ביאור על הדרוש וספרתם לכם דחג השבועות

This heading introduces a Biur, a further explanation, of a discourse for Shavuos on the verse “And you shall count for yourselves”: the commandment to count seven weeks from the day the Omer offering is brought, on the second day of Pesach, until Shavuos. The Biur develops the discourse’s themes: barley and wheat, the days of the count, and the fiftieth gate revealed on Shavuos.

The Hebrew word for barley, se’orah (שעורה), can be split into shiur hei (שעור ה׳), “a measure of hei,” the letter whose value is five; the Zohar (Balak, 3:188b) already reads barley as “the measure of the hei.” This Biur sets out to explain that measure, and it begins with the angels: the lion of Hosea’s verse is the face of the lion in the Divine Chariot (Merkavah), whose “roar” is the angels’ call of “Holy.”

The “lowing ox” is the face of the ox in the Chariot. Its service is awe, and it belongs to the camp of the angel Gavriel, while the lion stands for love. The two animals thus correspond to the two basic modes of serving G‑d, love and awe.

Before explaining how the angels are nourished, the Alter Rebbe defines an angel: an emissary, which is what the Hebrew word malach means. Two verses show an angel spoken of, or speaking, as G‑d Himself: Hagar called the angel who spoke to her by G‑d’s Name, and the angel who visited Avraham said, “I will surely return to you,” as only G‑d could promise. In Tanya (Kuntres Acharon, essay 4) the Alter Rebbe states the principle: an angel sent on a mission is called by the very Name of G‑d that dwells within him.

The reason is that what acts and speaks through an angel is the Infinite Light itself, descending and taking on the measure of each angel’s level. Thus Michael is the angel of Chesed, and there is a Michael on every level, down to the World of Asiyah.

The bracketed gloss explains why an angel may speak in G‑d’s own words. The angel is only a vessel for the G‑dly light within it and is wholly nullified before that light; since the light is what truly matters, the angel’s words are really the light’s words.

The gloss cites the Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, which says that angels speak in G‑d’s name “by means of the light enclothed in them.” It then identifies that light: it comes from combinations of the letters of Malchus of Atzilus, the Divine “speech” that brings created beings into existence.

Each angel is formed from the letters of a particular attribute within that Malchus: Michael from its Chesed, Gavriel from its Gevurah. And the Sefiros divide into ever finer particulars, such as Chesed within Chesed and Chesed within Gevurah, which prepares the next paragraph’s explanation of why the angels are so many and so varied.

Each of the ten Sefiros contains all ten, and each of those again contains ten, giving combinations such as “Chesed within Chesed of Chesed.” Every different blend of the Sefiros produces a different kind of angel, which is why the verse asks, “Is there any number to His legions?”

Even the camp of Michael alone holds myriads upon myriads of angels, all of Chesed, yet in different combinations, such as Chesed within Chesed within Chesed, or Chesed within Gevurah within Chesed. Each angel’s character follows the particular combination from which it receives its life.

So the enormous number of angels in Michael’s camp does not contradict their all belonging to one attribute: Chesed itself has many shades. The reader is referred to the discourse on the spies at the beginning of Parshas Shelach.

Every angel contains all ten Sefiros, yet the whole camp is called Michael’s, the camp of Chesed. A camp is named for the attribute that dominates in it and spreads through all its members.

Gavriel’s camp, in general, is the attribute of awe. The Sages teach that the River of Fire issues from the sweat of the Chayos, the holy beings of the Chariot, and pours down “upon the head of the wicked.”

That “sweat” is a waste product of the angels’ fire, which comes from the Gevurah within them. In Likkutei Torah, Shelach, the Alter Rebbe explains the same teaching: the sweat is venom and fury, the angels’ “waste,” for every world has its good and its “evil” in the sense of anger and wrath.

Just as bodily heat pushes sweat out of the body, so the angels’ heat, their awe and trembling before G‑d, becomes “sweat” as it descends: a fierce, venomous anger against whatever is contrary to G‑d’s will.

This is why the River of Fire falls “upon the head of the wicked.” Because the angels grasp the greatness of the Infinite One, they are filled with wrath at those who transgress His will, astonished that anyone could dare to do so.

The opening theme returns. Barley, the food of the angels, who are called “beasts” after the lion and ox of the Chariot, is “a measure of five”: the angels’ sustenance is measured and limited, and its source is five, the five articulations of the mouth, the five places in the mouth where the Hebrew letters are formed.

