90. Letters [of the alphabet of the Holy Tongue, being the articulating components of language,] are revelations. The connection between אוֹת (“letter”) and revelation is hinted at in the phrase, אָתָא בֹקֶר –”The morning comes,”1 i.e., the revelation of morning has come.2 Morning is preceded by darkness, and even according to the view3 that darkness is not only the absence of light but a created entity in its own right, darkness is still obscurity; morning, by contrast, means light, which is revelation, as in the above-quoted phrase, אָתָא בֹקֶר, which suggests that letters signify revelation.
Seen more profoundly and more precisely, letters should be understood not as “revelations” but as “revealers”: they bring about revelation, as in the maxim, אוֹתִיוֹת מַחְכִּימוֹת – “Letters make one wise.”4 In fact this maxim is appropriate here only at a superficial level, for in fact, saying that letters make one wise signifies a higher function than saying that they are “revealers.”
To be more explicit:5 The very essence6 of letters lies in the fact that they are instruments of revelation; this essence governs the extent of the revelation. When we are speaking of the revelation that letters effect (i.e., when we are speaking of their innermost quintessence7), it is appropriate to describe them as “making one wise.” Sometimes, however, letters obscure, as may be seen by comparing the letters used in a parable to those used in a riddle. A parable makes its analog more distinct than it was, spelling out its rationale and clarifying its inner content. The letters that constitute a riddle, by contrast, serve to obscure [their ultimate message]. Yet while they [initially] lock out all possibility of revelation, this very fact retains, strengthens and preserves the complete and ultimate revelation of their content.
Let us delve a little more deeply into the phrase, אָתָא בֹקֶר. This means not only that letters reveal, but that revelation is – letters. That is to say, that whenever any material or spiritual entity is in a manifest state, that manifestation may be called “letters.” Take, for example, the verse, וְאָתָה מֵרִבְבוֹת קֹדֶשׁ – “And He came from holy multitudes.”8 This means that the revelation that came from the holy [celestial] multitudes may be called “letters.”
In all, then, there are four categories of letters: (a) letters that are revelations; (b) letters that “make wise”; (c) letters in the sense that “revelation is letters”; and (d) letters that [paradoxically] reveal that which is hidden by being circumscribed.
These four categories of letters correspond to the four “attendants” (mesharsim) explained above:9 (a) action, (b) speech, (c) thought, and (d) melody. The “letters” of action are prominent and palpable, visible by all. The “letters” of speech correspond to the letters that reveal and the letters that “make wise.” The “letters” of thought are of the kind of which it may be said that “revelation is letters.” For Chassidus explains three levels within thought:5 the action within thought, the speech within thought, and the thought within thought.
As to the “letters” of [inspirational] melody, these are letters of ascent: they raise a man aloft, beyond his present rung; utterly absorbing him within themselves, they uncover that which is hidden in the innermost and most exalted strata of his soul, so that he is temporarily not [merely] that which is revealed to the eye; at this point he is part of his soul. Through the “letters” of melody he is lifted up and drawn into the sublime altitudes of the palaces of light and revelation, where the rays of light dispel for a time whatever in him is undesirable.10 The hidden kernel of untarnished good is awakened within him. For a space, Form dominates Matter.11
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In this we perceive how the “letters” of melody surpass the “letters” of even the highest level of thought, viz., “the thought within thought,” which is thought as exercised in the intellect.12
The foregoing discussion will also enable us to understand more clearly and more profoundly the above-quoted answer13 which my grandfather, the Rebbe Maharash, gave at yechidus to R. Yisrael Dov: “Toil” – chiefly the exertion of thought in the intellect – “is no match for an insensitive mind; what you need is melody in your prayers.” For melody is the “attendant” of the spiritual faculties of delight and will, and its “letters” bring to light one’s hidden depths, which in every Jew are good throughout.
91. The Alter Rebbe expected of chassidim that they engage in avodas halev, “the [divine] service of the heart”; the Mitteler Rebbe expected of chassidim that they engage in avodas hamo’ach, “the [divine] service of the brain.” Though neither approach can exist without the other, the difference between them is a difference of emphasis. As to the former kind of avodah, it takes place in the heart and with the heart.
The Alter Rebbe’s and the Mitteler Rebbe’s expectations or demands – and the same is true of the spiritual tasks set by the Rebbeim of the following generations – are not what their bald definition would call to mind: when a Rebbe expresses an expectation, this in itself provides support in one’s practical avodah.
