two explanations:
It refers to the mitzvah mentioned just before, the mitzvah of teshuvah ("and you shall return to Hashem your G-d"), telling us that teshuvah is exceedingly near to a person.
A second explanation (brought in the Ramban, in other commentators, and in Rashi on the verse): "this mitzvah" means the mitzvos of the Torah as a whole, that is, keeping all 613 mitzvos and studying every part of Torah are exceedingly near to a person.
The style of the wording makes clear that the Torah is telling us something we would not otherwise have known. A person might well have thought that this is far from him and beyond him, that is, hard to attain, unworkable, or too complicated to carry out. So the Torah goes on at length: know that it is not beyond you and not far off, not in heaven and not across the sea. Rashi explains that had the Torah been in heaven or across the sea, a person would have had to find some way to reach it. But the Torah tells us something new and states firmly that it is not distant as one might have imagined; on the contrary, it is very near.
The Torah does not stop with that statement; it spells it out: "בפיך ובלבבך לעשותו", "in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." These three expressions hint at thought, speech and action:
"בפיך", "in your mouth" - speech.
"ובלבבך", "and in your heart" - thought, and also the emotions of the heart: love and awe.
"לעשותו", "that you may do it" - actual deed.
Before we start weighing the words, we should notice the order: the Torah moves from speech to thought, and then to action. Seemingly it should have gone in sequence, either from the higher to the lower (thought, speech, action) or from the lower to the higher (action, speech, thought). The order the Torah chose, speech, thought, action, calls for explanation, and we will return to it.
First, let us try to understand: of these three components, which is the hardest to carry out in practical terms? Seemingly the greatest difficulty lies in "in your heart," in arranging things so that they are done out of a feeling of love. To tell a person to perform an act, or to utter words with his mouth, these are matters that lie in the technical realm and are readily available to him. But to govern one's thoughts, and to arouse feelings of love and awe in the heart, that is where the real difficulty seems to lie.
One might have thought that the novelty in the verse "for this thing is very near to you" is chiefly that even the heart is near. But if that were the point, the Torah would have opened with it and mentioned "in your heart" first. From the fact that it opens with "in your mouth," moves to "in your heart," and closes with "that you may do it," it is clear that the novelty applies equally to all these dimensions. What, then, is the special new teaching the Torah is conveying in this verse?
"By way of a long, short road":
We will grasp this point once we examine the phrase the Alter Rebbe chose when he wrote that he comes to explain how the thing is very near "by way of a long, short road, with the help of G-d."
Some explain that the Alter Rebbe is charting two parallel paths in the Tanya: a long way and a short way. According to this explanation, up until chapter eighteen the sefer deals mainly with the long way, and from chapter eighteen onward it turns to the short way.
What is the difference between them?
The long way: The opening chapters explain what a person should contemplate and delve into. After effort and focused hisbonenus (meditative contemplation), a person succeeds in arriving at the proper feeling. This is a long road, because it demands concentration, depth, and the capacity to contemplate in order to awaken the heart.
The short way: From chapter eighteen the Alter Rebbe reveals that in the heart of every Jew there already exists a hidden love for the Creator. This love exists in his inner core, and there is no need to create it from scratch, only to arouse what is already there. When the task is to arouse something that already exists, the road becomes easier and shorter.
This is one way of explaining the intent of the words "a long, short road," and the Rebbe brings this explanation many times in his sichos.
To summarize: In this section we learned about the importance of precision in every word of the Tanya, a sefer over which the Alter Rebbe labored for twenty years. We examined the title page: the name "Likutei Amarim," which expresses humility; the sources, "from books" (the Shelah and the Maharal) and "from teachers" (the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid); and its foundation in the verse "For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." We raised the question of which component is hardest to carry out, and we began to explain the phrase "a long, short road": the long way of hisbonenus (up to chapter eighteen), and the short way of arousing the hidden love already embedded in the heart.
In the next section we will take up the opening itself, examine every detail in the Tanya, and continue to delve into the precise wording of the Alter Rebbe.