וידבר ה׳ אל משה במדבר סיני באוהל מועד וגו׳

The maamar opens with the first verses of Bamidbar, where G‑d speaks to Moshe in the Tent of Meeting and commands him to count the Jewish people. The words for “take a count,” se’u es rosh, literally mean “lift up the head,” and legulgelosam, plainly “by their skulls” (one count for each head), can also be read “to their skulls”; the Alter Rebbe asks what this “lifting of the head” means in the soul, and why it is tied to the Tent of Meeting.

Because man is made “in the image” of G‑d, the body’s structure mirrors the soul’s: the physical head holds the brain within and the skull around it, and in the soul there is the intellect (Chochmah, Binah and Daas) and a will that flows from that intellect and gives the emotions their existence and vitality. In Tanya, chapter 3, the Alter Rebbe sets out the same order: Chochmah, Binah and Daas are the source of the emotive attributes, and Daas is what “sustains them and gives them life,” the very phrase used here. The closing words announce that there are two kinds of will.

The lower will is the one that grows out of understanding. The higher one, the Supernal Will, is not produced by the mind at all; it surrounds the mind from above, as the skull surrounds the brain. A makif is something that encompasses a level and affects it from outside, without being contained in it.

To explain the will that is born of understanding, the Alter Rebbe cites the verse about the woman of valor, “Her husband is known in the gates.” The Zohar hears in “gates” (she’arim) the word “measures” (meshaer): G‑d, “her husband,” is known to each person according to the measure he can conceive in his heart. Tanya, chapter 44, brings the same Zohar to explain why love of G‑d has endless levels, each person according to his own measure.

Knowing G‑d “according to one’s measure” means meditating with one’s own intellect on the greatness of the Infinite One, as deeply as one’s thought can reach and as much as one’s heart can hold. The result is not abstract information but a recognition felt in the heart, which leads a person to cleave to G‑d.

The Tikkunei Zohar’s statement that “no thought can grasp Him at all” might seem to rule such meditation out. The Alter Rebbe answers that the word “Him” is precise: what no thought can grasp is G‑d’s own essence and being.

What a person can and must contemplate (“this is the whole of man,” in the closing words of Koheles) is G‑d as Creator: He brings countless higher and lower worlds into being from nothing and gives them all life, as the Levites say in their prayer in the book of Nechemiah, “You give life to them all.” The words “in His goodness renews them every day” echo the morning blessing Yotzer Or before the Shema; the maamar adds “every moment,” for creation never stops.

Each person, according to what he can conceive in his heart, can broaden his understanding and set his heart and soul aflame, so as to bind his soul to G‑d and cleave to Him. This is the first, “lower” path to G‑d: through one’s own understanding.

The strength of this attachment differs from person to person. It depends on the depth of one’s intellect and understanding and on how much persistence and longing one arouses in one’s heart; each person’s fire burns according to who he is.

The Alter Rebbe now reads the word nodda (“is known”) precisely: it is passive, describing G‑d as being made known. In the Zohar, “her husband” is the Holy One, blessed be He, the Husband of the Matronita (the Queen, that is, the Shechinah), and the verse speaks of His praise. Torah Ohr, Ki Sisa, opens its discourse “This they shall give” with the same verse: G‑d is the husband of every Jewish soul and gives each one its love and awe, according to its own measure.

G‑d’s praise is that He lowers Himself, through the descending chain of worlds and the spreading forth of His greatness. “Known in the gates” thus describes a divine self-lowering, not only a human achievement.

He lowers Himself in order to be known: so He can be grasped in the inner depths of a person’s heart (“the inwardness of a man and a deep heart,” words borrowed from Psalms), by each one according to his own measure. The person, in turn, uses that grasp to draw G‑d down and bind himself to Him.

The parenthesis adds that nodda, from the root of “knowing,” also means connection; Tanya (end of chapter 3 and chapter 42) explains Daas this way, as in “Adam knew Chavah.” The Sages’ teaching that “wherever you find His greatness, there you find His humility” expresses the same idea: G‑d’s greatness shows itself in His stooping to be known (the Talmud, Megillah 31a, says “His might”; the Kehot note points to the Rebbe’s remark on the exact wording quoted here).

The Alter Rebbe now describes the lower will: the will that arises from this knowledge and sustains love and awe. Love is felt toward what one wants and hatred toward what one does not want, so the emotions depend on will.

