Joy is part of the avodah
Sefer HaMiddos, also called Sefer HaAlef-Beis, arranges hundreds of short teachings alphabetically. Many appear without an explanation of how they were derived. The rav describes the remarkable work of assembling these teachings before bar mitzvah. Reb Noson's introduction gives an important distinction: the first part was collected in Rebbe Nachman's childhood, while the second contains later teachings. We should therefore keep the childhood description attached to the early collection.
The rav explains that later scholars worked through Tanach, Bavli, Yerushalmi, Midrash and other sources to identify the teachings' roots. He particularly mentions Reb Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, who died in 1900, and the further annotations added after him. A National Library catalogue does record editions with source annotations by Reb Noson, R Nachman of Tcherin and Reb Tzadok. The rav marvels at the work involved before computerized searches. His statement that every teaching has now been sourced is his report; we have not independently checked every entry.
He also reports that Likutey Moharan was said never to leave Reb Tzadok's desk. He introduces that as something people say. Likewise, when he describes Sefer HaMiddos as the only work of a later author on which Reb Tzadok supplied such annotations, he qualifies it: the only one he knows of. These reports help explain why he draws attention to the book; neither establishes a complete bibliography of Reb Tzadok's work.
Under Atzvus, the book connects dejection with keri. The matching teaching in the edition opened for this review is PartI 15; the oral reference gives 16. Likutey Moharan 169 develops the other direction, joy spreading as far as the feet and helping a person guard the bris. We learned its reading of:
וְהָיָה ׀ עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן אֵת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים הָאֵלֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם וְשָׁמַר ה׳ אלוקיךָ לְךָ אֶֽת־הַבְּרִית וְאֶת־הַחֶסֶד אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֶֽיךָ׃
It will be, because you listen to these laws and guard and carry them out, that Hashem your Elokim will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your fathers. (Devarim 7:12)
The derash hears joy reaching the ekev, the heel, and connects that with Hashem's help in guarding the covenant. Earlier shiurim described the particular difficulty of repairing a damage to the bris, alongside the Baal HaTanya's insistence that genuine teshuvah is possible. The rav therefore treats simcha as crucial to this repair: it counters the dejection through which the damaging pattern gains strength. It is a spiritual explanation of the place of joy in this avodah, rather than a diagnosis of every cause of an involuntary occurrence.
Rebbe Nachman's well-known statement in Likutey Moharan II:24 is that it is a great mitzvah to be in simcha always. We will need to understand that statement more fully. For now, we should notice that joy is being treated as work a person must make room for.
Sometimes there are clear, sound reasons to feel happy. A person can recognize what he has received and rejoice in it. At other times, the feeling does not come easily. Rebbe Nachman includes permitted silliness among the ways to begin: a joke, a little dancing, dressing up in a funny way, something that loosens the heaviness. The means still have to remain clean and within halachah. The need for simcha does not make every means acceptable.
The rav gives an example from his own family. One evening, his daughter asked him about a word in the book she was reading. He made a very silly joke. He says it was hardly funny at all, but he started laughing, then his wife, then the children. Soon the whole supper table was laughing. The joke had not become cleverer. The atmosphere at the table had changed.
A person can sometimes begin there. He does not need to wait for a new insight before allowing a little healthy laughter into the home. The laughter can give him some room to breathe and some strength to act differently.
This matters within marriage too. The rav puts it strongly: a marriage needs a foundation of simcha if it is to last. He connects the mitzvah of bringing joy to a chassan and kallah with the joy that must continue in married life and in bringing children into the world. His warning asks a couple to build that foundation; it is not a ruling that a particular marriage is doomed because of a difficult period.
Likutey Halachos,Hilchos Piryah VeRivyah 3:2–3, supplies the underlying connection. Reb Noson joins kedushas habris with simcha and describes the marriage relationship as bringing sorrow into joy. The rav announces a fuller study of that teaching. We can preserve its direction here without pretending that he has already taught the whole section.
The source is already in Torah
Joy in avodas Hashem did not begin as a new invention of Chassidus. The Torah speaks about failing to serve Hashem with joy:
תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָבַדְתָּ אֶת־ה׳ אלוקיךָ בְּשִׂמְחָה וּבְטוּב לֵבָב מֵרֹב כֹּֽל׃
Because you did not serve Hashem your Elokim with joy and a glad heart, from an abundance of everything. (Devarim 28:47)
And Tehillim says:
עִבְדוּ אֶת־ה׳ בְּשִׂמְחָה בֹּאוּ לְפָנָיו בִּרְנָנָֽה׃
Serve Hashem with joy; come before Him with song. (Tehillim 100:2)
In Taanis 22a, two men are described as people of the World to Come because they cheer those who are sad and work to make peace between people who are quarreling. Bringing another person joy belongs within serious avodah.