From these articulations come the four camps of angels: Michael’s, the face of the lion; Gavriel’s, the face of the ox; and the face of the eagle, which is compassion.

In a human being, compassion is felt over his own distance from G‑d: he arouses great pity over it and even falls into melancholy. Of such sadness the verse says that it brings profit, reading etzev, plainly “toil,” as “sadness.”

The angels have no such distance to mourn; their compassion comes from grasping the greatness of the Infinite One, before whom no created being bears any comparison. The Kehot note reads these words as “[the compassion] over the distance is so great because of the greatness,” making explicit that their compassion is over the vast distance between all creation and the Creator.

Therefore their compassion extends over all the worlds, since every created world is as nothing beside the Creator. The Alter Rebbe refers to two other discourses, in Parshas Bamidbar and Parshas Vayetzei, for more on this.

This explains “I bore you on eagles’ wings”: Israel was sunk in the mortar and bricks of Egyptian slavery, and to rise to the face-to-face revelation at Sinai they needed the eagle, compassion, which lifts upward.

So the four camps come from four of the five articulations. The fifth, the palatal letters gimmel, yud, kaf and kuf, belongs to Chochmah, through which “all are refined,” and it “makes peace” among the others, an echo of Job’s “He makes peace in His heights,” the verse just before “Is there any number to His legions?” In Likkutei Torah, Vayikra, the Alter Rebbe explains that Chochmah refines as rennet curdles milk into cheese: its own taste is not felt in the result, yet it separates the good from the waste.

The fifth articulation, the palate, is linked with the verse “His palate is sweetness”: the palate is where sweetness is revealed. Physically the palate tastes food, and taste, ta’am, a word that also means “reason,” belongs to Chochmah.

The palatal letters gimmel, yud, kaf and kuf “sweeten” the Gevuros, the severities, of the other four articulations; this is how the fifth “makes peace.” A bracketed gloss lists places that discuss this: the Zohar on Shemini, which reads “His palate is sweetness” together with the good wine through whose joy the left side is included in the right, and a discourse in Parshas Vayechi that explains chachlili, “red,” as “every palate (chech) that tastes.”

Pri Etz Chaim, in its gate on the shofar, likewise speaks of the palatal letters as coming from the palate, which is Chochmah.

The list closes with the Ramaz on Parshas Acharei; the Zohar at the end of Mishpatim, which calls the King’s palate “His palate is sweetness” and says that all His hosts depend on it, as “by the breath of His mouth all their host”; and the Idra Zuta.

The Biur now explains the five articulations. Letters are a “drawing forth”: they carry what is within outward, as when G‑d blew the breath of life into Adam, and from that supernal breath came Adam’s soul, an intellect.

Here “breath” means the soul’s life-force extending outward, like the power that flows into the hand so it can work. When a person sleeps that power is withdrawn, and he can do nothing.

This extension into action is the soul’s outermost dimension, the power of action.

Likewise above, the verse speaks of G‑d having “made” the heavens and the earth, using the word for action: this is the extension of the outer dimension into the World of Asiyah, the World of Action. The Alter Rebbe refers to a discourse in Parshas Yisro for more on this.

By contrast, “by the breath of His mouth all their host” describes a more inward extension, that of the life-giving breath. Beyond it are extensions of thought, of the emotive attributes and of will, and so with all the Ten Sefiros; yet below only five such levels are revealed, which correspond to the five articulations, as Etz Chaim teaches.

The word for letters, otiyos, comes from the Aramaic asa, “comes,” as in Isaiah’s “morning comes”: letters bring the light forth. Morning, and the light of “Let there be light,” are the drawing forth of Chesed.

All of this is the Infinite Light drawn downward. In souls it comes in an inward way, like the river that flows from Eden to water the garden; in angels it comes as the outer dimension of each world, for the angels are “the keepers of the garden.”

The angels’ “measure of five” is drawn down through Israel’s service: the Omer offering of barley, which the kohen waved. The Zohar (Balak, 3:188b) reads tenufah, “waving,” as tenu peh, “give a mouth,” and “give honor”: the waving raises Nukva, the feminine aspect (Malchus), to her source and root, and from there the flow of sustenance descends. In the same passage the Zohar reads se’orah, barley, as “the measure of the hei.”

