In the previous section we studied the hisbonenus that gives birth to the offshoots of love and fear, how contemplation in the mind produces a corresponding emotion. But the structure of the mind does not consist of chochmah and binah alone; there is a third component, daas. In this section we will examine daas as the root of emotion and its role in producing genuine middos (emotional attributes).
At first glance the picture already seems complete: there is contemplation, and there is a result, a corresponding emotion. Chochmah is the father and binah is the mother, and once there is a father and a mother, offspring follow naturally. What, then, is missing, that the structure of the mind requires a third component? Where does daas enter the picture?
Recall that at the opening of the chapter, in its very first lines, when the Alter Rebbe listed chochmah, binah and daas, he called them "שלוש אימות," the three "mothers." Just as chochmah and binah are called mothers, sources of the middos, so too daas is called a mother and a source of the middos.
The meaning of the word 'daas':
Daas does not mean "to understand"; understanding is binah. In lashon hakodesh, daas is the language of "והאדם ידע את חוה" ("and Adam knew Chavah"), the first appearance of the word in the Five Books of the Torah. It does not mean that Adam came to know that he had a wife named Chavah, as though he had not known before and now knew. The Torah speaks in refined language, and its intent is that Adam took Chavah as a wife, that he bonded and joined himself to her. From here we learn that "yada" is a term of connection and attachment: the existence of a bond and a relationship between two is called daas.
The parable of the villager and the melamed:
To understand this in our context, let us first bring a parable told by one of the chassidim, cited in the sefer Shiurim BeSefer HaTanya. There was a villager who could not read or write, but he was a G-d fearing Jew, and he brought a melamed for his young children to teach them reading, writing, Chumash and Mishnah. Whenever an official document reached his hands, he would call the melamed to read it and explain its contents to him. One day he received a long, detailed letter from his parents' home, describing precisely and step by step what his father had gone through: that he had taken ill, that he was not feeling well, that a doctor had been called, and at the end of the letter, that his father had passed away.
The melamed read line after line with great animation, as was his job. In the middle he lifted his eyes and saw that the villager had already fainted and was no longer hearing a word.
Who understood the contents of the letter better? The melamed. He grasped every detail, every expression, every nuance of the wording. But who cared about what was written? Who connected to the content and felt that it was speaking to him? Who fainted? The villager.
When a person studies something with chochmah and binah alone, he does not faint. He may experience some measure of arousal, he is not entirely indifferent and the matter touches him somewhat, but it is an excitement with no grip, with no substance to it. But when a person connects to what he learns and feels that he cares, that it belongs to him, as is said of Mordechai the Jew, "ומרדכי ידע את כל אשר נעשה" ("and Mordechai knew all that had been done"), that he felt that whatever was happening to Jews concerned him personally, then he enters into the matter with all his enthusiasm and all his vitality. That is why the emotions born from it are genuine emotions and not imagined ones. This is what is meant by "connection and attachment."
The Alter Rebbe's language:
"שמקשר דעתו בקשר אמיץ וחזק מאוד" ("binding one's daas with a very firm and strong bond"): a person ties his daas to the subject he is studying with tremendous intensity.
"ויתקע מחשבתו בחוזק ובהתמדה בגדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא" ("and fixes his thought forcefully and persistently on the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He"): he puts his entire self in and leaves no part of himself standing outside the idea he is studying. If the subject is the Creator of the world, then all of him is invested in it. When a person studies something that does not particularly interest him, he invests only part of his soul in it, since other things matter more to him; and if an important phone call comes in the middle, he will drop everything and run to it, a sign that even while he was reading he was not really invested in it. But in matters of avodas Hashem and the greatness of Hashem, a person drives himself into it forcefully, with his whole soul.
"ואינו מסיח דעתו" ("and does not divert his attention"): investing the whole soul is not enough; the whole of one's time is required as well. Someone who devotes only a brief stretch of time to the matter and then turns to his affairs, even if he was fully present while doing it, will not see any real effect. What is needed is the whole soul and the whole time, with no diversion of attention.
And what if the student does not understand? We already learned in the introduction to Tanya that one whose understanding is limited should go to the great ones of his city and have them explain it to him; and once it is explained to him, he drives himself into the matter forcefully.