This will is measured by one’s understanding of G‑d’s greatness as He fills and encompasses all worlds, since it is derived from that understanding. Because it is born of the mind, it is called the lower will, “below Daas.”

The higher will is far above the will that is born when a person grasps with his mind how G‑d’s greatness spreads through the worlds, filling and encompassing them. It is not a product of comprehension at all.

Instead, it comes from the recognition that one’s own comprehension, and that of every creature, is null before G‑d’s essence, which no thought can grasp; so this will is itself above comprehension and the bounds of intellect. This awareness rouses the soul to “go out of its sheath,” beyond the confines of the body and its garments.

This is a longing so intense that the soul is ready to expire (klos hanefesh) and pour itself into its Father’s bosom, G‑d’s very essence. Before that essence all existence is as nothing, so even the terms “filling all worlds” and “encompassing all worlds” do not apply to it.

Those terms describe only the radiance that comes from the Infinite Light and gives life to the worlds. That radiance is called the Malchus (kingship) of the Infinite One, as the blessing Yishtabach calls Him “King … Life of the worlds” and Psalms says “Your kingship is a kingship over all worlds”: kingship is a relationship with the worlds.

G‑d Himself is beyond both categories, and no thought can grasp Him. As the morning prayers say, “You are He before the world was created, and You are He since the world was created,” and as G‑d says through Malachi, “I, Havayah, have not changed”: creation makes no change in Him.

The wondrous longing of the higher will was drawn into the souls of Israel and openly revealed at the Giving of the Torah on Shavuos. This is why the Sages say that their souls flew out at each of the Ten Commandments.

The divine utterances at Sinai carried this longing to the people, because each utterance was a drawing down from G‑d’s own essence to the souls of Israel. Torah Ohr, Yisro (“Their appearance and their workings”), explains that the Torah was given from the fiftieth gate, which encompasses every level equally, with no above and below; and the Shavuos discourse below on “And I was with Him as a nursling” explains that the mitzvos are the Supernal Will itself, which is above Chochmah.

This is why the First Commandment says “your G‑d”: G‑d as He shines within each Jew. Anochi (“I”) here means G‑d’s very self, “I am who I am,” whom no one but He Himself can know. In Likkutei Torah, Pinchas, the Alter Rebbe explains that this Anochi is the inner dimension of the Supernal Will, higher even than the Name Havayah, which G‑d lowered into the laws of the Oral Torah so that it would be revealed in the souls.

That very self is “Havayah your G‑d,” the spark of G‑dliness that dwells in each Jew, since “Havayah’s portion is His people.” The verse “you who cleave to Havayah your G‑d are all alive today” speaks of this bond between the soul and G‑d.

The soul’s essence never descended into the body and the animal soul in this world. Only a glimmer of it spreads into the intellect and emotions, the soul’s powers, which are what a person consciously experiences.

The soul as it is in its source, “from the head of all levels,” is far beyond what any human mind can comprehend. Isaiah’s “I created him, I formed him, I also made him” is cited for its three verbs, which name the stages of the soul’s descent, through the worlds of Beriah (creation), Yetzirah (formation) and Asiyah (action).

In that root the soul is permanently attached to the living G‑d. It has only one desire, for its Father in Heaven, and it remains in unchanging self-nullification (bittul) before Him.

This is because the soul is truly “a part of G‑d above,” the words of Iyov as Tanya, chapter 2, reads them. All the rises and falls a person experiences happen only below, in the soul’s powers, according to the changes in his understanding.

The soul’s essence does not enter its powers; it stands over them as a makif, an encompassing presence. The discourse on “My dove” in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, explains this: the body is too small to contain the whole soul, so only a glimmer of it is enclothed there, while the soul as a whole remains above as a makif, which the Sages call the mazal.

At Sinai, on Shavuos, the Supernal Will, which is above Daas and belongs to that encompassing level, was revealed, and the root of the souls shone openly within their conscious powers. The parenthesis points to the discourse “When you go out” (Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei), which reads David’s “Seek My face; Your face, Havayah, I will seek” as seeking the heart’s hidden inner point and drawing down the inwardness of Havayah.

Hence “at each utterance their souls flew out”: the souls rose beyond all intellect and comprehension and were wholly absorbed into G‑d, nullified in their very existence, in a true expiring of the soul.

