ביאור הדברים ע״פ והיה מספר בני ישראל כו׳

This maamar is a biur, an explanation of the preceding discourse in this book, on Hosea’s verse “And the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea.” That discourse (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar 6:6) said that through “You visited the earth” comes “the stream (peleg) of Elokim,” the Name Elokim dividing into mi and eleh; this one first explains the root of that idea.

The Hebrew word Elokim (אלקים) is made of the letters of two words: mi (מי, “who”) and eleh (אלה, “these”). The Zohar at its very beginning builds on this, expounding Isaiah’s call to look up at the stars: “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who (mi) created these (eleh)?”

Mi, “who?”, is a question, and one asks a question only about something one does not know. So mi stands for what is hidden, not known or revealed to those below; the Zohar itself says of mi that it “stands as a question.”

Eleh, “these,” is the word one uses when pointing at something that is present and visible to everyone. So eleh stands for what is revealed.

Mi and eleh are therefore opposites, hidden and revealed. The maamar now traces this contrast to its root in the higher worlds.

Above there are two worlds, a “hidden world” and a “revealed world,” called mi and eleh. In the four letters of the Name Havayah, the first two, yud and hei, are Chochmah and Binah, the hidden levels of intellect; the last two, vav and hei, are the emotive attributes and speech (Z’eir Anpin and Malchus), the revealed levels, in the language of the verse “The hidden things are for Havayah our G‑d, and the revealed things are for us.” Pesach Eliyahu in the Tikkunei Zohar applies that verse to Chochmah and Binah.

Binah, understanding, enters into Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes, the way understanding gives rise to feeling. It brings with it the Chasadim, the flows of kindness that build those attributes. While they are still within Binah’s own lowest point (its Yesod), they are “covered”; once they leave it, they are “revealed.”

Peleg means a stream, and also a division. “The stream of Elokim” is the moment the letters eleh divide off from the letters mi: the revealed Chasadim separate from the covered ones.

The division happens so that the Chasadim can be openly revealed, and this is “Who (mi) created these (eleh)”: the hidden brings forth the revealed. In a person’s soul it is intellect that does not stay within itself but gives birth to awe and love born of understanding (dechilu urechimu, the Zohar’s Aramaic for awe and love).

When eleh and mi are still joined in the single word Elokim, even eleh, the revealed, remains hidden like mi. He adds that in the word Elokim the letters of eleh even stand first, so they have not yet come out of mi the way “Who created these” describes.

This joined state is when all five Chasadim are still closed within the Yesod of Imma (Binah). The parenthesis points to the Arizal’s Etz Chaim and to his Likkutei Torah on the mitzvah of circumcision, which, as the paragraph goes on to show, is linked to the uncovering of what is hidden.

In the soul this is the state that Tanya, chapter 16, describes (the first part of Tanya is called Sefer Shel Beinonim, “the Book of the Intermediates”): a person whose understanding is not strong enough to make love of G‑d felt openly in his heart, yet who still has that love hidden in his mind and in the depths of his heart. The love is real, but it is concealed, like eleh still inside Elokim.

The Yesod of Imma ends at the chest of Z’eir Anpin. Below that point two Chasadim and two thirds of the third are revealed, while two Chasadim and the remaining third, above it, stay covered, as the Kehot note quotes from the Mitteler Rebbe’s version. That release is “the stream of Elokim”: eleh splits off (niflegu) from the covered Chasadim, which are mi.

The Chasadim are compared to water, which flows from high to low, so once released they are a stream “full of water”; Etz Chaim (Sha’ar 25) calls them “streams of water” that descend first and open the way. Yet even this revealed flow has its source in the hidden mi.

This is the sense of “Who created these” in a person: by contemplating with his intellect and the depth of his understanding (the hidden mi), he brings awe and love to birth, felt openly in his heart (the revealed eleh).

Etz Chaim and the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah add that sometimes even the upper third of the Chesed that is normally covered (the third Chesed, in Tiferes, whose upper third lies above the chest) is revealed, and at times all five Chasadim are.

The Zohar on Parshas Vayera quotes Rabbi Abba: before Avraham was circumcised he was “closed,” and once he was circumcised “everything was revealed,” and the Shechinah rested on him. The Alter Rebbe points to the commentary of the Ramaz, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, the seventeenth-century Kabbalist, on this passage, as bearing on the state in which even the covered Chasadim come into the open.

