In the previous section we saw that love of G-d and fear of G-d are clothed in the actual performance of the mitzvos. Now we will look closely at why the Alter Rebbe chooses precisely the word 'clothed', and from there we will continue with his words about fear of G-d and about the klipos that take hold of a person.
What the Alter Rebbe means by 'clothed' is this: if love and fear were only a root influencing from afar, you would not be able to tell, looking at the deed itself, whether it was done out of love or not. Take a fruit picked from the tree and a fruit still attached to its root: to the eye they look identical, because in both cases the root is far away, and even once the fruit has been severed from it the difference is not visible.
But that is not the case with love that is clothed in the performance of a mitzvah. A mitzvah done without feeling and a mitzvah done with feeling are two entirely different acts, as we explained in the previous lesson. That is why the Alter Rebbe stresses the term 'מלובשות', 'clothed', and it is a term worth remembering.
"כל תועבת ה' אשר שנא" - "every abomination of G-d which He hates":
A person who has yiras shamayim, fear of Heaven: what is he afraid of, and on a higher level, what is he ashamed of? He is ashamed to do what is evil in the eyes of G-d. And what is evil in the eyes of G-d, that thing whose existence the Holy One does not want? On this the Alter Rebbe continues: "כל תועבת ה' אשר שנא", "every abomination of G-d which He hates". These are the klipos and the sitra achra, all the forces of evil and impurity that are the opposite of holiness. A precise definition of the terms 'klipos' and 'sitra achra' will be explained at length in chapter 6.
At first glance this seems self-contradictory. If the Holy One hates them, how do they exist at all? When a human being hates another, it is not in his power to prevent his existence, but the Holy One is the Creator of everything, and who can tell Him what to do?
The answer is known: in creating the world, the Holy One created klipos and sitra achra and willed their existence, in a minimal dose, so that there should be free choice, so that good and its opposite would stand before a person and the choice would be in his hands.
But when a person transgresses, he nurtures, enlarges and expands the forces of evil in the world. He takes the divine vitality present within him and transfers it to the domain of impurity, and in doing so he enlarges precisely the thing the Creator hates.
"אשר יניקתם ואחיזתם בו" - "whose nurture and hold is in him":
From where do the klipos and the sitra achra draw their strength and their expansion? From 'the lower man', each and every one of us, as opposed to 'the supernal man', who is the Holy One. When the lower man stumbles in matters in which he should not stumble, he thereby supplies nurture to all the forces of klipah.
"ואחיזתם בו", "and their hold is in him": the klipos take hold of the person himself. And where is the point of grip? "בשס"ה מצוות לא תעשה", "in the three hundred and sixty five prohibitions". The moment a person stumbles in one of the three hundred sixty five negative commandments, the klipah has immediately seized him. This language of 'grip' parallels the Gemara's language about the yetzer hara, that it "winds itself around him and holds him until the day of death". Just as something wound around a thing becomes fixed in place, so is the grip of the klipah on a person who has stumbled. Separating from it is not simple at all; it is a whole avodah whose particular order is explained later in the sefer, in Iggeres HaTeshuvah. Continuing to keep mitzvos and to learn Tanya is of course good and necessary, but by itself it does not release the grip of the klipos, and for that there are special paths.
It is like a person on whose garment a large stain has spilled. In physical terms he removes the garment and changes it, but here the change does not happen quickly. The stained garment stays where it is, and even if he puts another suit on over it, the filth shows through from underneath. A person needs to know that every time he stumbles, he is caught by evil.
A mitzvah without feeling:
Another point that was expanded on above: the middos and emotions, love of G-d and fear of G-d, are clothed in speech and in action. And what happens when a person keeps mitzvos without love of G-d, day after day, in the manner of "mitzvas anashim melumadah", a rote habit of men? Meanwhile the powers of the nefesh habahamis, the animal soul, keep working, growing and developing. For if a person does not cultivate the feeling of love of G-d, it is inevitable that a feeling of love for worldly matters will develop in him, and that will lead him to stumble in permitted desires; permitted desires coarsen a person, and that coarseness is liable later to bring him down even to things worse than they are. There is no such thing as a vacuum here. The claim "I have no love of G-d, the main thing is that I actually keep the mitzvos" does not hold up: someone who does not cultivate the matter of the middos as the Tanya instructs is in danger that in time he will not even keep what he is obligated to keep.
Hence the need to stress that one must not remain with the garments alone, speech and action. The very name 'garments' means that there is someone who has to be clothed in them, and that is the middos.
