Tanya with Rochel Schmukler

Have you ever been in awe?

The higher it is, the farther it reaches.

Love and fear are two wings.

A tiny being can initiate vast positive change. When a person learns and prays out of love and fear, the letters he utters are “alive” with spiritual infusion and they rise to the ten sefirot. There, their true identity as the completely unbounded light of Hashem is exposed. In this world below, the radiance of Torah and mitzvot cannot shine, but in the coming future when the world rises out of it...

The secret of intention?  The  power to send things up from the material world into infinitely higher realities. Man’s animating, speaking soul is subject to the condition which affects the totality of this world –– kelipat nogah. When speaking worthless things, the vivifying soul constitutes a concealing veil, obscuring the Divine life energy within it. However, when the vivifying soul enunciates...

Where do differences come from?

Acts of holiness naturally rise beyond this world. When someone studies Torah without the intention to connect to Hashem, then the study does not rise to become incorporated with the ten sefirot. But it does rise! Torah is essentially holy and so its natural place is in a place of holiness, in the spiritual worlds above ours. In fact, angels are created from these acts of holiness either in our wo...

Keep doing good things, no matter your intention. When someone studies Torah with self-serving interests, that holy act becomes trapped within the kelipah. But this is only a temporary situation. Once a person returns to Hashem in teshuva, their previous acts of holiness are released and return with them. This is not just a possible outcome. It is a definite outcome! Every person will ultimately d...

Is a good habit good enough? We are looking at someone whose Torah study and mitzvah performance is not done out of a space of love and fear of Hashem. He acts this way out of habit, having been trained to fear and serve Hashem from youth. This kind of service is not considered truly for the sake of Hashem, because in order to do something for the sake of another, there has to be a motivating emot...

Knowing the difference can make all of the difference. By analyzing the reward for a mitzvah and being aware of its destination in the spiritual worlds, we can understand something of the essential make-up of a mitzvah. Knowing that a mitzvah powered by love and fear ascends to the higher worlds and becomes incorporated within the ten holy sefirot motivates us to serve Hashem out of a space of awa...

The world of Atzilus is beyond the intellect of a created being, therefore it is the abode of the sublime souls who served Hashem in a way that completely transcends the intellect. As a chariot is nullified to the rider, these great tzadikim are completely surrendered to the Divine will–– and they, as well as everything that they own, expresses nothing other than the will of Hashem. People who are...

The world of Atzilus is a world of oneness, and it is completely beyond the grasp of a created being. In that sublime world, the ten sefirot are completely unified with their Emanator, and so utterly and infinitely transcend the mind of a limited creature, no matter how great. A created being does indeed possess the ability to grasp chochmah bina and da’at in the lower world of Beriah and still re...

There’s a distinction between the soul that serves and the service that it performs. Depending on the level of intention, the soul’s service of Torah and mitzvot rise to be incorporated within the ten sefirot, the Divine life force, in the higher worlds of either Beriah or Yetzirah. But ultimately, the ten sefirot of the world of Atzilus, which are one with their Emanator, the blessed Infinite One...

Normally, a soul who served Hashem with instinctive love and fear abides in the world of Yetzirah, as does the “ruach” of a righteous person’s soul. However, on special occasions the soul gets to rise to a world beyond its normal self, a privilege not available to angels. Why this special treatment? Because an angel doesn’t have to fight a dark side in order to implement its natural emotions. But...

In order to “inhabit” a world, there must be a common bond between the “self” and the “world.” The world of Yetzirah is a world of holy emotion and the angels who serve Hashem with their emotional instinct abide there. Emotions are their mode and so that is their world. The world of Beriah is a world where the Divine intellect, the source of the holy emotions, radiates. Righteous people who served...

Animals are instinctive beings of our physical world. But there are instinctive beings in the higher worlds too – these are the angels. Their powerful instincts of love or fear of Hashem are sublime and magnificent. However, it is a nature which they did not create by choice, by which they simply operate. From this we can appreciate the power of our own service, even if we cannot produce any new e...

When a person lacks the capacity to generate new emotions of awe and love for Hashem, he has another path. He can awaken his instinctive love, which is embedded deep within his soul. This powerful love is innate to the Jew and includes within it an element of fear. Being mindful of his deep desire to attach to Hashem, a Jew can then use his awareness to perform a mitzvah. This intention then becom...

A human being is characterized by his power of intellect and freedom of choice. A person with the ability to meditate upon Hashem’s greatness and to generate love and awe based on that awareness, when he uses that intention to power a mitzvah, his intention becomes like the soul of a human for the body of the mitzvah. But what if you do not have the capacity to create love through meditation? How...

The correlation between the mitzvah and its intention is sourced in the supernal world of Atzilus: the intention to cleave to Hashem is sourced in the lights of Atzilus while the act or speech of the mitzvah is sourced in the vessels. Lights are about uncontained, unlimited manifestation of the Divine. Vessels are about expressing Hashem’s infinity in defined, structured ways. The attachment of th...

The intention of attaching to Hashem while performing a mitzvah is like the soul of the mitzvah. It is not that the attachment that is forged by intention is greater than the attachment forged by the act or speech of the mitzvah. Both action and intention are equal in this regard, since they are both the will of Hashem. The difference between them lies in how manifestly this connection is sensed....

While everything of this world is equal in that all are subject to utter and total Divine concealment, the difference between one thing and another becomes vast when we consider the contraction or expansion of the Divine light which flows into each. Generally, this world is divided into four categories, each class corresponding to a different letter of the Divine name Havaya –– one below the other...

Drawing upon what we’ve learned until now, we can now understand the halacha –– that meditation is not valid in lieu of verbal articulation. Because the soul itself requires no perfecting; it came down here only to draw light upon the vital soul as well as the body. This is accomplished by actual articulation or action via the body. On the other hand, our Sages said that prayer or any other blessi...

Torah study is called “calling through the Torah.”  To study Torah is to call G-d by His Name, turning to His very essence, asking Him to stay with us and not to leave us alone. This deep call from our inner space pulls down the very essence of Hashem over the source of our souls. Being cognizant that we draw down Hashem's essence when we study Torah allows us to experience great awe when doi...

So much of your vital soul, and often its totality, is invested in earning a livelihood. Thus, when hard-earned money is given to charity, this one act brings the entire vital soul up to Hashem. That is why the Sages of the Land of Israel called charity simply “the mitzvah.” Because it embodies what a mitzvah is all about and is outstanding in this respect –– elevating the vital soul to holiness....