The Talmud relates that when Israel said “we will do” before “we will hear,” a heavenly voice asked, “Who revealed to My children this secret, which the ministering angels use?” The Alter Rebbe suggests a Kabbalistic reading: mi is Binah, “My children” are Netzach and Hod, and “this secret” is the Chasadim hidden in the Yesod of Imma, called a secret because they are covered.

Read this way, “Who revealed this secret” means that Binah brought the hidden Chasadim out into revelation.

He refers to the discourse on this same Talmudic passage, which explains “this secret” in the soul as the hidden love present in every Jew, now revealed, and above as the Yesod of Abba (Chochmah). In the Shavuos discourse “And I was with Him as a nursling,” later in this book, he reads “Your right hand, from within Your bosom” as Knesses Yisrael’s plea that G‑d’s right hand, His supernal Chesed hidden within the Torah, be brought out of concealment into revelation as the love in the soul.

Section 2 turns to the beginning of the same verse, “You visited the earth and stirred its longing (vateshokekeha).” In its plain sense vateshokekeha means “and watered it,” the earth’s longing being for rain; the Alter Rebbe hears in it teshukah, longing: through the mitzvos, which are “water,” a revealed love and longing is born in the “earth,” Knesses Yisrael, the collective source of the souls of Israel.

Kabbalah pairs the four elements with four Names, the four ways of spelling out the letters of the Name Havayah, called by their numerical values Av (72), Sag (63), Mah (45) and Ban (52). The spelling that adds up to fifty-two, Ban, is the level of earth and dust; it is associated with Malchus, the receiver.

The spelling that adds up to forty-five, Mah, is the level of water. Pesach Eliyahu, Eliyahu’s prayer at the opening of the Tikkunei Zohar, calls it “the path of Atzilus” that waters the tree, “like water that waters the tree.” So “the earth is not sated with water” describes the union of Mah and Ban: Malchus always receives from Z’eir Anpin and never has enough.

Mah (Z’eir Anpin) refines Ban (Malchus): birur is the sorting of what is fit for holiness from what is not. Refinement comes through Chochmah, wisdom, and since “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah,” the Torah and its mitzvos show how this works.

All of the Torah’s rulings teach and distinguish: impure from pure, fit from unfit. Making such distinctions is exactly what birur, refinement, means.

Yet the categories themselves, fit and unfit, guilty and innocent, are expressions of the emotive attributes Chesed and Gevurah, which permit and restrict. So the Torah’s refinement takes place when Chochmah becomes the intellect (mochin) of Z’eir Anpin and works through its attributes.

This is why the Name Mah is in Z’eir Anpin: it is there only as Chochmah clothed in it, for the word Chochmah (חכמה) divides into koach mah (כח מה), “the power of Mah,” as the Zohar (3:34a) teaches. The Zohar on Balak, expounding “What (mah) is His name,” is given for further study.

The mitzvos are “water” because they come from the five Chasadim, which, like water, flow down and make things grow. The 248 positive commandments correspond to the nine Sefiros of Z’eir Anpin, each including all nine (eighty-one); the count, abbreviated with “etc.,” continues until, with the five Chasadim, it reaches 248, and these Chasadim make Z’eir Anpin grow “like water that waters the tree.”

The Torah is revealed from Chochmah, but its root is higher, in Keser, the Crown. The 613 Torah commandments and the seven rabbinic ones make 620, the numerical value of keser (כתר), matching the “620 pillars of light” of Keser; and Keser is the Supreme Will, “the will of all wills.”

Arich Anpin is the configuration of Keser that is the Supreme Will (the outer dimension of Keser, as against Atik Yomin within it). Its lower attributes, Netzach, Hod and Yesod, are clothed within Z’eir Anpin, as Etz Chaim explains at the end of Sha’ar 15 (chapter 7, the Kehot note specifies); this is how “the will of all wills” comes down and is clothed in the mitzvos, which are in the nine Sefiros of Z’eir Anpin.

This explains the verse: “You visited (pakadta) the earth” is the performance of the mitzvos, which are called pikudim, “precepts,” as the preceding discourse notes; through it comes “and stirred its longing (vateshokekeha).” Because the mitzvos carry the Supreme Will, doing them awakens longing and will in Knesses Yisrael.

