אַחַר בִּיאָתוֹ מִפֶּטֶרְבּוּרְג

The following letter was penned by the author after his arrival from Saint Petersburg. This was the place of Rabbi Shneur Zalman's incarceration, interrogation, and debate, followed by his ultimate release. "After Petersburg" became a hasidic concept that signifies the era following his imprisonment, which was characterized by a significant increase in the revelation and expansion of hasidic teachings and ushered in the coalescence of the unique path of Chabad Hasidism.

״קָטֹנְתִּי מִכֹּל הַחֲסָדִים וּמִכָּל וכו׳״ (בראשית לב, י).

Jacob said, "I am unworthy of all the kindnesses and of all the truth that You have performed for Your servant…" (Gen. 32:10). Since the author of the Tanya's release occurred during the week when Parashat Vayishlaḥ is read, he opens with a verse from the weekly Torah portion upon which the entire letter is built. These words were uttered by Jacob as a prayer when he was returning to the Land of Israel from Ḥaran before his encounter with Esau. Rashi asks, "Why was Jacob afraid? Didn't God promise him, both when he left the Land of Israel and upon leaving Ḥaran,'Behold, I am with you; I will keep you wherever you go' (Gen. 28:15)?" Rashi answers that Jacob was worried that perhaps his merits had decreased, that he had "become unworthy" due to the kindness and truth that God had shown him. Since the scale of his debts and merits had shifted after he had received the promise due to the immense kindnesses that God had performed for him, he was concerned that God's promise was no longer in effect. The author of the Tanya will explore this idea in a broader scope as a general instruction for every person on how to act when God showers him with immense kindness and truth. Each and every one of us, the children of Jacob, must respond similarly, and be humbled by all the kindnesses God bestows on us.

פֵּירוּשׁ, שֶׁבְּכָל חֶסֶד וְחֶסֶד שֶׁהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עוֹשֶׂה לָאָדָם צָרִיךְ לִהְיוֹת שְׁפַל רוּחַ בִּמְאֹד,

This means that with every single kindness that the Holy One, blessed be He, does for a person, one must become exceedingly humble, A person's response to the kindnesses that God performs for him must be a feeling of humility. The more divine kindness he receives, the smaller he should feel. The problem is that human nature is exactly the opposite. When he is in a good place, not only is he in a better mood, but he also considers himself superior and more important. Often, when a person does well in business, he begins to think that he is extremely intelligent and God-fearing. Success and status in one area cause him to feel a sense of superiority in other areas of life, even though this assumption is entirely illogical. The mystical explanation of this phenomenon is that the essence of the sefira of Ḥesed (Kindness) aligns with greatness and embodies the quality of expansion. When a person becomes the recipient of greatness and liberation from a given confinement, he may translate this feeling into self-importance and self-aggrandizement.

כִּי חֶסֶד דְּרוֹעָא יְמִינָא,

for kindness is called the right arm. Ḥesed is all about giving. In the configuration of a person's soul, the sefira of Ḥesed corresponds to the right arm, which gives, acting from the inside out. By contrast, the sefira of Gevura is the power of contraction and convergence inward, like the left arm that opposes the right, modifying and containing the right hand's outward movement.

״וִימִינוֹ תְּחַבְּקֵנִי״ (שיר השירים ב, ו),

as it is written, "And his right hand embraces me" (Song 2:6), God's right hand signifies His attribute of Ḥesed. When God gifts a person with a show of His Ḥesed, it is as if He is embracing him, drawing him close.

שֶׁהִיא בְּחִינַת קִרְבַת אֱלֹהִים מַמָּשׁ, בְּיֶתֶר שְׂאֵת מִלְּפָנִים.

referring to actual closeness to God to a greater degree than before. The revelation of divine Ḥesed to an individual is an embrace, which brings two parties closer than they were before. This does not mean that they were far from each other, but whatever distance they were from each other, now they are closer. There has been a movement of drawing close.

