אני יהודי בלב! למה זה לא מספיק טוב?!

Why are practical commandments actually needed? Why can't we be satisfied with the commandments in our hearts, with the worship of God that is entirely emotional? Why is the act itself needed? Today on the podcast, Tanya talks about the value of practical mitzvot and the value of studying Torah. [Music] Hello, welcome to the podcast, Tanya from Sam Podcasts. I am Shmuli Kaplan and in our series of episodes we will give you a taste of the exciting ideas that are in Tanya with the help of people for whom Tanya is a central part of their lives, Rabbi Moshe Shilt, director of the Sama project and a Tanya teacher, Rabbi El-Machi Even Israel, a lecturer on Hasidism and editor-in- chief at the Steinsaltz Institute, and Rabbi Shmuel Raskin, a lecturer [music] and author of the book Meetings with Tanya [music] Chapter 23 comes and says an idea that is truly radical [music] comes and says in light of the previous episodes in light of 22 22 22 that teaches me that the whole world is a joke and the whole world is vanity. We mourn and if I connect to this consciousness to this frequency in the world that there is no world, then what is there? What are the commandments of the commandments? Here is the real thing. There are no games here. This is a mitzvah. This is where the Holy One, blessed be He, is found [music] What is actually a mitzvah? We are accustomed to interpreting a mitzvah in the sense of a command, a command. Someone commands me to do this and that. But the word mitzvah is also from the word tsveta [music] which means together, connecting. Because it is true that a mitzvah This is someone who commands me, but why is he commanding me? [Music] So that I and he can connect, merge. A mitzvah is the thing in which there is the most complete merging , the most complete [Music] abandonment to the Holy One, Blessed be He. Because its name is a mitzvah, the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. There is nothing more Holy One, Blessed be He than this. It is the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. So when I put on tefillin, when I fold my hands, when I light Shabbat candles, all of this is the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. And when I fulfill the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He, now the Holy One, Blessed be He is present here. There is the thing here that is most abandoned to Him, the thing that is most connected to Him, because that is what He wants. This is not even talking about the Holy One, Blessed be He. This is the Holy One, Blessed be He, this is what He wants. And therefore every mitzvah is something that is completely and perfectly connected to the Holy One, Blessed be He. The completely abandoned person [Music] is the person who is guided by this The will of the Holy One, blessed be He. This is a different approach to practical mitzvot. It does not speak of doing a mitzvah in order to receive a reward and not committing a transgression in order not to receive a punishment, but as the Sages said, the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah. The greatest reward I can receive [music] from the mitzvah is that I fulfilled the mitzvah. I carried out the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and we connected. [Music] He wanted something and I acted and brought his desire down here into reality. [Music] [Music] And when we approach the mitzvah like this, the attitude is exaggerated not to put on tefillin. The importance of the mitzvah and what efforts will we make so that another Jew will put on tefillin because in the end, everything in the world is all kinds of things that G-d has touched that the Holy One, blessed be He, is within. This is the mitzvah. This is a central point in relation to the question that people may ask. Do we really think that the Holy One, blessed be He, cares about what I do or don't do? This is really what concerns Him. Job asks this to see what you will do to him. If you have been righteous, what will you give him? From your dead he will take. The point is that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants this because He wants His connection with us. In other words, it is less a question of what the mitzvah is, but rather that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants a connection with us, and therefore He commands us to do things in Hasidism. It is written that this is the reason that in all the blessings, the common word in all of them is that He sanctified us with His commandments and the very fact that He sanctified us, distinguished us through the mitzvahs, in fact, that He commanded. The author of the Tanya says not here but in another book of his, Torah Or, if we were commanded to cut down trees. If the command were to write trees in the forest. We would do it with the same joy and holiness as we put on tefillin. why? Because the point is that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded that He wants a relationship with us, and we do this precisely through an actual mitzvah. The moment I performed a mitzvah, when my hand took a coin [music] and now put it in the charity box, at that given moment my hand is completely connected to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and this is what illuminates