The forty-third "cheder" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Shabbos, 3 Shevat 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Va'eira, Shevi'i, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, 3rd of the month, from chapter 18 through chapter 22 inclusive.
Tanya, on this day we begin the first part of chapter 16, from the word "vezeh", until the end of the shiur at the word "ba'arichus".
Today's saying brings a brief account of the history of the printing of the seforim "Torah Or" and "Likkutei Torah" as we know them. The Rebbe quotes a letter of the Rebbe Rayatz which describes how the matter unfolded. Let us begin with a little background, and afterwards we will examine the wording of the text itself.
The matter began when the Alter Rebbe was taken to prison for the second time, in the year 5561. In that same year the grandson - the Tzemach Tzedek - began to gather his grandfather's maamarim and to copy them. There is an interesting description there, in which the Tzemach Tzedek relates about himself that he was diligent in writing, and wrote for several hours every day. Over the course of the years - from 5561, when the Alter Rebbe was taken to prison the second time, until 5573, twelve years, and 5573 is already the year of the Alter Rebbe's passing - he wrote and copied more than ten thousand "boigen". What is a "boigen"? Each boigen is eight pages, so ten thousand boigen come to eighty thousand pages. And to these maamarim the Tzemach Tzedek added notes of his own and source references from midrashim, from Zohar, from Kabbalah and so on.
After the Alter Rebbe's passing, almost twenty years later, in the year 5592, the task began of preparing the seforim for distribution and printing. Two copyists were engaged to begin copying the maamarim in the order in which the Tzemach Tzedek had arranged them according to the parshiyos, and in the stages of copying prior to the printing it was called "Torah Or". "Torah Or" originally had two parts, and as we will see shortly in the saying, when it came to the actual printing they only managed to print the first part, and that is indeed what is called "Torah Or".
Afterwards there was a decree: the maskilim informed on the seforim of chassidus, and on seforim of Judaism in general, to the Russian government, and in the year 5597 a government decree was issued to close all the printing houses in Russia that printed Jewish seforim, leaving only two places. And since in that very year, in which they were printing the "Torah Or", many printing houses were closed, they only managed to print the first part, which is called "Torah Or".
After this background let us examine the wording of the saying, and we will also see the completion of the matter. And this is the wording: "Torah Or was first printed in the year 5597 in Kopust - without the additions". In Kopust they planned to print both parts, but they did not manage to, as we will see shortly, because of the government decree.
"The Tzemach Tzedek writes in his letter dated 3 Shevat 5597" - there is a letter that the Tzemach Tzedek wrote in that same year in which the first part, called "Torah Or", was printed. And it is a letter that was written toward the printing of the sefer, and it was included in the sefer as part of the description. And this is what he writes: "The sefer Torah Or which is now being printed contains maamarim - the majority of the discourses - from the year 5556 until the end of 5572" - the end of 5572 is already close to the Alter Rebbe's passing; and over the course of all those years, from 5556 - close to twenty years - most of the maamarim are found in the sefer "Torah Or".
"Many of which our Rebbe of blessed memory himself set his examining eye upon and corrected" - that is, the Alter Rebbe himself went over most of the maamarim prepared for "Torah Or" and corrected them. "And his holy will consented to bring them to the printing house" - the Alter Rebbe agreed in advance that this be printed and publicized. "And the sefer comprises two parts" - as mentioned, originally it was supposed to be one name, "Torah Or", comprising two parts.
What are the two parts? "The first part" - which to this day is "Torah Or" - "on two of the Chumashim of the Torah", that is, on Bereishis and on Shemos, "and Chanukah and Purim", and it also includes maamarim on these festivals, "also several discourses for the festival of Shavuos, the time of the giving of the Torah, in parshas Yisro" - which is in Shemos - it also contains maamarim on Shavuos, "and a few for Pesach in parshas Vayakhel". This is the first part of "Torah Or".
