תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה׳ אלקיך בשמחה וגו׳

The maamar opens with Deuteronomy 28:47, from the rebuke in Ki Tavo: the curses come “because you did not serve Havayah your G‑d with joy and with gladness of heart.” The difficulty is that rejoicing in G‑d seems to be the level of the righteous, as Psalms 97:12 says, “Rejoice, you righteous, in Havayah”; how, then, can the Torah expect it of every Jew?

The answer begins by distinguishing two levels in serving G‑d, called “day” and “night” and linked to the patriarch’s two names, Yaakov and Yisrael. In a person’s daily life the two levels appear as Torah study and prayer; the maamar explains each pair as it goes on.

This parenthesis lists where the Alter Rebbe treats these themes elsewhere: Torah Ohr’s discourse on “Sing and rejoice” (Zechariah 2:14), which takes up the Zohar’s “joy in the morning and song in the evening,” and its discourse on Chanukah, which contrasts the morning tending of the Menorah’s lamps (Exodus 30:7) with their kindling toward evening (Exodus 30:8). The Zohar passage cited explains why the patriarch is sometimes called Yaakov and sometimes Yisrael.

Before explaining the two levels, the Alter Rebbe recalls the Talmud (Shabbos 10a): when Rava saw Rav Hamnuna lengthening his prayer, he said that people leave “eternal life” (Torah) for “the life of the hour” (prayer, in which one asks for present needs), and Rav Hamnuna held that each has its own time. Torah and prayer are thus two distinct services.

Prayer is linked to the verse “And Avraham rose early in the morning” (Genesis 22:3). Every Jew has a hidden love for G‑d in the heart, but it lies dormant, as if asleep, and prayer is the time to wake it; the verse in Song of Songs uses two verbs for waking, ta’iru, written with one letter reish, and te’oreru, written with two.

The single reish stands for waking the outer layer of the heart, and the doubled reish for stirring its inner depth. The Alter Rebbe cites this reading from the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on Song of Songs.

The verse ends “the love, until it desires”: the hidden love has its proper time to awaken into desire and longing for G‑d. That time is Shacharis, the morning prayer.

This is why prayer is tied to Avraham rising early: the morning is Avraham’s time. The Zohar passages cited speak of “the morning of Avraham,” the hour of divine favor, and of Avraham as the one who instituted the morning prayer.

The Alter Rebbe now explains what it means for love to “sleep.” In a sleeping person, thought has withdrawn above the mind and is no longer clothed in it, so it does not operate through deliberate thinking.

That is why dreams are only imaginings; the Torah Ohr discourse on “we were like dreamers” (Psalms 126:1) explains that in sleep the discerning intellect withdraws and only imagination is left. On waking, thought enters the mind again, and a person directs his thinking as he wishes.

In a dream a person has no choice or will. The hidden love can be in the same state: a person remembers G‑d in his heart and knows in a general way that “the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3), yet this knowledge has the quality of a dream.

The proof is that a person can sin against G‑d’s will even at the moment he remembers Him. The Sages’ saying (Berachos 63a, in the Ein Yaakov’s reading, as the Kehot note says) describes a burglar who, at the very mouth of his tunnel, calls on G‑d to help him succeed in his theft.

The burglar believes in G‑d, but the belief only passes over his mind like an image; it has not entered the mind and been clothed there, so it does not govern what he does.

Prayer’s task, then, is to wake the love and bring it into the mind through sustained contemplation, from the start of the prayers until the Shema. The next paragraphs describe that contemplation.

The contemplation that wakes the love concerns how G‑d relates to the world. Avraham called on G‑d as “El Olam” (Genesis 21:33); the Alter Rebbe reads it not as “the G‑d of the world,” as though the world were a separate thing that G‑d rules, but as “G‑d, world”: the world is not a thing in its own right.

Rather, everything in the world is only a ray spreading forth from G‑d’s light, as the sun’s radiance spreads from the sun. That radiance shone forth when it arose in G‑d’s will to create the world.

An analogy for how the world relates to G‑d: the earth has a spiritual power that makes plants grow. The fruit that grows is physical, so it cannot be the very essence of that spiritual power.

The fruit comes from only a ray of that power, which has become so coarse that it turns into physical fruit, with flavors such as sweetness that the palate can taste. Nothing like taste exists in the spiritual power itself.