The power of the Name Mah to refine has a still higher source: the “Forehead” (Mitzcha), the place in Kabbalah where the Supreme Will, “the will of all wills,” shines openly. In the discourse on “My offering, My bread” (Likkutei Torah, Pinchas) the Alter Rebbe explains that the root of Mah is the Forehead, which always stands for will (“it shall be on his forehead for favor (ratzon)”), and that Mah’s power to refine Ban is drawn from “the will of all wills,” which is above reason.

Why is the “earth,” Knesses Yisrael, never sated? Because she constantly needs the flow that the mitzvos bring down, which arouses in her longing and the supernal will. This is why the Sages urge us to “run (ratz) to a light mitzvah”: each mitzvah adds to that flow, and eretz, “earth,” holds the letters of ratz, “run,” and of ratzon, “will.”

Malchus of Atzilus, the root of Jewish souls, does not stay in one place: she is always rising and descending.

At night she descends into the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, as the woman of valor “rises while it is still night and gives food to her household”: Malchus at night, below, giving life to the lower worlds. In the morning prayer she rises back into Atzilus; the Alter Rebbe’s explanation of “I have come into My garden” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim) sets out the cycle: a descent until midnight, an ascent from midnight through the morning, and from Minchah a gradual descent again.

The Talmud tells that when the moon complained that two kings cannot use one crown, G‑d told it, “Go and diminish yourself.” Malchus is the moon, and her “diminishing” is her concealment in the lower worlds; just as the moon wanes at the end of each month and waxes again from Rosh Chodesh, so Malchus descends and ascends.

Two verses describe the ascent: “So that glory may sing to You and not be silent,” and “But I am prayer,” for prayer is how Malchus rises from Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah back to Atzilus. The discourse he cites, on “And I will betroth you to Me” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar), ends by explaining that in exile Knesses Yisrael is “the fallen booth of David,” always rising and falling, and that in the future she will stand without falling.

But Malchus descends so deeply, clothed in the lower worlds to refine kelipas nogah (the “translucent husk,” the mixture of good and evil that can be raised to holiness), that she cannot rise on her own strength. The refinements of Ban are not yet complete, and what remains unrefined darkens her somewhat.

So she needs help from above, from Mah, Z’eir Anpin, the “groom.” This is the meaning of “Come, my beloved, to greet the bride,” from the Friday-night hymn Lecha Dodi: the groom comes toward the bride.

The same thing is easier to see below, in human souls. They cannot awaken themselves to “raise mayin nukvin (feminine waters),” the arousal from below that draws a response from above, entirely on their own; they need “You visited the earth and stirred its longing,” an awakening that comes from above.

The reason is that people live on physical food, which draws its life from kelipas nogah. Eating with the right intention refines the food, but not completely: a trace of its impurity remains in the person. Tanya, chapter 8, discusses food from kelipas nogah.

So food makes a person coarser and pulls his soul toward the physical world. This holds even for a tzaddik who eats only for the sake of Heaven, “to satisfy his soul” in the words of Proverbs, which the Zohar (Vayechi, 240a) reads as satisfying the Shechinah, “the place called the soul of David.”

Even such a tzaddik is affected, because kelipas nogah will not be fully cleansed and raised to holiness until “the end of days” (ketz hayamin, from the last verse of Daniel), as Tanya, chapter 37, explains. Until then refinement cannot be total, and food always coarsens a little.

The proof is Moshe Rabbeinu: no one knew better than he the Kabbalistic intentions (yichudim, “unions” of supernal levels) one can have in eating. The Mitteler Rebbe’s version of this discourse, quoted in the Kehot note, sharpens the question: Moshe surely knew those intentions so well that his food caused no concealment at all, so why did he not eat bread?

Scripture says that Aharon and the elders came to eat bread with Moshe’s father-in-law, Yisro, “before G‑d.” The Talmud at the end of Berachos asks whether they ate before G‑d, when they ate before Moshe, and concludes that sharing a meal with a Torah scholar is like enjoying the radiance of the Shechinah; Moshe’s presence made their meal one “before G‑d.”

Yet when Moshe went up to receive the Torah, he ate no bread for forty days and forty nights.

He did not eat because physical food, coming from kelipas nogah, still conceals and coarsens a little, since the time of its complete refinement has not come; the Mitteler Rebbe’s version adds that the Emanator willed that the worlds still descend, with no ascent until the time of the end. More striking still, he did not eat even the manna, the food on which the angels are nourished.