The First Commandment continues, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” Relative to the revealed essence, all worlds and levels below it count as Mitzrayim, Egypt, a name that suggests limitation.

Every other kind of comprehension of G‑d and attachment to Him, however lofty, still lies within boundaries, the meitzar (narrow strait) that the name Mitzrayim implies. Leaving Egypt, in this sense, is leaving all limits.

The parenthesis cites two discourses: one on counting the Omer, and an explanation of “These are the journeys.” In the latter (Likkutei Torah, Masei) the Alter Rebbe explains that all forty-two journeys are called “going out of Egypt” up to the Jordan at Jericho, because whatever is enclothed in a vessel is constraint and limit compared with the encompassing light above the vessel, which is “scent” (reiach, as in Yericho).

The Mishnah in Avos says both “Do His will as your will” and “Nullify your will before His will.” The first belongs to the lower will: a will born of each person’s understanding, in the powers of the soul that is enclothed in the body.

At that level the person still has a will of his own, separate from G‑d’s. Only through deep contemplation of G‑d’s greatness is he moved to carry out G‑d’s will in his heart and soul.

“Nullify your will” is a higher state: the person’s own will is removed entirely, and only one will remains, for G‑d alone. This is the Supernal Will shining in him, so that his soul pours itself out into its Father’s bosom.

Now the Alter Rebbe answers the opening question. “Lift up the head … to their skulls” means taking the lower will, which comes from the “head,” the intellect enclothed in body and soul, and binding it to something higher.

The lower will is to be joined and raised to its source: the essence of the soul, which stays above as a makif and does not shine within the body. This higher root is what the verse calls “their skulls.”

Why does the essence of the soul not shine in the body? Because sins separate a person from G‑d, as Isaiah says, and the Torah speaks of a soul “cut off from before Me”; the result is like a body severed from its head.

The remedy for this severing is like a cure, if one could be found, that would rejoin a body to its head. “Lifting the head” is that remedy: the lower will, born of the soul’s intellect and emotions, is raised specifically to “their skulls.”

“Their skulls” means each person’s own skull: the root of his soul above, where the Supernal Will shines. The first discourse in the parenthesis, Torah Ohr, Ki Sisa, “His left hand is under my head,” ends on this very verse: the Torah and mitzvos, which descend like water, hold a person so that he does not fall, and through charity he binds and raises his soul to G‑d.

The Counting of the Omer belongs to this lifting of the head. On each of the forty-nine days between Pesach and Shavuos one counts, “Today is such-and-such a day of the Omer.”

Each counted “day” is a drawing down, and what the days of the count draw down from above to below is the Supernal Will. The parenthesis points to the discourse below on “And you shall count,” which explains that to reach the revelation of “I am who I am” on Shavuos one counts fifty days, the forty-nine gates of understanding and the fiftieth that includes them all; and to Likkutei Torah, Emor, which explains that to receive the Torah, the revelation of G‑d’s will below, even the animal soul must first be nullified, through the Omer offering of barley and the count.

This drawing down of the Supernal Will comes through the Tent of Meeting (Ohel Moed). The word moed (meeting) comes from G‑d’s promise, “I will meet (venoadti) there with the Children of Israel.”

Venoadti (“I will meet”) and venodati (“I will be known”) have the same letters, with the ayin and dalet changing places, and both describe G‑d’s bond with the souls of Israel. But “being known” comes through Daas, the understanding of G‑d’s greatness, like the “Her husband is known in the gates” of the first paragraph.

“Meeting,” by contrast, is a higher union that comes from G‑d’s very self, “I am who I am.” It binds the souls so that they pour themselves out into their Father’s bosom, beyond understanding.

The parenthesis points to a discourse on “to offer to Me in its appointed time (moed)” and to two passages of the Zohar, with the commentary of the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto). In Vayigash the Zohar speaks of the time when the will is present and the bond is crowned, so that the two worlds, upper and lower, are joined and meet together; in Mishpatim it reads “a man who sells his daughter” as the Holy One, blessed be He, and the holy soul.

The light of this level can be revealed in the soul only through a “Tent” and a Mishkan, a dwelling that holds it. This answers the opening question of why the census is tied to the Tent of Meeting.