The Alter Rebbe sharpens the analogy by a contrast: this “spreading forth” is not like water running downhill.

Water that flows downhill leaves its source; none of it stays behind. The power of growth loses nothing by producing fruit and can produce again and again without limit, because what goes out from it is only a ray.

This is why the Kabbalists, “the sages of truth,” call such an outflow he’arah, “illumination.” A person’s thoughts are a second example: they come from the soul without occupying any space, they neither change nor diminish it, and the soul can go on thinking without end.

So the world is only a ray of G‑d’s light: before Him it is “considered as nothing,” as the Zohar says, and creating it brought no change in Him, as Malachi 3:6 says. The morning prayers say the same: “You are He before the world was created; You are He since the world was created.”

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on “The voice of my beloved” in Song of Songs for more on this. Contemplating this truth is what arouses the love in prayer, and it is the theme of “Give thanks to Havayah, call upon His Name” (I Chronicles 16:8), recited in the morning prayers.

When we say “Give thanks,” we acknowledge that G‑d is “El Olam,” the world being only His light. The discourse “Return, O Israel” takes this up in explaining the blessing formula, “Blessed are You, Havayah, our G‑d, King of the world.”

This contemplation, that the world is only G‑d’s radiance, is the thread that runs through the whole morning prayer. One must return to it again and again until it is settled in the heart as clearly as something seen with the eyes; each person dwells on it according to his capacity, and one whose mind is more bound up with the physical needs to go deeper.

Why, then, do the Pesukei DeZimra, the morning’s verses of praise, contain requests? The Men of the Great Assembly placed them there because there are accusations against a person, and he is judged on whether he is worthy of reaching this contemplation and love.

The requests also answer the many obstacles and distractions that keep a person from this contemplation. So among the praises we ask for mercy, with verses such as “Save Your people … and tend them and carry them” (Psalms 28:9).

Another such verse is “And He, being merciful, forgives iniquity” (Psalms 78:38); the Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse “Command the children of Israel” in Pinchas for more. Everything before the Shema serves to awaken the love, and the Shema itself then declares G‑d’s oneness: “Havayah is our G‑d, Havayah is One.”

The Talmud (Pesachim 56a) reports that the people of Yericho “wrapped together” the Shema: in one view they did not pause after “One,” and in another they left out “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.” The Alter Rebbe describes their practice as not interrupting between “One” and “And you shall love.”

Their reason, as the Alter Rebbe explains it, is that the love depends on the contemplation of G‑d’s oneness: as deep as one’s contemplation of His unity, so strong will the love be. The halachah does not follow them, because “Blessed be the Name …” is not an interruption: it too expresses the secret of “One.”

The Zohar (Part II, 134a) says that va’ed, “and ever,” at the end of “Blessed be the Name …,” is echad, “One,” with its letters exchanged. This is the “lower unity,” G‑d’s oneness as it is found within the world’s existence, as against the “higher unity” of the verse “Hear, O Israel.”

The second section begins here. There are two kinds of love for G‑d; the first arises by itself from contemplating that “Havayah is One,” rising like a flame and burning “like flashes of fire” (Song of Songs 8:6), and it seeks nothing for itself.

Tanya, chapter 10, describes this love in the bnei aliyah, people of the highest rank: their service is not only to cleave to G‑d and quench their own soul’s thirst for Him. It follows the Tikkunei Zohar’s “Who is a chassid? One who acts with kindness toward his Maker,” which Tanya explains as uniting the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah in the lower worlds.

Two more discourses describe this love: one on “How beautiful and how pleasant you are, love, in delights” (Song of Songs 7:7), which the Kehot note suggests is Iggeres HaKodesh 18 in Tanya, and one on the burnt-offering. The word olah, “burnt-offering,” also means “rising,” and this love rises of itself.

The second love is the desire and longing to cleave to G‑d. Unlike the first, it is present in the heart of every Jew.

This is how the Alter Rebbe reads the commandment “And you shall love Havayah your G‑d”: you shall long for Havayah to be your G‑d, which every Jew can do. The first love, by contrast, belongs to the elevated few; it is the joy of “Rejoice, you righteous, in Havayah,” and the discourse on the half-shekel in Torah Ohr speaks of the same distinction.