וְכָל הַקָּרוֹב אֶל ה׳ בְּיֶתֶר שְׂאֵת וְהַגְבֵּהַּ לְמַעְלָה מַעְלָה, צָרִיךְ לִהְיוֹת יוֹתֵר שְׁפַל רוּחַ לְמַטָּה מַטָּה,

Whoever has a greater degree of closeness to God and is raised to lofty heights must be more humble, lowering himself to the lowest depths, How should a person respond to true closeness with God? The more God's kindness elevates a person and brings him close, the more he must lower himself so that he can receive this kindness and experience this connection so that he might preserve it. Closeness to God is not necessarily mutual. When God draws a person close, this does not necessarily cause the person to be close to Him. For example, there is a relationship described in Jeremiah with the words "For they have turned their back to Me and not their face" (Jer. 2:27). Two people could be standing right next to each other, and one of them does not want closeness, so he turns around. The first person is standing as close as he can to the other, but the other person has created the greatest conceivable distance by turning his back on his comrade. In this sense, when God draws a person close to him, the person needs to make sure to also position himself for closeness. This is not easy. If God elevates a person, and the person views it superficially and not in a deep, internal way, it is as if he is turning his back on God and using the greatness he has merited merely to blow up his ego. This distances him from God to the ultimate degree, preventing him from any real closeness to God.

כְּמוֹ שֶׁכָּתוּב: ״מֵרָחוֹק ה׳ נִרְאָה לִי״ (ירמיה לא, ב).

as it is written, "The Lord appeared to me from afar" (Jer. 31:2). It is particularly when a person feels distant that God appears to him: "If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I lie down in the netherworld, You are here" (Ps. 139:8). "If I ascend to heaven," if I feel like I have ascended to a high realm, like I am great and superior, "You are there," distant and concealed. Yet "if I lie down in the netherworld," when I feel that I have descended to the depths, when I have humbled myself, "You are here." For a person to merit seeing God, he must know that he is far, that he is nothing, because only then can God appear to him. But when he feels great and important, he will see less and less of the Divine, until he will cease to perceive God's presence at all. By way of analogy, when a person looks at a tall mountain from afar, it seems small. Yet the more he draws close, the bigger the mountain appears and the smaller he feels next to it. A person who stands next to the mountain and still feels big should doubt whether he is truly close to it, or perhaps it is not a mountain at all.

וְכַנּוֹדַע, ‘דְּכוֹלָּא קַמֵּיהּ דַּוְוקָא, כְּלֹא חֲשִׁיב׳ (הקדמת זהר יא, ב). וְאִם כֵּן,

As it is known, "Everything before Him is considered nothingness"

כֹּל שֶׁהוּא קַמֵּיהּ יוֹתֵר, הוּא יוֹתֵר כְּלֹא וְאַיִן וְאֶפֶס.

(Introduction to Zohar 11b), specifically emphasizing "before Him." If so, the more one is "before Him," the more he is like absolute nothingness. The concepts of close and far in relation to God, who is everywhere, must be understood in the context of inside and outside, revealed and hidden, as explained elsewhere. The more a person is "before God," the closer he feels to Him, the smaller he is, the more he is nothing. The feeling of smallness is a result of his closeness to God. Conversely, the closer a person can get to God depends on the degree to which he can nullify his sense of self.

וְזוֹ הִיא בְּחִינַת יָמִין שֶׁבִּקְדוּשָּׁה וְ״חֶסֶד לְאַבְרָהָם״ (מיכה ז, ב), שֶׁאָמַר: ״אָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר״ (בראשית יח, כז).

This is the right side of holiness and the "kindness of Abraham" (Mic. 7:20), who said, "I am dust and ashes" (Gen. 18:27). When God's right hand, which draws a person close, causes him to feel small in his own estimation, it is called "the right side of holiness." The paradigm of holy kindness and right-handedness is Abraham, who was a chariot for the divine attribute of Ḥesed since he humbled himself until he felt that he was mere dust and ashes.

וְזוֹ הִיא גַּם כֵּן מִדָּתוֹ שֶׁל יַעֲקֹב.

This is also the attribute of Jacob. The more Jacob received in the way of divine kindness, the closer he was brought to God, the smaller he felt, as he said, "I am unworthy of all the kindnesses and of all the truth that You have performed for Your servant" (Gen. 32:10). There is a conceptual leap here, because Jacob is not explicitly referring to spiritual kindnesses, about the revelation of God and mystical closeness, but rather about the divine kindness that is manifest in material things, in "bread to eat and a garment to wear" (Gen. 28:20). But this only fine-tunes the point, that God's kindness, even when manifest in physical objects, is still a test for man: Will he now think of himself as greater or lesser? If he has become greater in truth, then his frame of reference has also grown, so that his status, assets, intelligence, and character traits seem much less significant in his own estimation. When a person merits closeness to God, he becomes privy to a larger frame of reference in which he becomes smaller. The more he receives kindnesses from God, the smaller he feels.

