Beginning of Chapter 41 – This chapter shifts our focus from love of Gd and the confluence of needing love and fear to carry the light of our actions back to the divine realms to a discussion of the importance of awe/fear. We look at the metaphor of relationship to Gd as master/servant vs. parent/child which comes from the notion of love of Gd. This section suggests that complete service to Gd must be within this combined focus of fear and love.
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Conclusion of Chapter 40 – We continue to focus on intentionality, kavvanah, with a focus on trying to understand how love and fear are the wings of bringing the study, prayer and action upwards. We answer the question of how love and fear can be wings if they are mitzvot, not just extras to mitzvot. We also look at few of the tangential notes the Alter Rebbe presents in this section to better understanding the wings and the divine realms.
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Continuation of chapter 40. We continue to explore intentionality by looking at the reason why mechanical, non-focused, prayer and learning have a partial effect. He suggests that doing things without intent is not as problematic because the prayers and study are already imbued with at least some holiness and light from the divine, even though our existence is greatly diminished from the Ein Sof light.
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Beginning of Chapter 40. We continue looking at intentionality, Kavvanah. The piece today tries to distinguish the categories of Kavvanah, intentionality, and Lishmah, something for its own sake. We see the difference between the two in that lacking intention doesn’t fully take away from the action while doing something for an ulterior motive does.
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Conclusion of chapter 39. We continued to explore the notion of intentionality in our actions as it pertains to his description of the divine realms. The love and fear of Gd we have as we are performing mitzvot, whether that which is intellectual or that which is from the animal soul play a role in our focus. We define the notion of the reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah as well as the importance of taking action even for the wrong reasons so long as we are always striving to do things for the right intentions.
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Continuation of chapter 39 – We continue by discussing the realm of Atzilut and how only the few righteous have soul roots from there. This discussion is a deepening of the Alter Rebbe’s description of the divine realms and soul roots. He also introduces the concept that our prayer, when done right, can be a journey to the divine realms. I also give a short piece on the importance of entering Passover in the right frame of mind, one that sees the cleaning as part of the process, not the burden before the day of celebrating redemption.
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Beginning of Chapter 39. This chapter offers an approach to the difference between Malachim (angels) and human beings. The goal of the Alter Rebbe is to show how the human being is on a higher level than Gd’s servants as the human has the opportunity to change and grow. This is done through the discussion of natural love and fear vs. intellectual love and fear. And even the natural love and fear of a human is different that the Malachim as the human must work to uncover that which is hidden while the Malachim are already at that level. The work, the growth is what makes the human higher.
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Do we cherish and rejoice in fulfilling mitzvot? Are we excited when we study? Or are these things rote actions? This is the daily struggle. Most of the time, I would venture we are doing because we feel we must. Even if there is a modicum of joy, it is not nearly enough to get us to celebrate even the simplest of activities or the completion of another line of study.
I came across this small piece in Rebbe Nachman’s Likkutei Eztot, in the section on faith, that I think gives us another incentive to really cherish all we do:
When you take such joy in Torah and mitzvoth that you literally dance for joy, it will strengthen your faith (Likutey Moharan II, 81).
Our actions and our learning are the outer manifestations of our faith. If we just do them by rote, checking the boxes, fulfilling our “obligations,” what does that say about what we feel? What does this say about what we believe to be the underlying goals? If we are fully present, if we bring the excitement to the mitzvah or the study like it’s the first time, being so overwhelmed all we would want to do is show how excited we are, perhaps we are showing how much we really do have faith. And from that we can build and build, strengthening our faith through all we do.
I recognize this is an ideal. It can be extremely difficult to maintain the constant joy we would need to fulfill this approach. Yet, why should we not strive to get there?
So today, find something to be fully present to, something to be joyful for, and “dance,” and hopefully this will help strengthen your faith just a little bit.
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As we have seen in many of my previous posts reflecting on Rebbe Nachman’s words, his approach is one of “simplicity” which is often misunderstood for lacking depth. Rather, it is an approach to faith that tries to remove all aspects of intellectualism as it pertains to harming our sense of belief. Most of us, this author included, struggle to balance the desire to investigate and reflect deeply while also maintaining a child-like innocence in how we see faith and belief. This includes the consumption of deep, intellectually stimulating works. As we see in the below piece, Rebbe Nachman clearly states that delving into philosophy is “destructive.”
One has to greatly distance oneself even from the philosophical works. Such works are very damaging to faith. Now, it has already been explained in various places [in our teachings], yet it is necessary to repeat this again and again, to save oneself from destruction, God forbid (Ibid.).
I believe that Rebbe Nachman is categorizing philosophical works as those which are written to undermine faith, not works which offer a deeper and richer read of the beauty of Gd’s world. Further, if we take a statement like this in the context of the times he is living, there is clearly an Anti-Enlightenment polemic. And finally, we see that for Rebbe Nachman, there was a struggle. For those who have studied his Likkutei Moharan, you see a deeply thoughtful person who offers a depth to spirituality. It is not exactly a book of “simplicity.” I would even suggest that Likkutei Etzot, the book we are drawing these lessons from, was an approach to simplifying the message. Yet, there was a strong storytelling tradition, in which he taught deep ideas through the tales he crafted. His theory was that the story carried the simplicity and sophistication he wanted simultaneously.
For my purposes though, I think there is something more fundamental we can learn from this passage. We are by nature curious. Curiosity is valuable. And knowledge is important. Yet, in order to live a life of faith, there are times when we need to shift away from the intellectual exercises and the overthinking and just be. It is at this juncture that our actions, speech (prayers) and thoughts go from something in the mind to something coming from the depths of our humanity.
Yes, be a reader. Be a thinker. And be a person who continuously cultivates one’s faith in a way that it is not fractured, that it is as close to whole as possible. This is not easy. It is fraught with many potential pitfalls. And one need not go it alone. Find others who are on the same path and strength one another in this approach.
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Conclusion of Chapter 38 – In the final section of this chapter, we discuss intentionality, kavvanah, seeing the two types, intellectual/proactive, and instinctual/reactive. This ties in with the overarching theme of how our mitzvot are divided into action and thought, with speech being the bridge between the two.
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New beginnings: A blog about spirituality, chaplaincy and renewal 