Daily Tanya

This [latter] category of love sometimes precedes fear, according to the quality of the daat which fathers it, as is known. (17For daat incorporates both Chasadim and Gevurot, which are love and fear; chesed is love, and gevurah is fear. Daat reveals both these emotions. Thus, binding one’s daat intensely to the greatness of G-d gives rise to both feelings, fear and love,

and sometimes, the Chasadim descend and manifest themselves first).

Therefore, it is possible for a wicked and sinful person to repent by virtue of the love that is born in his heart at the time he remembers the L-rd his G-d.

At any rate, fear, too, is included therein—in the love, as a matter of course, except that it is [there] in a state of “minuteness” and “concealment,” namely, as the fear of sin—of rebelling against Him, G-d forbid, while the love is in a revealed state in his heart and mind so that consciously, the individual is only aware of a love for G-d.

However, such a case—where the wicked and sinful person should suddenly attain a love of G-d and become a penitent, where love precedes fear, is an extraordinary occurrence, and an “emergency prescription” through G-d’s particular providence as the occasion requires, as happened with Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya,18 who had been sinful and suddenly became a penitent, repenting out of a love for G-d. Indeed, so intense was his penitence that it caused his soul to depart his body.

However, the [regular] order of divine service, which is determined by and depends on a man’s choice, is to begin with the fulfillment of the Torah and mitzvot through yirah tataah in its state of “minuteness,” at least, departing from evil and doing good, i.e., refraining from committing any sins and performing all the mitzvot,

so as to illuminate his divine soul with the light of the Torah and its commandments

whereupon the light of love will also shine upon it,

(22for the word Ve’ahavta, (“And you shall love [the L-rd your G-d],”) has a numerical value twice that of ohr (“light”), as is known to the students of the Kabbalah).