The Baal Shem Tov and his students gave this a strong emphasis. The criticism of rebuke that merely crushes people helps explain why. The rav describes a pattern he associates with that period of physical and spiritual hardship. A paid visiting maggid would learn from the local rav what needed criticism. The rav could hand over complaints that he could not say himself without risking his position. The visitor would then shout at length about sins and Gehinnom, collect his payment and leave. The listeners were left crushed, while the speaker could move on. This is the rav's account of a damaging pattern, not an independently verified description of every maggid or every community. Rebuke has to help someone serve Hashem; dejection that stops him from serving has defeated that purpose.
The rav then recounts the Baal HaTanya's two imprisonments. Yud-Tes Kislev commemorates his release from the first. In the Chassidic interpretation he reports, that release resolved the principal heavenly accusation, which explains the greater celebration of the first liberation. He tells of the departed Baal Shem Tov and Maggid visiting the Baal HaTanya in prison and assuring him about the outcome. This is a received religious account, also recorded in Chabad tradition; it is not a finding from government interrogation records.
In the rav's telling, the authorities questioned detailed teachings of Chassidus. Malchus is the lowest sefirah and has nothing of its own; those spiritual expressions were construed as insults to the czar's monarchy. He attributes the underlying teaching to Pri Etz Chaim, without giving a passage. He also describes accusations that the emphasis on joy, farbrengens and new celebrations amounted to creating a new religion. Which accusation belonged to which arrest remains unverified here.
As a much later illustration, he mentions Hei Teves, the celebration of the Lubavitch library court victory. It shows how a community can give a new event religious significance; it did not occur in the Baal HaTanya's lifetime. The argument about joy itself is answered by the Torah and Chazal already cited. Chassidus gave those teachings a strong emphasis; it did not invent the obligation to serve Hashem with joy.
Hearing why the people are dancing
The Degel Machaneh Ephraim, Yisro 12, records a mashal heard from the Baal Shem Tov. A musician plays with such sweetness that the people who hear him cannot hold themselves back from dancing. Someone who cannot hear the music sees the movement and thinks the dancers are acting strangely. He is missing what is drawing them into it.
In the telling here, the musician is playing a violin in a marketplace on an ordinary Tuesday. People leave their stalls and gather. The tune becomes quicker, and the crowd starts dancing. A man who cannot hear has come to buy eggs. He sees everyone dancing in the middle of the working day and cannot understand why. Once the music is explained to him, the scene has a different meaning.
The mashal asks us to notice the sweetness that gives avodah its joy. Its use of hearing is an image for awareness, rather than a judgment about a person's physical hearing or spiritual worth.
Perek Shirah gives a related picture of all creation constantly singing to its Creator. In the rav's explanation, hearing that song naturally draws a person into joy. If he cannot yet hear it, he should make music himself and create occasions for joy.
Sichos HaRan 273 directly encourages a person to revive himself with a niggun. Even someone who cannot sing well can do this privately, according to his ability. The teaching calls music very great and lofty, with power to awaken the heart toward Hashem. The rav stresses that a niggun is itself avodah, alongside its ability to help with other avodah.
The same inward reading is applied to:
הִגְדִּיל ה׳ לַעֲשׂוֹת עִמָּנוּ הָיִינוּ שְׂמֵחִֽים׃
Hashem has done great things with us; we were joyful. (Tehillim 126:3)
The plain verse speaks of the joy accompanying Hashem's great acts. The rav's further reading makes a causal claim: Hashem has done great things for us because we were joyful. That is his derash on the verse, distinct from its plain wording. It also hears a path out of constriction in:
כִּֽי־בְשִׂמְחָה תֵצֵאוּ וּבְשָׁלוֹם תּוּבָלוּן הֶהָרִים וְהַגְּבָעוֹת יִפְצְחוּ לִפְנֵיכֶם רִנָּה וְכׇל־עֲצֵי הַשָּׂדֶה יִמְחֲאוּ־כָֽף׃
For you shall go out with joy and be led in peace; the mountains and hills shall break into song before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Yeshayahu 55:12)
The rav reads this as a way out of tzaros through simcha. He is teaching a strong religious connection between joy and deliverance; that does not specify a deadline or establish that every particular problem disappears as soon as someone feels happy.