Question: “What is meant by avodah that takes place ‘in the heart and with the heart’?”
Reply: “So long as the spiritual emotions are excited14 they have no practical outcome; when they do have their effect on one’s actual avodah, the spiritual emotions are no longer in a state of excitation. This, however, is true only of the outward levels of the heart; more inwardly, both can coexist – both the spiritual excitation and the practical avodah that it inspires.”
92. We said earlier15 that a melody that conveys a consciously directed message – a niggun mechuvan – is one either composed by a Rebbe or chosen by him, whether used specifically in his davenen on weekdays or on Shabbos or Yom-Tov, or whether in a general way sung by him or sung at his request.
In order to understand the inner content of such a niggun one needs to study the Chassidus expounded by that Rebbe. One can then become enveloped by the melody, and can permit oneself to hope that its “letters” will succeed in their function of dispelling undesirable traits and bringing hidden depths to light. If, however, one does not study Chassidus, there is no point in even hoping that the “letters” of music will achieve anything – except that a niggun of spiritual arousal or of teshuvah can (and does) have an effect on anyone and at any time.
93. Chassidic tradition includes an explanatory commentary on a melody – on the Niggun of Four Themes composed by the Alter Rebbe.16 Unlike a chassidisher farbrengen, this commentary is a Torah teaching in itself. A farbrengen can arouse one’s heart for avodah and open one’s mind to Torah, whereas the explanation to the above melody is itself a Torah teaching.
94. The four themes that comprise the Song of the Mitteler Rebbe’s Choir17 correspond to the four stages in the spiritual labors of the Divine soul, whose task it is to refine the animal soul – displacing the evil within it and utilizing the good within it.
The four stages are as follows: (a) the essence of avodah, i.e., the utter dedication with which one initially devotes himself to the task of sifting and refining materiality;18 (b) apprehending the intellectual richness of a concept involving Divinity, savoring the sweetness of Divinity, and realizing that the animal soul’s material interests oppose this; (c) deeply contemplating the undesirability of materiality, and encircling the animal soul;19 and (d) sensing that “all roads are presumed to be dangerous,”20 so that fear strikes the servant of G‑d who is engaged in the sifting and refining of the animal soul, and he relies upon help from Above.
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We shall now sing, pensively, the Song of the Mitteler Rebbe’s Choir. And as we sing, we shall hear how its four themes lend a voice to the above four stages in the spiritual labors of the divine soul, as it sifts and refines the animal soul.
The first theme speaks of the prelude to one’s avodah. Even if the subject one is studying is not lengthy, but only four or five lines long, or fifteen minutes long when spoken, or five minutes long in thought, it needs to be approached with utter self-dedication, so that it will be absorbed in all its ramifications. If one encounters something on the physical plane that really matters in one’s life, it is immaterial whether dealing with it takes seventeen hours or seventeen minutes. In exactly the same way ought a man feel bound to the subject in Chassidus that he studies as a preparation for prayer.
The second theme describes how one senses that Divinity is something good - yet this awareness does not suffice to expel the animal soul: one needs avodah as well, and “the time of prayer is a time of battle.”21 One has to realize that the animal soul, true to its name, is a wild animal that tries to clamber up impossible walls. It requires avodah if one is to expel the undesirable traits of the animal soul, and to acquire the good that is to be found among its faculties, such as vigor and resoluteness, harnessing them for the study of Torah, for the performance of mitzvos, and for prayer, the “service of the heart.”22
The third theme of the melody portrays the encirclement of the animal soul. The Tzemach Tzedek calls this “attacking,”23 in the spirit of the lesson in divine service that the Alter Rebbe was taught by [R. Avraham] “the Malach” (“the Angel”), the son of the Maggid of Mezritch. R. Avraham observed that in the Seven Years’ War24 the strategy that ensured victory was the encirclement of the enemy on three flanks. In the analogue, this means that one ought to [simultaneously] deploy all three soul faculties – Chessed, Gevurah and Tiferes25– in attacking one particular undesirable character trait. This three-pronged offensive on the animal soul should be executed in a spirit of hispaalus; i.e.,it should be prompted by the excitation of the divine soul’s emotive attributes. The animal soul is vulnerable to hispaalus because its own spiritual source is the residue of those [emotively expressive] angels that are called Ofanim.26
The fourth theme says: לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי ה' – “I hope, G‑d, for Your salvation.”27 Since the divine soul must deal with the animal soul, confronting it and (more particularly) garbing itself in the very materiality which it is obliged to sift and refine, it could conceivably be itself influenced by the object of its endeavors. To counter this, one needs to activate one’s resources of trust in G‑d. And this is expressed – in a vigorous spirit of chassidic joy – by the fourth theme of the above niggun.