it , this is what is present in it at that moment, the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. So my hand becomes a vessel in which the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He, shines. [Music] When we say Meir, we don't mean us, because we are living Esther today. Later, when we discuss the purpose of the creation of the world and the days of the Messiah, we will understand when we see this in practice. But the point of the mitzvah is to bring the Holy One, blessed be He, the infinity down here to the world, to my body and to the entire world [of music]. This is the meaning of what is written in the Midrash in Genesis 1:1-3 that the fathers are not the chariot. What does chariot mean? What is this image of a chariot and a rider? It's true that there is Ezekiel's chariot and there are all sorts of things like that in Kabbalah, but a chariot is an inanimate object that moves from place to place. This is what the Holy Fathers are compared to. [Music] Precisely in the image of a chariot, precisely in its stillness, there is a great mystery in it. The fathers are the chariot. This means that just like a chariot drawn by horses and there is some kind of rider who leads this chariot somewhere, the chariot has no will of its own. The chariot has no desires. What does it want to do? It is an inanimate object. It has no desires of its own. So what is its whole life? Where does it go? Where does it go? It adjusts to where the rider will lead it. That's what drives her and nothing else. The ancestors do not have the chariot. The interpretation is that the fathers reached a state of complete and perfect connection to the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. That all their thoughts, all their desires and wishes, and of course their actions, were connected to what the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted from me. [Music] Not that there are them and there is the Holy One, blessed be He, and He commands them to do and they obey Him, but that their nullification is so great that they nullify their will and independence for the Holy One, blessed be He. And this is already something that happens in the way that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants and they automatically do it. We cannot reach such a level of negating the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. That is why they say that the patriarchs, due to their great holiness, reached the level of a chariot. But even for us, every time we perform a mitzvah, there is something within us that turns the chariot into a holy chariot for God, blessed be He. Every time a Jew fulfills a mitzvah, he instantly creates a complete connection that stems from what? From complete emptiness to the Holy One, blessed be He. Because at this moment when my specific organ is busy fulfilling a mitzvah, then at least that organ is, once again, the hand that gives charity. At this moment, all that fills the being of my hand is the will of God. I am doing something that is God's will. The moment I take off the straps around my hands and put the tefillin on my head, in that given moment my head, my hand, this movement of mine are completely connected to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. Other layers of my personality may not be there right now, and that's okay. [Music] [Music] This form of connection with the Holy One, Blessed be He, that occurs through fulfilling His will, which is the mitzvot, is one way to connect with the Holy One, Blessed be He. A second way that the Holy One, blessed be He, has given us to connect with Him is through Torah, which is even more than a mitzvah in a certain sense. [Music] The Torah we study is the wisdom and will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. And in studying Torah, as, by the way, in studying anything else, there is a union [music] of my inner world, of my understanding, of my mind, of my knowledge with the thing that I am studying, that thing becomes a part of me. My brain, my gray cells are filling up with this knowledge. This thing is becoming part of my DNA. And this thing in the case of Torah study is the Holy One, blessed be He. So when I study Torah, I speak and think and live and study and breathe the Holy One, blessed be He. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, becomes a part of me. This connection, this unity with the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, is my reality right now. It is what is happening in my head. It is what fills my mind right now. And this is even more than a mitzvah, because as we said before, in a mitzvah, it can be that if I put on tefillin with my hand or [music] give charity, and at that moment my body is a kind of chariot, completely surrendered to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. But learning is an internal thing. When we talk [music] about learning Torah orally, mishnah, gemara, halacha, if I don't learn with my mind, if I don't understand [music] what I'm reading, it's not learning. I do not fulfill the mitzvah of studying Torah at all. And studying Torah [music] draws upon a person's inner self and makes him special with the wisdom of the Holy One, Blessed be He. [Music] And in this place there is a connection of my self, of my understanding, of