And on the other hand: can one determine about another person that his mitzvos are done without feeling?
No one knows what is in his fellow's heart. For example, sometimes the feeling of the man in the street who puts on tefillin is stronger than the feeling of the one who puts the tefillin on him. The very willingness of a Jew to stand in the middle of the street, roll up his sleeve and put on tefillin in front of the passersby testifies to a tremendous feeling. If you asked a man in the middle of the street to break into a dance, he would look at you as if you were crazy and keep walking; and here he responds and rolls up his sleeve at once. If only we had a feeling like his. Therefore a person can judge no one but himself: each of us knows what goes on inside him, and from the Tanya he has learned how things ought to be.
Positive mitzvos and prohibitions:
In the Alter Rebbe's language here, the grip is mentioned specifically with regard to the prohibitions. True, the yetzer also prevents a person from fulfilling positive mitzvos, putting on tefillin, keeping Shabbos and the like, and there is no doubt that failing to fulfill a positive mitzvah is also an expression of the nefesh habahamis, but it is not of the same severity and the same intensity as the prohibitions, in which the person acted with his own hands and cut a negative groove into himself.
So too in halachah. In the mitzvah of shiluach haken, sending away the mother bird, one who did not send her away is not punished immediately, since at every single moment he can still fulfill the mitzvah; only if the mother died and he can no longer send her away has he actually transgressed. As long as the possibility is open, time stands before him, and tomorrow the obligation applies to him again. The difference, as will be explained later in the sefer, is this:
With a positive mitzvah: the person failed to draw down light.
With a prohibition: the person damaged and broke the vessel.
The superiority of the garments over the soul:
Up to here this section of the chapter can be summed up under one heading: the Alter Rebbe has revealed to us the concept of 'garments'.
In chapter 3: we learned about the soul itself, that it has intellect and it has middos and emotions.
In chapter 4: we learned that the soul has garments, thought, speech and action.
And when you place the two on the scales, the soul on one side and its garments on the other, which is higher than which?
In physical terms, if you ask what is worth more, the man or his clothes, obviously the man is more important, unless he is a particularly lowly man... In spiritual terms too, logic would seem to favor the soul: the soul is intellect and emotion and it is eternal, while its garments look like a merely technical matter.
And here the Alter Rebbe teaches a great chidush. True, without a soul there are no garments, but the entire descent of the soul into this world is for the sake of the garments. For its own sake it could have remained above, but above it had no garments, and only in its descent below were they granted to it. Therefore the garments are loftier than the soul itself, not just relatively higher, but incomparably and without limit.
Let us look at the wording: "והנה שלשה לבושים אלו מהתורה ומצותיה", "these three garments, which are of the Torah and its mitzvos", the three garments that have been explained, thought, speech and action. "אף שנקראים לבושים לנפש רוח ונשמה", "even though they are called garments of the nefesh, ruach and neshamah", and the title 'garment' is understood as something lowly, since a garment can be put on and can be taken off. "עם כל זה גבהה וגדלה מעלתם לאין קץ וסוף על מעלת נפש רוח ונשמה עצמן", "nevertheless their quality is loftier and greater without end or limit than the quality of the nefesh, ruach and neshamah themselves".
And the comparison is to garments in actual practice, not to their potential. 'Garments' means the garments of the mitzvos, a person who fulfills mitzvos in thought, speech and action, as against a soul that does not fulfill them. The distance between them in closeness to the Creator of the world is literally infinite, without limit.
On this basis a similar question arises: which is loftier, the body or the neshamah? And 'body' here means a body that fulfills mitzvos. There is no doubt that in the time to come the superiority of the body will be revealed, and that is why there will be the resurrection of the dead, that we will return to the body, which is the essential thing.
In summary: in this section we examined the precision of the term 'clothed', that the middos are not merely a distant root but are clothed in the deed and change its very face. We learned that "every abomination of G-d which He hates" refers to the klipos and the sitra achra, which were created in a minimal dose for the sake of free choice, and whose nurture and grip in the lower man is through the three hundred sixty five prohibitions. We saw that keeping mitzvos without feeling leaves the nefesh habahamis to grow, and therefore one must not remain with the garments alone; we noted the difference between failing to draw down light with a positive mitzvah and breaking the vessel with a prohibition; and finally, the Alter Rebbe's great chidush, that the quality of the three garments is loftier without end or limit than the quality of the nefesh, ruach and neshamah themselves.
In the next section we will go deeper into the reason for this chidush: why the quality of the garments of Torah and mitzvos is loftier without end or limit than the quality of the soul itself.