וּבָזֹאת הִתְנַצֵּל (בראשית כח, טו). מִפְּנֵי הֱיוֹת קָטָן יַעֲקֹב בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד בְּעֵינָיו, מֵחֲמַת רִיבּוּי הַחֲסָדִים: "כִּי בְמַקְלִי כו׳״ (בראשית לב, י), וְאֵינוֹ

This is how he justified his fear of Esau, and this is why he did not suffice with God's promise "And, behold, I am with you; I will keep you wherever you go " (Gen. 28:15). Since Jacob was exceedingly small in his own eyes due to the many acts

רָאוּי וּכְדַאי כְּלָל לְהִנָּצֵל כו׳.

of kindness God had performed for him, as it is written, "For with my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps" (Gen. 32:10), he considered himself entirely unworthy and undeserving to be saved, and so on. Jacob surmised that when he crossed the Jordan River on his way to Ḥaran twenty years before, he had only his staff and nothing else. He was alone and being pursued. "And now I have become two camps" – now he had a large family and great wealth. Yet instead of feeling greater and more entitled, he declared, "I am unworthy of all the kindnesses." You did so many kindnesses for me, God, and You brought me so close, yet I do not deserve any of it.

וּכְמַאֲמַר רַבּוֹתֵינוּ זַ״ל (ברכות ד, א): "שֶׁמָּא יִגְרוֹם הַחֵטְא״, שֶׁנִּדְמֶה בְּעֵינָיו שֶׁחָטָא.

This is in accordance with the Rabbis' statement "Jacob was concerned lest a transgression would cause God to revoke His promise" (Berakhot 4a), because it seemed to him that he had sinned. This was not a new feeling stemming from a recent sin that Jacob though he had committed but rather the sharpness of his own internal critique. The more a person grows in holiness, the more he demands of himself. What he would not have considered a sin in the past, he now considered a transgression. It is recounted that during Tashlikh, a prayer said on the afternoon of Rosh HaShana where one metaphorically casts his sins into a body of water, the students used to follow the Lubavitcher Rebbe and collect the sins he was discarding, because for them his sins were considered mitzvot.

מַה שֶּׁאֵין כֵּן בְּזֶה לְעוּמַּת זֶה,

This is not the case with the unholy counterpart to divine kindness, This expression, "unholy counterpart," conveys the parallel between the infrastructure of the world of holiness and the other side, that which opposes the sacred, not only in general but in every detail. The pattern of kelippa, the force of impurity, only echoes the pattern of holiness because kelippa does not have any authentic vitality in and of itself; it is but a shell, a shadow of the side of holiness.

הוּא יִשְׁמָעֵאל, חֶסֶד דִּקְלִיפָּה. כֹּל שֶׁהַחֶסֶד גָּדוֹל, הוּא הוֹלֵךְ וְגָדֵל בְּגוֹבַהּ וְגַסּוּת הָרוּחַ וְרוֹחַב לִבּוֹ.

which is Ishmael, who represents Ḥesed of kelippa. In the realm of kelippa, the greater the kindness, the more the recipient's arrogance, pride, and sense of entitlement increases. Abraham embodies the holy aspect of Ḥesed, while Ishmael, Abraham's son, embodies the Ḥesed of kelippa. When the kindness a person receives makes him feel entitled to even more, this is the Ḥesed of kelippa. It is not necessarily a different category of Ḥesed. It shares the same source as holy Ḥesed, yet becomes distorted by its recipient. Just as kindness can be an instrument for blessing, growth, and holiness, it can also be destructive and damaging to its recipient. If in response to the kindness a person receives he grows larger in his own eyes, if his appetite grows bigger and bigger, then sooner or later he will lose everything. It is clear from this that not only are challenging times a test, but so are times of plenty and benevolence. Even when a person is the recipient of open kindness from above, a sense of importance and entitlement will cause all the goodness to revert to kelippa.