The second section turns to Shavuos, the festival of the wheat harvest. Wheat draws down a revelation of the concealed level above Daas: the Sages say the Tree of Knowledge was wheat, since a child does not know to call his father until he has tasted grain; so wheat brings knowledge, and specifically the hidden knowledge above ordinary Daas.

That hidden level is the Anochi, “I,” of “I am Havayah your G‑d,” explained as “who I am”: G‑d’s own self, of whom the Tikkunei Zohar says that no thought can grasp Him. On Shavuos it is revealed as real knowledge, Daas, but only as a small child knows his father: he calls “Abba” without grasping what makes him his father.

This revelation of G‑d’s very being is far above the “barley” of the angels, which is only the outer dimension, the word of G‑d.

To explain: the verse says that man lives not by bread alone but by “what comes forth from the mouth of Havayah.” What nourishes him is the Divine word that has descended into the bread.

Man himself also comes from the Divine word, but he belongs to the World of Tikkun, the ordered world that issues from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva. The prophet’s vision of “a likeness like the appearance of a man” upon the throne shows that the human form is a form of Tikkun.

Wheat, however, comes from what fell into nogah when the vessels shattered: nogah, “brightness,” named for the verse’s “brightness around it,” is the realm, kelipas nogah, in which good and evil are mixed. Since nogah has its origin in the World of Tohu, the first world, whose intense lights shattered their vessels, wheat carries something of that earlier world.

Wheat corresponds to Bela, the first of the seven “primordial kings,” the kings who reigned in Edom before any king reigned in Israel; in Kabbalah they stand for the World of Tohu, and Bela is its Daas. It fell low because it came from the outer dimension of those worlds.

Yet because it comes from that higher world, it becomes life-force for man. Its descent is like the Sages’ teaching that every blade of grass below has a force above that strikes it and tells it to grow: the flow comes from above, through one level above another.

A child who calls “Abba” does not have revealed knowledge: he cannot say why this man is his father. Instead he has a bond with his father beyond reason, and that bond is very strong.

Yet this is a revelation of the concealed itself. The gloss explains that it is the hidden Daas, above the knowledge that is comprehended.

That hidden Daas is the Daas of Tohu, above the Daas of Tikkun, which is knowledge that is understood. This is why it comes through wheat, whose root is in the Daas of Tohu.

Alternatively, the hidden Daas is the “higher Daas,” above the “lower Daas” of comprehension. In Likkutei Torah, Nasso, in the explanation of “Thus shall you bless,” the Alter Rebbe explains that the higher Daas joins Chochmah, which is ayin, with Binah, which is yesh, so that the yesh of Binah is as the ayin of Chochmah; the gloss also refers to other discourses on the higher Daas.

Barley too holds the Divine word that gives man life, but it does not impart this revelation of the concealed, the strong Daas that comes from the world of concealment.

The revelation of the concealed is “who brought you out of the land of Egypt”: a going out far beyond the limits of comprehension. The bracket refers the reader to the main text of the discourse, where this is explained.

Mitzrayim, Egypt, is Binah as it is found in the throat: the throat is a meitzar, a narrow strait (the same root), between brain and heart, and Pri Etz Chaim indeed calls the throat Mitzrayim. The throat is also the voice, which awakens intention, as the custom is to say the first verse of the Shema aloud “to arouse the intention”; and Pharaoh’s three officers are the windpipe, the gullet and the jugular veins.

Physically too the throat separates head from heart, and it narrows because the heart’s emotions must be drawn from the mind through a constriction. In Torah Ohr, Va’eira, the Alter Rebbe explains that the pleasures and preoccupations of this world are the barriers between the light of G‑d in the mind and its revelation in the heart, and likens exile to pregnancy and redemption to birth.

The third section begins: the fifty gates of Binah, as they spread out, are “branches that separate,” but in their source, in Arich Anpin (the “Long Face,” the configuration of Keser), they are included together. There they are the 370 lights, made up of 220 and 150, called “a great reckoning,” the tikkun of Arich.

Etz Chaim (Shaar Arich Anpin, chapter 14), cited in the gloss, explains that of the 370 lights 150 belong to Z’eir Anpin, and the 220 that remain in Arich Anpin give it its name, for arich is written with the letters of 220. Pri Etz Chaim reports that the Arizal did not cut his hair from Pesach to Shavuos, because these days awaken the tikkun of the skull of Arich Anpin called “pure wool” (amar naki), the same word as Omer; and in Likkutei Torah, Chukas, on “Come to Cheshbon,” the Alter Rebbe explains the “reckoning” as the measure of G‑dliness revealed in each world, which follows how much Chochmah is revealed there.