This longing is the acceptance of the kingdom of Heaven that the Mishnah (Berachos 2:2) associates with the Shema. Yet a person cannot cleave to G‑d by his own power, for, as the Tikkunei Zohar says, “no thought can grasp Him,” and in the Zohar’s words He is “hidden of all the hidden ones and concealed of all the concealed ones.”

The Zohar’s “hidden ones” are worlds so lofty that they are above even the World to Come, and still they cannot grasp G‑d. The one way to cleave to Him is through the Torah, as the next paragraph explains.

This is the meaning of “And you shall speak of them” (Deuteronomy 6:7), which follows “And you shall love” in the Shema: the way to cleave to G‑d is through words of Torah. A ray of G‑d’s light is clothed in the letters of the Torah, as the power of growth is present in the fruit and the soul in the letters of its thought, in the analogies above.

The manna shows the same descent: it is linked with “a dew of lights” (Isaiah 26:19), yet it became so physical that the Israelites “pounded it in a mortar” (Numbers 11:8). The discourse on “And He fed you the manna” in Eikev explains this further.

The verse “For a mitzvah is a lamp, and the Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23) teaches that the Torah is a ray of light from the Infinite One. That is why there should be great joy in Torah and mitzvos: through them a person quenches his thirst, the longing to cleave to G‑d that every Jew has.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse in Pinchas on “Command the children of Israel … My offering, My bread” (Numbers 28:2), which discusses the burning of the fats on the altar and the verse “The precepts of Havayah are upright, gladdening the heart” (Psalms 19:9). This joy of the mitzvos is the joy that Deuteronomy 28:47 requires.

Because this joy comes from quenching one’s thirst through Torah and mitzvos, which are open to everyone, every person can reach it. This answers the opening question of how the Torah can demand joy of all.

The Alter Rebbe now distinguishes two situations in Torah study. The first is right after prayer, when the love has been aroused and a person studies with a thirsting soul; then he certainly rejoices in his service.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his Torah Ohr discourse on “Binding his foal to the vine” (Genesis 49:11), which explains that delight comes after a desire has been fulfilled. So when Torah study fulfills the thirst aroused in prayer, joy follows.

The second situation is when a person has fallen from the love aroused in prayer: a businessman busy with his affairs, or even one who spends his days in study, “dwelling in the tent,” whose love has cooled.

Even then he can make himself joyful by contemplating that the Torah is the Infinite Light itself, and that, as the Zohar teaches, “the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one.” He can rejoice in his study even while he feels utterly far from G‑d.

His distance comes from his involvement in the world and in business, but since that involvement is permitted, he can still return to G‑d. The Hebrew words carry the point: asur, “forbidden,” also means “bound,” and heter, “permitted,” also means “untied”; one engaged in permitted things is not bound in the hands of the external forces, the kelipos.

He is like a man handed over to his enemy but not imprisoned: he can still walk off and escape. One who has stumbled into something forbidden is bound, and has no remedy except sincere thoughts of teshuvah, as is explained elsewhere.

Far from blocking joy, the awareness of being far from G‑d can increase it. A person should honestly consider his place and worth, even if he is a scholar who spends his days in study.

Even such a person can break off his learning for idle talk with nothing to stop him; how much more so if he has stumbled into the sins of youth, which each person knows about himself.

Even after teshuvah, he may not yet have done complete teshuvah, with the mortifications that cleanse sin more fully. The more deeply he dwells on his own lowliness, until he is “despicable in his own eyes, contemptible” (Psalms 15:4) and sees himself as leftovers, wondering why he was created at all, the greater his joy will become.

Then the soul’s joy in studying Torah will be doubled and redoubled, as Tanya teaches in chapters 31 and 34, and as the Torah Ohr discourse on the well of living water dug by Yitzchak’s servants explains. Sadness, by contrast, comes from seeking greatness, such as wanting to be like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, whose Torah was his occupation; Tanya, chapter 27, calls such sadness a form of pride.

Rabbi Shimon said of himself, “With one bond I am bound [to Him],” his soul always held fast to G‑d and aflame in Him. His love never slept and needed no awakening, so he was exempt from prayer. The Jerusalem Talmud (Berachos 1:2) quotes him: people like us, occupied with Torah study, do not interrupt it even for the Shema.