"כי אף מי שהוא חכם ונבון בגדולת אין סוף ברוך הוא, הנה אם לא יקשר דעתו ויתקע מחשבתו בחוזק ובהתמדה - לא יוליד בנפשו יראה ואהבה אמיתית, כי אם דמיונות שוא" ("for even one who is wise and understanding in the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, if he does not bind his daas and fix his thought forcefully and persistently, will not produce in his soul true love and fear, but only vain fancies"): even one who possesses chochmah and binah, and understands the greatness of the Ein Sof very well, if he does not bind himself to it in an inner way, with his whole soul and with persistence, will not produce true love and fear in his soul. He is like that melamed who read and understood, and even had some feeling, but a feeling that was not genuine, since after all he did not faint. He will have a love, but an imagined love.
"Vain fancies":
What are "dimyonos shav," vain fancies? We can illustrate it from halachah. The Rambam, at the beginning of Hilchos Shevuos, based on the Gemara, distinguishes within the category of an untrue oath between a false oath (shevuas sheker) and a vain oath (shevuas shav). A false oath is when a person swears about a table that it is a chair, something that is simply not true. A vain oath is, for example, when someone says about a chair, "I swear that this is a chair." There is no falsehood here, and nevertheless it is a vain oath, because it accomplished nothing and produced no benefit and no content. It is a known fact, and he swore about it for nothing.
This is why the Alter Rebbe does not write "dimyonos sheker," false fancies, for the person will in fact have some measure of love. Had he had no love at all and claimed that he did, that would be falsehood. Rather, this love is shav, vain and pointless: such a love did not require the chochmah and binah at all, since it exists anyway. The hisbonenus produced nothing, innovated nothing, changed nothing and accomplished nothing new. For the love to be genuine, for a new emotion to be aroused that acts upon a person and changes his way of life and his outlook, there must be daas; without it, the whole thing remains in the category of vain fancies.
From here it is clear why daas is included together with chochmah and binah under the heading of "mothers," the mother of the middos: without daas there are no middos. There is chochmah and there is binah, but middos will not come into being; and if it seems that there are middos, that is not accurate, it is shav. Therefore "הדעת הוא קיום המידות וחיותן" ("daas is the sustainer of the middos and their vitality"): daas sustains the middos and even enlivens them, for once a person feels a bond with something, the thing becomes his own.
The Rebbe once related at a farbrengen the well known story about Aristotle, who was caught in a disgraceful act at the conclusion of one of his lectures. When he was asked how this fit with the serious lecture he had just delivered, he answered: "Right now I am not Aristotle." At the moment he was speaking he was fulfilling his function at the university and delivering his lecture, but it was not he himself, he was like a recording device transmitting information he knows; and at home he does as he pleases.
A person who studies Torah or contemplates in this manner will find that the learning accomplishes nothing in him. He may deliver a lecture on the dangers of smoking and then step out during the break for a cigarette; the two do not go together. When there is no connection to the matter, the matter does not act upon him; and if it does act upon him, its effect is of the nature of shav.
Therefore daas is the sustainer of the middos and their vitality, "והוא כולל חסד וגבורה, פירוש אהבה וענפיה ויראה וענפיה" ("and it includes chesed and gevurah, that is, love and its offshoots and fear and its offshoots"): daas includes the strengthening and sustaining of both the right side and the left side, chesed as well as gevurah, love as well as fear. And when we say "the sustainer of the middos and their vitality," this includes the offshoots of love and the offshoots of fear that we mentioned; all the results we spoke about, which are the continuation of love and fear, depend entirely and exclusively on daas.
In summary: in this section we studied the role of daas as the root of emotion. Daas is from the expression "and Adam knew Chavah," a term of connection and attachment; it is the binding of one's daas forcefully and persistently to the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, with the whole soul and the whole of one's time, without diverting the attention. Without daas, even a wise and understanding person will produce nothing but imagined love and fear, "vain fancies," similar to a vain oath that has no content to it. This is why daas is counted together with chochmah and binah as one of the "three mothers," and is called "the sustainer of the middos and their vitality," which includes chesed and gevurah, love and its offshoots and fear and its offshoots.