וְלָזֹאת בָּאתִי מִן הַמּוֹדִיעִים מוֹדָעָה רַבָּה לִכְלָלוּת אַנְשֵׁי שְׁלוֹמֵנוּ, עַל רִיבּוּי הַחֲסָדִים אֲשֶׁר הִגְדִּיל ה׳ לַעֲשׂוֹת עִמָּנוּ, לֶאֱחוֹז בְּמִדּוֹתָיו שֶׁל יַעֲקֹב,

Accordingly, I am hereby making a momentous announcement to all the members of our community about the many acts of kindness that God has magnanimously done for us: Adopt the attributes of Jacob, In light of the first part of this letter, the entreaty takes on a different tone and scope. The letter does not just outline good attributes versus bad ones or delineate whether it is permitted to take revenge against the opponents of Hasidism. These concepts relate to the soul's quintessential response to God's goodness and the serious ramifications of it. Every person needs to realize that the magnitude of the kindness that God has performed for the hasidim in general and Hasidism as a movement is a personal test: Will one succeed in retaining his essence as a Jew and embody the attributes of Jacob, who was humbled from all the kindnesses God performed for him?

״שְׁאָר עַמּוֹ״ (ישעיה יא, יא) וּ״שְׁאֵרִית יִשְׂרָאֵל״ (ירמיה ו, ט), שֶׁמֵּשִׂים עַצְמוֹ כְּשִׁירַיִים וּמוֹתָרוֹת מַמָּשׁ, שֶׁאֵין בּוֹ שׁוּם צוֹרֶךְ.

for we are known as "the remnant of His people" (Isa. 11:11) and "the remnant of Israel" (Jer. 6:9), referring to a person who regards himself as a remainder and truly dispensable, with no use at all. The explanation for this appellation of the Jewish people is mentioned in several places in the Talmud. This is the litmus test of true closeness to God: The receiver sees himself as small, unimportant, and even dispensable.

לְבִלְתִּי רוּם לְבָבָם מֵאֲחֵיהֶם כו׳, וְלֹא לְהַרְחִיב עֲלֵיהֶם פֶּה אוֹ לִשְׁרוֹק עֲלֵיהֶם חַס וְשָׁלוֹם. הַס מִלְּהַזְכִּיר, בְּאַזְהָרָה נוֹרָאָה. רַק לְהַשְׁפִּיל רוּחָם וְלִבָּם בְּמִדַּת אֱמֶת לְיַעֲקֹב

They should not feel superior to their brethren, and so on, and they should not jeer at them or whistle at them derisively, God forbid. This is a strict warning: Mention nothing to the opponents. Rather, they should lower their spirits and hearts, adopting Jacob's attribute of truth The author of the Tanya warns the hasidim not to be arrogant and humiliate the opponents of Hasidism, despite the greatly tempting opportunity to act as their superiors and crush them now that Hasidism has the upper hand after his release. He is not implying that the other side was right; the hasidim suffered from brutal, unjustified persecution. But now that the hasidim had won, the author does not just present this conduct as good advice or general words of morality but rather as a practical instruction that includes a strict warning not to stray from it. The reference to "Jacob's attribute of truth" means that this is not a demand for particular external behavior, but rather it should be felt deep within as well. Moreover, one who is not capable of this conduct does not belong to the community of Chabad hasidim.

מִפְּנֵי כָּל אָדָם בִּנְמִיכוּת רוּחַ, ״וּמַעֲנֶה רַךְ מֵשִׁיב חֵימָה״ (משלי טו, א), ״וְרוּחַ נְכֵאָה כו׳״ (משלי יז, כב). וְכוּלֵּי הַאי וְאוּלַי יִתֵּן ה׳ בְּלֵב אֲחֵיהֶם, ״כַּמַּיִם הַפָּנִים וגו׳״ (משלי כז, יט).

before every person, with humility, with "a gentle response that assuages fury" (Prov. 15:1) and with a "depressed spirit…" (Prov. 17:22). Through all this, perhaps God will put a similar response in the hearts of their brethren, "As water reflects a face to the face…" (Prov. 27:19). Even if one does all the above, humbling oneself and behaving toward the opponent with a lowly spirit, it is not guaranteed that they will respond in kind. The author of the Tanya is cautioning his followers against using the opponents' response as a condition for their own behavior. This advice is not a tactic or even a strategy for making peace with others but rather a deep, personal test of faith, a path that one should walk in his service of God. This is the right way to act, the way of Jacob's attribute of truth. In any event, the author of the Tanya adds, "perhaps" this will be beneficial and effect change in the other side. A person's nature compels him to feel for his friend what his friend feels for him. Expressing love for another person awakens that same feeling in the other. This is not a guarantee, but nevertheless it "assuages fury." It extinguishes the flame of the dispute. It creates a possibility, an opening, a "perhaps."