This is the meaning of Micah 7:18, “He passes over transgression for the remnant of His heritage”: the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 17b) reads “remnant” as one who regards himself as leftovers. For one who has reached such deep humility, the Torah, which is the Infinite Light, passes over his transgressions, so that they count for nothing.

The analogy is sunlight: its warmth is felt most where its shining comes to an end, on the earth itself, while high in the air there are mountains of snow. So the Torah’s light acts most strongly where a person is lowest in his own eyes.

So too the light of the Torah shines most in one who sees himself as leftovers, as superfluous in the world. This is how “He passes over transgression” applies to him.

There is one condition: “my sin is ever before me” (Psalms 51:5), so that he never thinks his sinful ways upright, like the “fools” who suffer “because of the way of their transgression” (Psalms 107:17), and as “the way of a fool is upright in his own eyes” (Proverbs 12:15). The discourse “When you raise up the lamps” explains this further.

This humble service, of one who has fallen from the love of prayer, is called Yaakov. Yisrael is a higher level, named for “you have striven with G‑d … and prevailed” (Genesis 32:29); the discourse “How goodly are your tents, Yaakov” explains the two names.

Yisrael is the time when great love is aroused, in prayer and in the Torah study that follows it. Then joy comes more easily.

So Psalms 97:11 says, “and for the upright in heart, joy,” and Ecclesiastes 7:29 says that “G‑d made man upright.” The name Yisrael itself can be read as yashar El, “upright [with] G‑d.”

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse “In the passage of the libations it is written.” Even one whose service is that of Yaakov receives a glimmer of the level of Yisrael during prayer, and Shabbos as a whole is the level of Yisrael, as the discourse “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov” explains, where Yaakov is called “My servant.”

This explains “Because you did not serve with joy”: “serving” is the level of Yaakov, G‑d’s servant, and that service too must be joyful. The Alter Rebbe lists other discourses on serving G‑d with joy, among them those on “Serve Havayah with joy” (Psalms 100:2) and “I will greatly rejoice in Havayah” (Isaiah 61:10).

The joy of “Rejoice, you righteous, in Havayah” is the “love in delights” of Song of Songs 7:7, described above. Not every person merits it.

But the joy of a mitzvah and of Torah, in which a person quenches his soul’s thirst for its Creator, is commanded of everyone. Tanya, at the end of chapter 41, says that every Jew truly desires the union of his soul with G‑d’s light.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on “When you raise up [the lamps]” for the difference between the love of Avraham and that of Aharon. Avraham’s love is the “morning” of prayer, the attribute of day; Aharon’s is the morning in which he “makes the lamps good” (Exodus 30:7), an improvement beyond Avraham’s morning as it is by itself.

Aharon’s “making good” brings a person to the level of “Rejoice, you righteous.” The Alter Rebbe now offers a second way to distinguish the joy required of every Jew from the joy of the righteous.

It follows his discourse on “Havayah is for me among my helpers” (Psalms 118:7), which explains why the festivals are called “festivals for joy.” Throughout the year, joy is hidden within the service itself.

During the year the service is primary and the joy is the joy of performing a mitzvah; this is what “because you did not serve with joy” requires. On Yom Tov the joy itself is revealed, as the festival prayer says, “and may Israel rejoice in You.”

To rejoice “in You,” in G‑d Himself, is the level of the righteous, but on Yom Tov every Jew can reach it. The Alter Rebbe links this to the silver goblet Yosef hid in Binyamin’s sack (Genesis 44:2): kesef, “silver,” recalls “you longed greatly” (nichsof nichsafta, Genesis 31:30), a deep longing.

This second approach is close to the first. The Alter Rebbe also refers to his explanation on “And all your children” (Isaiah 54:13), which discusses the Midrash on “We will exult and rejoice in you” (Song of Songs 1:4) and its “complete joy.”

The third section turns to the preparation for prayer. Before praying one needs koved rosh, “heaviness of head” (Berachos 30b): bitterness that the level of Yisrael, whose letters spell li rosh, “a head for Me,” does not shine in him openly, for, as Psalms 38:5 says, “my iniquities have passed over my head.”

This heaviness is a clear and thorough recognition, in the mind, of one’s own lowliness, which brings submission. It need not be felt in the heart.