my mind, of my knowledge, [Music] of my understanding with the Holy One, blessed be He. There is also a mitzvah here like any other mitzvah, the mitzvah of studying Torah, but there is also a much deeper connection here and a lot of very tangible [music] to this great thing that is the light of God. And so there is such wonder and exaltation in the relationship of the Sages and the Torah itself. To the study of Torah. Because truly in the study of Torah, our connection to that inner unity of the Holy One, blessed be He, is something that filled our being in a much more powerful and strong way. [Music] It can be said that in all the conditioning there is a tremendous wonder in the exaltation of devotion and unity that exists between a person and the Holy One, blessed be He while he is studying Torah. Anyone who looks at the descriptions of the old Rebbe's study of Torah understands that there was devotion there at the highest level, both in the study of the Gemara, in the study of Kabbalah, and in the discovery of the teachings of Hasidism. Everything was an infinite devotion to the Holy One, blessed be He, a devotion greater than prayer. This Rebbe is indeed a man of the Torah. His prayers were of unspeakable devotion. The stories about the prayers were that they would put kriyas around the walls of the room because the old Rebbe did not notice what was happening to him and got stuck in the walls. There are extraordinary stories about prayer. But still, according to what this Rebbe does explain, Both prayer and the mitzvot are revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, within the world. Such a revelation that does not take the person completely. The person exists. Studying the Torah, a person fades away. He receives the word of God that descends to him and in a complete nullification that is higher than the nullification of the chariot for the rider of the body for the soul. In the Zohar it is written and this is quoted in the Tanaya several times the expression "Orita and Kodesh-Breich is all one." The Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, is one thing. And when a person studies the Torah, he prays with the Holy One, blessed be He, and it becomes one thing. Orita and Kodesh-Breich is all one thing. When a Jew studies the Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to him as if he does not tell him to do something with your body. Of course, there are here the great virtues of fulfilling the will of God. My hand puts on tefillin. This is true. But in studying the Torah, there is a deeper unity and a deeper nullification, and you do not exist at all. There is only the word of God that speaks to you and allows you to understand it, apparently. Studying the Torah is more of a unity because the word of God is found in With your mind, you understand it, you are united with it, and this is the wisdom of Hashem. But there is also seemingly less nullification here. Because here you have to be with your reality, to understand, to ask questions, to arrive. It is not like a chariot where you are like an inanimate object to the will. Here you do have to use your personality, who you are, to understand the word of Hashem. And this does not contradict nullification. The fact that it enters your mind nullifies you. The understanding that you understand things makes you less existent. [Music] There is a wonderful description of the middle rabbi, the son of the old rabbi in the introduction to the Shulchan Aruch of the Rabbi, that the old rabbi, who was 30 years old, repeated the entire Gemara, the entire Talmud, with all the Rishonim and the Aharonim for the sixteenth time , for the sixteenth time. And the study was in a standing position night and day, he did not stop, he did not stop studying, when he was happy, everyone saw, and he would illuminate the rumors from his mouth like the day the Torah was given. A wonderful description of the old rabbi precisely in the context of studying Torah and studying the part of The Torah reveals the first and last Gemaras. The Elder Admor sees the Torah as the pinnacle of the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world. He says here in chapter 23, this is what they said in the Torah: "And the Holy One is all one, and not just as they say about the commandments that are organs of the kingdom of God, which is a cancellation like the body for the soul, which is a very high cancellation. But still, when a Jew studies Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, is completely special here, there is nothing besides Him, and therefore the soul [music] is truly infinitely special when studying Torah. [music] [music] All of this leads us not only to some theoretical understanding of what a mitzvah is and what studying Torah is, but to something that really changes our worship of God. After we understood what Torah is, we understood the union that is created in studying Torah, now we can understand what this is supposed to do for us. On an emotional level. Because when I perform a mitzvah and I know that now my hand, my head, my body are connecting to the will of the Holy One, connecting to the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He. When I study Torah and understand that this ascending light that is on the way Our entire world