The verse in Shir HaShirim describes this dwelling: “I held him and would not let him go, until I brought him into my mother’s house and into the chamber of her who conceived me.” The Alter Rebbe reads “my mother’s house” as the Written Torah and “the chamber of her who conceived me” as the Oral Torah.

As a child is enclosed in its mother’s womb, the Supernal Will is enclosed in the laws of the Oral Torah: what is forbidden or permitted, who is guilty or innocent. These rulings are the “chamber” that holds the infinite will.

Although the Torah has come down into physical subjects, the Supernal Will itself is enclothed in it. So a person who studies it draws onto his own soul the light of that will, which no thought can grasp.

Yet a person must take counsel so as not to remain “below,” in the lower level. Two modes of service are needed for this: that of the Kohanim and that of the Levites.

The Kohanim stand for a flow from above to below, like water, which always descends from a high place to a low one. The Levites stand for the opposite movement, like a flame, which always rises upward.

The verse “When the Mishkan comes to rest, the Levites shall set it up” is read as a lesson for the soul. When the “Mishkan,” the soul’s radiance, has come down from its level into the body and the animal soul in this world, it is the Levites, the soul’s upward-striving powers, who must raise it up again.

The counsel is to arouse holy gevuros, the soul’s fiery powers of restraint, which divide into three like the three Levite families: Gershon, Kehas and Merari. Gershon (from garesh, “drive out”) is like Sarah’s “Drive out this handmaid and her son,” an act of Gevurah; the parenthesis notes that this is why that portion is read on Rosh HaShanah, the day of judgment.

Gevurah is the “left hand” that pushes away, driving the evil out from within, and the Mishnah calls mighty (gibbor) the one who conquers his inclination. This is higher than the Exodus, when “the people fled”: as Tanya, chapter 31, explains, they had to flee because the evil within them was still at full strength.

The goal is to drive the evil out so thoroughly that it flees from the person, not he from it. This is the promise “Five of you shall pursue a hundred”: holiness pursues and the evil runs.

That is why, of the redemption to come, it says, “You shall not go out in haste”: the sitra achra will already be subdued, so there will be nothing to flee from. Sarah, who stands for G‑d’s Malchus (sovereignty), tells Avraham, who stands for supernal Chesed (kindness), to drive out the handmaid and her son, who must not inherit with Yitzchak.

Yishmael stands for evil desires and their root, which must not inherit together with holiness. The Sages’ words “not like Avraham, from whom Yishmael issued” show that such an unholy offshoot came forth even from Avraham, and the text refers elsewhere for the explanation.

The Sages teach that one who says “I have nothing but Torah” does not even have Torah; the Alter Rebbe reads this to mean that one’s deepest yearning must be for G‑d Himself, not for the Torah alone. So the verse says, “I held him and would not let him go.”

“I held him” means G‑d Himself; only then, “I brought him into my mother’s house,” the Torah, in which G‑d’s will is housed. This bringing is the work of Aharon, the supernal Kohen, who brings the Supernal Will into the Torah, as explained above.

The parenthesis points to the Zohar on Korach (with the Ramaz’s commentary), which says the Kohen covered everything before the sons of Kehas came near, and they approached only by the poles, for the inner and hidden service belongs to the Kohen. It also points to the Zohar in Vayechi, which reads “And they shall not come to see” of those who are not worthy to gaze on the King’s hidden delight.

This is why the Torah so often says “Havayah spoke to Moshe and to Aharon”: G‑d’s word reaches Israel through both Moshe and Aharon. The text links this to the verse “Who wraps [Himself] in light as with a garment,” which it explains elsewhere.

The closing parenthesis lists Midrashic sources on “Lift up the head”: the Midrash Rabbah on Metzora, and several sections of Bamidbar Rabbah, one of which links it to “He has raised up a horn for His people.”

The list continues with further sections of Bamidbar Rabbah and with Shir HaShirim Rabbah, which the Kehot notes quote: the children are counted as their fathers’ children (section 9), Israel counts by the moon (section 10), G‑d handed them over to Moshe by number (Pinchas, section 21), and Israel is like “a heap of wheat,” which is taken out to be sown only by number (on the verse “Your navel is a round goblet … your belly is a heap of wheat”). Last comes the Zohar on Pinchas (III, 253b), where, a manuscript notes, the first-ripe fruits are called the “heads” of all, as in “Lift up your heads, O gates” and “Lift up the head of all the congregation of the Children of Israel.”