The gloss continues with two more places on “a great reckoning”: the Tanya’s letter on charity, where every small coin joins into a great sum, and Etz Chaim, where the numbers of Arich Anpin are “great” above and small below. From that source the light descends to Malchus of Atzilus as “the illumination of the face,” the priestly blessing “may Havayah make His face shine,” which is a drawing down from Keser.

This is why the twenty-four books of the Tanach are recited on the night of Shavuos, a custom the Kehot note sources in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 494) and the Chok Yaakov there. The Torah comes from Chochmah, but its source is higher: the 613 paths that issue from the “whiteness” of the skull of Arich Anpin, Keser within Keser, as the Idra in the Zohar describes a path in the parting of the hair from which the 613 paths of the Torah divide.

The two loaves of Shavuos are the “bread” of “Come, eat of my bread”: they draw down mochin, intellect, from Netzach and Hod of Abba.

On Pesach the bread is matzah, because within Atzilus the Gevuros, the severities that leaven represents, must not be stirred up. On Shavuos, however, Keser is revealed, which is above Atzilus, so the loaves must be leavened: there the Gevuros are included in kindness, as the Zohar says, “there is no left in this Ancient One.” At the Giving of the Torah Israel reached “freedom from the Angel of Death,” the state of which Reish Lakish said, “Come, let us acknowledge the goodness of our fathers,” for had they not sinned afterward, we would not have come into the world.

Yet this must be drawn from below upward, little by little, day by day. That is why we count “Today is two days,” not “the second day”: each day’s drawing down is not a separate level but the same light, growing.

On the night when we count forty-nine, the days are only forty-nine; but when Shavuos arrives they become fifty of themselves, for they have reached their source. The fiftieth gate is what joins all the others together.

Through the count the light of Keser is drawn down as “the illumination of the face”: the inner dimension shows through the vessel, which no longer blocks it.

The Divine word that sustains the world also reveals something inner, but only as through an opening or a window.

The two differ: through an opening more is revealed, while the illumination of the face is only a glow, like the radiance of the forehead.

At the beginning of creation this illumination came “when it arose in His will,” freely, with no cause from below, as Etz Chaim explains; now it depends on an arousal from below, as “May He make His face shine with us” implies: “with us,” through our own service. Serving G‑d with joy and gladness of heart arouses joy above, as the Zohar teaches that a person’s joy draws down a higher joy, and a shining face below brings shining from above.

Joy, too, is a revelation of the inner self, as the Talmud says that Rebbi’s face shone with joy. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, on “to make the face shine from oil,” the Alter Rebbe explains that this shining is not the flush that wine brings up from the blood but a light from above, as “a man’s wisdom makes his face shine.”

First the 370 lights are drawn to the Omer, which is Nukva, Malchus: 220, written arach, and 150, written kan, the same lights the third section counted. This was done specifically in Temple times, when the Omer was offered, whereas the hand-tefillin, which in the Kabbalah also belong to Nukva, apply even outside the Land, for there are many levels of drawing down; the waving of the Omer raises Nukva.

Even so, today the Omer’s ascent goes through the angels, the “lion” that consumes the offerings on the altar. In the Time to Come, Moshiach will be “exalted, lifted up and very high,” higher even than Moshe, as the Midrash reads the verse, and in Likkutei Torah, Tzav, the Alter Rebbe explains that he will stand above Adam and Moshe; the text adds that in Moshe’s Mishkan there was no lion.

So it is said, “At this time it shall be said to Yaakov and to Israel, ‘What has G‑d wrought’”: Israel will stand above the angels, who will say “Holy” before the righteous. Then “the lion shall eat straw like the ox”: the angels will receive only “straw,” which the text calls the influence of the barley. That is why today the angels “crown” our prayers, embracing, kissing and crowning them.

Prayer in a physical voice cannot rise by itself; it needs the angels appointed over it as intermediaries, one level above another, just as the soul enters the blood through intermediaries, the vapors. Each such angel gives the prayer its own inner and encompassing light.

In the Time to Come, when the earth is full of the knowledge of G‑d, Israel will hold all these levels in themselves.