People think that before prayer the heart may simply be dull, but at Shacharis that cannot be, for Chesed, Avraham’s attribute, awakens in the morning. The Talmud (Bava Basra 16b) says, “When the day rises, the illness lifts,” in connection with the healing stone that hung on Avraham’s neck and was set in the sun when he died.

Three things remove whatever hinders prayer, and the first is immersion in a mikveh. The Mishnah at the end of Yoma says, “Just as a mikveh purifies the impure, so the Holy One, blessed be He, purifies Israel.”

The Alter Rebbe gives the halachic background for the mikveh. The Rif (Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi) on the third chapter of Berachos, and the Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah who comment on him, cite Rav Hai Gaon: the decree that one who has had a seminal emission must immerse was annulled only for the study of Torah.

For prayer, in their view, immersion is still required. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 88) does not rule this way, but the Talmidei Rabbeinu Yonah add that by all opinions prayer is more readily accepted with immersion.

Why should prayer differ from Torah study? The Alter Rebbe’s answer rests on the Mishnah at the end of Sotah, in the Jerusalem Talmud’s version: “Purity has taken away the fragrance,” that is, when purity ceased, fragrance was lost.

The Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 49a) tells that Rav Huna found a date of the fragrant chinunisa kind and wrapped it in his cloak; when his son Rabbah came and said, “I smell the fragrance of a chinunisa,” he answered, “My son, there is purity in you.” Fragrance, then, is bound up with purity.

The reason is that impurity and purity belong to the makifim, the “encompassing” levels that surround a person rather than entering within, and smell too is an encompassing sense. The discourse “These are the journeys” explains this in connection with “the Jordan at Yericho,” a name that echoes re’ach, “fragrance.”

The offerings are called “My pleasing fragrance” (Numbers 28:2), and after Noach’s offering “Havayah smelled the pleasing fragrance” (Genesis 8:21). This explains the Talmud’s account (Gittin 56b) that a gnat entered the nose of Titus, who destroyed the Temple.

His punishment was measure for measure: he destroyed the Temple and ended the offerings, G‑d’s “pleasing fragrance,” so he was struck in the nose. Isaiah 48:9, “and [for] My praise I will restrain (echetom) for you,” uses a verb related to chotem, “nose”; the discourse “I have come into My garden” explains this in connection with “I have gathered My myrrh” (Song of Songs 5:1).

Prayer takes the place of the offerings (the Talmud, Berachos 26b, says the prayers were instituted to correspond to them), so it too is a “pleasing fragrance.” That is why, the Zohar relates, Rav Hamnuna Saba would say before praying, “To the Master of the nose I pray”; the Zohar applies Isaiah’s “My praise I will restrain for you” to Atik Yomin, the “Ancient of Days.”

Since prayer is “fragrance,” it calls for purity, which is bound up with fragrance. Rav Huna’s “fragrance of a chinunisa” matches Rav Hamnuna’s words, for chinunisa echoes mischanen, “I supplicate,” in “To the Master of the nose I supplicate.”

This is why, by all opinions, prayer is more acceptable after immersion. Reishis Chochmah gives a further reason, contrasting the Torah, which does not receive impurity, with prayer.

The second of the three preparations is charity. Rabbi Elazar would give a coin to a poor man before praying, citing “In righteousness (be-tzedek) I shall behold Your face” (Bava Basra 10a), because charity protects against the accusations that question whether one may enter the King’s palace in prayer: “charity saves” (Proverbs 10:2) and “charity exalts a nation” (Proverbs 14:34).

The third preparation is studying musar, words of moral instruction, especially those in the Zohar. The name Zohar means “radiance,” a light that shines in the place of darkness.

The Zohar is “the wisdom of truth,” the Kabbalah. In “A woman of valor is the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4), the woman of valor is simple faith that “the whole earth is full of His glory,” held even without contemplation; it is very precious above because G‑d desires a dwelling place among the lower realms, and so it is the crown of her husband.

Her “husband” is the great love that comes from contemplating this simple faith: the love to cleave to G‑d, the One who encompasses all worlds. This love is called “masculine” (dechar), as hinted in “He has remembered (zachar) His kindness” (Psalms 98:3), for zachar, “remembered,” also means “male,” and kindness is love.

Because G‑d desired a dwelling place among the lower realms, as the Midrash Tanchuma says, the simple faith, held even without contemplation, becomes a crown on the head of her husband, the great love. What is lowest is thus raised highest.