does not contain, this light now becomes a part of me. This thing that I understand, this thing that I learn with my mouth and with fire and with my mind, is the Holy One, blessed be He, and His sublime light. This thing leads me to a feeling of a different emotion in studying Torah. When I study Torah, I am now connected to what is happening here. To the experience. It is not just studying the text, it is not even just studying a holy text, it is not just fulfilling a mitzvah. There is a connection here at the deepest level to the most sublime light of the Holy One, blessed be He. And this feeling leads me to a place of awe. [Music] And here there is a new understanding of the whole concept of ira from the Holy One, blessed be He. We talk all the time, also in Hasidism, about developing feelings towards the Holy One, blessed be He, about love and intention and joy, positive feelings. But in the Torah, there is a mitzvah among the commandments of the heart that is also ira from the Holy One, blessed be He. ira is perceived as something negative, constricting, frightening. To fear the Holy One, blessed be He, is to fear punishment, hell. But Admor The old man, let's talk in more depth in the next chapters about another concept of Ira, which is precisely when you understand the depth of the connection you have with the Holy One, blessed be He, through every mitzvah and through studying Torah, a different kind of awe acts on you. I think that the opposite of great awe or awe in general is a feeling of comfort, of "leave you alone, no matter what" and "leave you alone, no matter what." The overlapping of cleanliness is the result of the habit of learned mitzvot. That is, things that I do semi-automatically. I am not in them. I do not experience the experience. And people come. People come in the conditions. And I assume that to this day, people ask this question. When I think about what I do, I think about the Torah and the mitzvot and the humility of my God. In moments of sincerity and truth, I understand that this is not an X mitzvot that I am supposed to keep. There is some kind of work of God here. There is some kind of process of facing the Holy One, blessed be He, something real. I stand before the Holy One, blessed be He, especially in these chapters in the conditions, where it is very, very clear that the world is nothing and zero, and I stand before the Holy One, blessed be He, in truth, and I come and I say yes, but I I got used to these rituals of mitzvot and it doesn't move me anymore. It doesn't excite me. Its owners don't look for a reply. Who are you? It doesn't look for applause at all. The idea is that it comes. The educated servant of God, as he is called here, with a real claim. How can I come to a situation where my study of Torah and the observance of my mitzvot will be out of awe. That is, out of a real feeling that I am dealing with something real and I am inside. My heart is inside it. How do I put my heart inside? And this is the difference between awe and love. In love, a person is present. He loves. He experiences himself. Awe is that I feel not myself but the situation in which I find myself. The thing I am afraid of. If the fear is not from a scary situation but from the respect for responsibility, like a pilot who understands the responsibility he has when he sits just before takeoff. A fighter pilot never gets complacent. He is completely focused. Every organ in his body and mind is focused on the action he is doing. Wow, worlds hang on every movement of his body. And it's terrible, terrible. It's not scary. It fills me with awe. Awe is a very positive feeling. I do great things and that's why I say The author of this chapter says, and from this, the scholar will be able to continue to be greatly awed by his Torah work when he observes how his soul and his clothing, which are in his body and in his mouth, are truly special in the very essence of the will of the Supreme and the End, Blessed be He, which is truly revealed in them, what all the worlds, upper and lower, are like a whisper, and how many, and what a mere nothing, and how all the worlds are nothing compared to the real thing that is given in my hands, the page of Gemara that I am studying and my insistence on understanding Rashi and not and not escaping, M M M M Okay, okay, apparently it is right to understand every move in the Tosafot to devote myself to study and to know, I am now in the cockpit and I am doing the only real thing that exists [music] So we learned in this chapter about the unity that is created precisely by actually fulfilling practical commandments, when we fulfill the will of the Holy One, Blessed be He. We learned about the cancellation of the Merkava to the Holy One, Blessed be He, and about a deeper connection that comes through studying Torah and how all this works. You will see a sense of awe when you engage in studying Torah and fulfilling commandments [music] [Music] Thank you for entering the Tanya discussion from Sam Podcasts. I am Shmuli Kapela, management and production of our podcast Mandplay. A taste of Tanya's book. If you want to delve deeper into the code, I really invite you to search on Google for Ma'ainout's study program and join in learning Tanya carefully. See you in the next episodes. Hey