"The second part, im yirtzeh Hashem" - it had not yet been printed. The plan was that the second part too would be called "Torah Or". What was it to include according to the plan? "On three of the Chumashim of the Torah", that is, on the three following seforim - Vayikra, Bamidbar and Devarim - "and Shir HaShirim", which at the end contains maamarim on Shir HaShirim alone, "and the festivals, and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur", on which there are also discourses. These two parts were originally called "Torah Or".
And the Tzemach Tzedek concludes in his letter: "And the name of the author befits it" - the name of the author of the sefer, who is the Alter Rebbe, fits the fact that his seforim should be called "Torah Or", two parts. And why is this connected to the Alter Rebbe's name? Because his name is "Shneur" - "shnei or", two lights. The two lights are the two parts of "Torah Or". And the hint of "twice or", "and Ve'ahavta is twice or", is also like "Ve'ahavta": the word "Ve'ahavta" in gematria equals twice "or" ("or" is 207, and "Ve'ahavta" is twice or). For there is a love that comes from above to below - an illumination from above, with which the Holy One, blessed be He, arouses the Jew so that love of Hashem be awakened in him; and there is a love that comes from below to above - that the Jew studies the maamarim and awakens the love of Hashem within himself. This is the idea, brought also in Tanya, that "Ve'ahavta" is twice "or". "Until here his words" of the letter, which explains the background of the two parts.
But in practice, as we said, "they only managed to print the first part" alone. In that year, in 5597, they did not manage to print both parts of "Torah Or", for "through informing, the government closed several of the Hebrew printing houses in Russia". Following the informing of the maskilim, a decree was issued that all the printing houses be closed, "and among them also the printing house in Kopust, in which the "Torah Or" was printed", and therefore they did not manage to print the second part. From 5597 there was thus only one part - "Torah Or" - and the second part remained in manuscript and was not printed.
And it took years until they succeeded in printing the second part. The Rebbe describes here that "in the year 5608" - more than ten years after the printing of "Torah Or" - "part two was printed in Zhitomir", where there was a printing house. After eleven years they succeeded in printing the second part, "and with a change of name" - the second part was now called "Likkutei Torah". We will study this, im yirtzeh Hashem, in a few days: we are here at the saying of 3 Shevat, and when we reach the saying of 15 Shevat we will study another passage completing this story, and then we will also understand it better.
Let us already say now why the name was changed to "Likkutei Torah". In one of the sichos, in 5748, the Rebbe addresses the concept of "likkut", gathering: there is the way the Rambam gathered all the halachos of the entire Torah; Tanya is called "Likkutei Amarim"; and regarding the ingathering of the exiles of Israel the verse says "and you shall be gathered one by one, the children of Israel". [And I will add - we are familiar with the Rebbe's seforim, "Likkutei Sichos".] The Rebbe explains there that when one makes a likkut, even though one is gathering things that already exist in other places and is merely assembling and arranging them together - already in the very act of gathering a new face is created and a great chiddush comes about in the matter. And so, for example, what the Rambam did - gathering from the entire Torah and concentrating and arranging the halachos - became a new sefer; the gathering itself is a great chiddush. And as we will see, im yirtzeh Hashem, in the saying of 15 Shevat, in the second part of "Torah Or", called "Likkutei Torah", all the corrections and notes of the Tzemach Tzedek were added, and this gathering that was added in the second part is a great chiddush, and therefore the sefer is called "Likkutei Torah".
Let us conclude with a final point. As we have spoken about in earlier sayings, in certain sections of "Hayom Yom" there is an allusion to the seforim of the Rambam. Until now we have seen the reference to the first two seforim - Sefer HaMadda and Sefer Ahavah - and between one sefer and the next there is an interval. Here begins, by way of allusion, the reference to the Rambam's Sefer Zmanim, which includes all the festivals - Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Eiruvin and so on. And here, when one looks at the list of maamarim of "Likkutei Torah" and "Torah Or" that the Rebbe notes, he mentions the festivals and the holidays - we have here Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the festivals in general. This is an allusion to the beginning of the third sefer in Rambam, Sefer Zmanim, which includes the matters of the festivals and holidays, which will come in what follows, im yirtzeh Hashem.