Show notes
Is G-d Exaggerating when He Wants Us to Love Him with All Our Heart?
This is the first class in a series on a Maamar of the Altter Rebbe, "Reah Anochi," which he said on Shabbos Parshas Reah, 29 Av, 5558, August 11, 1798, published in Likkutei Torah Reah. It explores the four letters of Hashem's name embedded in each soul.
This class was presented by Rabbi YY Jacobson on Monday, Parshas Re'eh, 20 Av, 5786, August 3, 2026, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.
This class discusses the Yud and Hay engraved in our soul and what that means in our lives: the experience of surrender, and the understanding of Hashem's oneness. We discussed how religion can be an external experience, and how the trauma of exile has snuffed out from so many the internal embodied experience of the Divine.
We also explained why Hashem asks us to love Him with all our hearts and souls; is that not exaggerated?
What if the deepest pain you carry — beneath the marriage, the parnassah, the worries about the children — isn’t what you think it is? In this breathtaking article, based on Rabbi YY Jacobson’s class on the first maamar in Likkutei Torah, Parshas Re’eh, the Alter Rebbe reveals a secret that changes everything: at Matan Torah, Hashem embedded His very name — the Yud and the Hei, “two friends who are never separated” — into your soul. It’s why even the most distant Jew is flooded with regrets he never invited; it’s why we numb ourselves with a thousand distractions. We aren’t broken. We’re homesick. And once you see it, you can never unsee it.
This is the Torah the Baal Shem Tov came to reveal — the heartbeat hidden in the holy books all along — brought down by the Alter Rebbe in one of the classic maamarim of Chassidus, and opened up by Rabbi YY with warmth, humor, and stunning honesty. You’ll discover why “k’lo chashiv” doesn’t mean you are nothing — it means nothing can distract you from how deeply okay you are; why your soul’s stubbornness is your greatest gift; and how five seconds a day of this truth can make your soul dance with the very simchah the Baal Shem Tov revealed. Read it slowly. Read it twice. This one is life-changing — and liberating.
The first maamar in Likkutei Torah on Parshas Re’eh is one of the classics of Chassidus — a foundational maamar the Rebbe would reference again and again, because it explains how the very name of Hashem is embedded in the soul. The Alter Rebbe delivered it on Shabbos Parshas Re’eh, Erev Rosh Chodesh Elul, in the summer of 1798 — 5558 — the last Shabbos of the era we call “before Petersburg.” Weeks later, he would be arrested and taken to the capital; after his liberation on Yud-Tes Kislev, his maamarim underwent a major transformation. What follows is Torah from that first era, and it goes straight for the heart.
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