95. In today’s reading of Tanya,28as set out in HaYom Yom, the Alter Rebbe begins with the words, וְגַם כִּי אֵין לוֹ דְּמוּת הַגּוּף – “And although He has no bodily likeness ...” One would surely have expected him to write, וְגַם כִּי אֵין לוֹ גּוּף – “And although He has no body....”29 The distinction is intentional, however, because גּוּף (“body”) refers to the body itself and the vitality that animates it, whereas דְּמוּת הַגּוּף (lit., “image of the body”) refers to the illumination of the soul within the body.
Existence (קִיּוּם) and vitality (חִיּוּת) are two distinct concepts, as we see exemplified in different kinds of people: there are people who are at the level of existence, and others who are at the level of vitality. A full-time scholar30 embodies the concept of vitality; a businessman’s life is existence. Whenever the businessman enters the House of Study he experiences vitality; his business is merely his existence.
The same two concepts may be distinguished in the vegetable kingdom31 too. While attached to its tree at any time through the year, an esrog merely exists; when a blessing is pronounced over it, thereby elevating its entire species, it attains vitality. So too in the body. The existence of the body is the body itself, while the “image of the body” is either the illumination of the soul, or the sap within the body, as the marrow is the sap of the bones. And just as in the body itself there are distinctions of level (such as between the head, respiratory organs, torso and feet), and moreover distinctions between the tissue of (say) the heart and the rest of the body, so too are there distinctions [of level and of substance] within the illumination of the soul in the body.
With the above-quoted phrase, “And although He has no bodily likeness ... ,” the Alter Rebbe sets out a paradox32 whose two opposing concepts fortify each other. A prologue to a prologue to grasping this intellectually may be afforded by an analogy drawn from the various categories of mixture through the agency of fire [in the laws pertaining to the kashrus of food].
Three kinds of mixture are distinguished in this context: (a) a mixture of two dry components:33 though the distinct identity of each is not as discernible as before they were mixed, each particle yet retains its previous existence (metzius); (b) a mixture of two fluid components:34 though the previous existence (metzius) of each is not discernible, its essence (mahus) remains intact; (c) a mixture through frying over a fire,35 whereby (for example) the opposing flavors of radishes and of honey coalesce so intimately that the palate tastes36 the intense sweetness of the radish and the intense pungency of the honey. It is fire that effects this mixture, to the point that sweetness proceeds from pungency37 and pungency from sweetness.
96. The same passage in Tanya goes on to say: כִּי נֶפֶשׁ הָאָדָם, אֲפִילוּ הַשִּׂכְלִית וְהָאֱלֹקִית, הִיא מִתְפָּעֶלֶת מִמְּאוֹרְעֵי הַגּוּף – “For the human soul, even the rational and divine soul, is affected by the events which transpire with the body.” With this the Alter Rebbe gives us a rich understanding of what is not the case [with relation to G‑d].
A little later the Alter Rebbe tells us what a Jew is, in the following words: אַךְ כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל מַאֲמִינִים בְּנֵי מַאֲמִינִים... – “However, all Jews are ‘believers, descendants of believers,’38 without any speculation of mortal intellect whatever, and they declare, ‘You were [the same] before the world was created,’39 and so forth, as has been explained above in ch. 20.”
Having just championed the cause of faith, the Alter Rebbe here surprises us by referring us to chapter 20, which offers various explanations of the concept of G‑d’s Unity. By so doing he is highlighting the need for both modes of apprehension – intellectual understanding, as far as it will reach, and faith.
97. When the [Alter] Rebbe, fleeing the Napoleonic invasion, left Liadi40 on the eve of Shabbos Mevarchim Elul 5572 (1812), he asked to be told with which marching song the French forces crossed the Prussian border into Russia.
When it was duly sung in his presence he said that it was a song of victory. He then fell into a state of deep rapture, and said: “Ultimately, we shall be able to say that ‘our side won.’”41
98. The Baal Shem Tov42 used to call the [third] meal of the Last Day of Pesach – “the festive meal of Mashiach.”43
