The thirty-eighth "room" in the palace of Hayom Yom.
Monday, 27 Teves 5703.
Shiurim: Chumash, Va'eira, sheini, with Rashi's commentary.
Tehillim, the 27th of the month, we say from chapter 120 through chapter 134 inclusive.
Tanya, we are in the middle of chapter 14, before the words "mah she'ein kein", and it concludes with the words "tzaddikim etc."
Today's teaching is short, and its source is a letter that the Rebbe Rayatz wrote on 7 Marcheshvan 5691. The letter was written to a chassid named Bezpalov, whom the Rebbe Rayatz addresses with special titles - "of the stock of tarshishim" - a chassid of a certain lineage. That chassid had written to the Rebbe Rayatz about a medical problem his son had; apparently the son was not in good health, and this troubled him greatly.
The Rebbe Rayatz opens the letter by blessing him for his son's health. He then asks him for further details about the situation - even though in two or three lines he wrote to him that he understood what was being discussed, he prefers that he give more detail. Afterwards the Rebbe Rayatz encourages him not to suffice with a sigh over the situation, but rather to set a fixed time for Torah study, to strengthen his soul through it and to give nourishment to the soul.
And then he concludes with a teaching - this is the daily teaching - which the Rebbe took from that letter. There the teaching is cited in the name of "Rabbeinu HaGadol", and here the Rebbe writes it in the name of the Alter Rebbe, who is the one intended: "The Alter Rebbe said".
The teaching in its original is in Yiddish, and in translation: "The gashmiyus of Jews is ruchniyus". And what is the explanation of the idea that a Jew's gashmiyus is ruchniyus? "The Almighty gives us gashmiyus so that from it we should make ruchniyus". The Holy One, blessed be He, gives us gashmiyus, and our task is to take that gashmiyus and turn it into ruchniyus - to use it according to Hashem's will, and through it to strengthen spiritual life and so on.
It is interesting that in this teaching the Alter Rebbe is referring to the gashmiyus that each and every person has. Each person looks at his own gashmiyus and says: "I have gashmiyus; I am a Jew, and my gashmiyus is essentially ruchniyus. And how does it become ruchniyus? By my turning it into ruchniyus" - meaning, I have to do something for that to happen.
There is a parallel teaching, which appears in many places and in well known chassidic letters, similar to this teaching, but in which one can see an additional interesting emphasis - for it speaks about someone else's gashmiyus. That teaching says that another person's gashmiyus is your ruchniyus: the other person needs to have gashmiyus, or has gashmiyus, while for you, the other person's gashmiyus is your ruchniyus - you do not have to wait until he turns it into ruchniyus; rather, a fellow Jew's gashmiyus is, for you, ruchniyus.
So the Rebbe writes in one of his letters to a Jew who wrote to him about his material situation: the Rebbe tells him, "Continue to detail for me your material situations; it is very important that you spell them out" - why? Because another's gashmiyus is ruchniyus. And the Rebbe adds: "and especially the gashmiyus of a Jew, which is holy". This connects to the teaching, and constitutes another angle on how to view the matter.
And the teaching continues: "Sometimes, when this is not the case" - as the Rebbe Rayatz relates to that Jew whose situation was not good. The meaning is that sometimes a person's situation is not good, and what is then asked of him? How is he to draw ruchniyus out of gashmiyus? After all, he has problems, he has no gashmiyus and he has a lack; he has no vessels and nothing with which to act.
To this the teaching says: "one must give the Almighty even a poor man's minchah". A Jew must give the Holy One, blessed be He, even a poor man's minchah - an offering small in quantity, a little flour, a handful and the like. But the words of Chazal about the poor man's minchah are well known: "whether one brings much or one brings little, provided that he directs his heart toward Heaven". If the Holy One, blessed be He, sees that you are giving - even though it is little, it is a minchah, and it accomplishes.
And the conclusion: "and He gives in abundance" - the Holy One, blessed be He, gives in return in abundance and fills the vessels. That is, you must give; and when you give - even if it seems to you that you do not have much and that you lack the strength - the little that you can, the "poor man's minchah" that is within your ability to give, that is the vessel that will bring about that you should have "full", an immense abundance. And this itself is the encouragement the Rebbe gives that Jew: act and do, and you will see that this very thing will draw down for you great abundance.
This idea is already written in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos in these words: "Everything that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world, He created solely for His glory" - that everything in the world must express Hashem's glory. And there is a well known statement of Chazal that the Rebbe repeated many times, that gold should not have been created in the world and the world was not worthy of gold - and why was it created? Only for the Beis HaMikdash. The idea that all gashmiyus is meant to become ruchniyus is a great foundation in a Jew's outlook and worldview in every matter, and it finds expression in this teaching.
We will yet encounter in Hayom Yom several teachings that express exactly this idea in a slightly different style, but this in any case is the content of this teaching.
We will conclude with a connection and a hint to the books of the Rambam, as we have seen on the previous days. Two days ago we began Sefer Zmanim with the hint about the laws of milah, and yesterday, in the previous shiur, about the laws of tefillah. What remains is all the intermediate laws in Sefer Zmanim - the laws of tefillin, sefer Torah, tzitzis and brachos - and all these laws in sequence express the idea of the teaching. For these laws speak exactly about the point that when you take a physical object, whether it is a sefer Torah, tzitzis, tefillin, or a brachah that you make on a physical food - you take a physical thing and make of it a spiritual thing, a mitzvah, a G-dly thing. This is a teaching that contains within it an idea summing up the entire sequence of laws of Sefer Zmanim in the Rambam, in the portion that expresses this sequence.