The manna’s root is very high, yet to reach this world it must pass through Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah by way of the outer layer of their vessels and garments. There good and evil are mixed, as in the Tree of Knowledge, so even manna is not perfectly pure by the time it arrives.

Compared with the holiness of receiving the Torah, even manna coarsens. Moshe himself could have refined it completely, for he is the level of Mah: he and Aharon said of themselves “and we are what (mah),” a phrase that expresses both his self-nullification and his bond with the Name Mah, the refiner.

What stood in the way was not Moshe but the era. Until “the end of days,” food from kelipas nogah cannot be refined so fully that it conceals nothing; only then will kelipas nogah leave its impurity entirely and become a “chariot” for G‑d, wholly given over to holiness.

The Alter Rebbe refers to two discourses. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (“And all the people saw”), he explains that food coarsens even a tzaddik, so Moshe ate nothing on the mountain, not even the manna, because the Torah he came to receive is higher than the angels; in Likkutei Torah, Matos (“And Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes”), he explains vows and the saying “Separation brings to holiness”: one who sees that a food draws him down into physicality separates himself from it.

What we see in food helps us understand something of Malchus above, who descends into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah to refine kelipas nogah.

Because that refinement cannot yet reach its final goal, what is not yet refined holds back her ascent, so she needs constant help from above. This is “the earth is not sated with water,” which is “You visited the earth and stirred its longing.”

The help comes through “the stream of Elokim is full of water,” the revealed Chasadim, and only through it can Malchus rise. The next verse, “Saturating (raveh) its furrows,” fits this: the Talmud explains the name yoreh, the early rain, as the rain that saturates (marveh) the earth and waters it to the depths, citing that very verse; he also points to the Ra’aya Mehemna, a section of the Zohar, on Parshas Mishpatim (the print reads משפט ים, evidently a misprint for Mishpatim).

He adds the Arizal’s notes on the Talmud (Likkutei HaShas) on Tractate Taanis, which explain the verse “You visited the earth.”

The same applies to a person: the “earth” in him is never sated with water. The mitzvos are likened to water and to seed sown by water, as in the morning blessing “He sows righteous deeds (tzedakos)” and the verse “Happy are you who sow beside all waters”; through them will and longing are drawn into the soul, so that it becomes “earth” (eretz), a word that holds the letters of ratzon (will) and ratzo (running).

This drawing down must happen constantly: even after praying with full intention, a person goes on to eat, drink and deal with physical things, so he always needs help from above to awaken the revelation of will.

That help comes through keeping the mitzvos, whose root is “the will of all wills.”

Section 3 places everything said so far in time: it describes the present, when the “earth” must be “visited” because the “water” of the mitzvos, from the Name Mah, ranks above the “earth,” the Name Ban. This inequality is the “diminution of the moon” mentioned above.

In the Time to Come, Isaiah says, “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun”: Z’eir Anpin (the sun) and Nukva (the moon) will be equal in stature. Etz Chaim describes the final stage of the moon’s growth: she will receive her lights from Imma herself, not through Z’eir Anpin, the way Abba and Imma stand as equals.

Both Z’eir Anpin and Nukva will then receive the flow directly from the higher Chochmah, in equal measure. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on the last wedding blessing, which ends “who gladdens the groom with the bride,” where groom and bride are these two levels.

To explain this: Ban is Malchus of Atzilus, which is G‑d’s supernal speech. As Koheles says, “the word of a king is rule”: a human king governs his kingdom by his word, so G‑d’s kingship (Malchus) is His speech.

Above, too, Malchus is therefore called “speech.” In Iggeres HaKodesh (the fourth part of Tanya), letter 25, beginning “To understand words of understanding,” the Alter Rebbe explains that G‑d’s word is called Shechinah by the Sages and Malchus by the Kabbalists, because “the word of a king is rule.”

Speech has its root in Chochmah, as in the Zohar’s phrase “Abba (Chochmah) founded the daughter (Malchus)” and the verse “With Chochmah He founded the earth,” “earth” being Malchus. Iggeres HaKodesh 5, which opens “And David made a name,” explains that the forming of the letters of speech comes from the hidden depths of intellect, the level called “Abba founded the daughter.”

But the light of Chochmah that reaches the letters of speech as they are revealed in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah is only a contracted glimmer. That is the moon’s diminution: Malchus is clothed in letters of speech that go outward.

In the Time to Come, when sun and moon are equal, Malchus of Atzilus, the source of speech, will rise to receive from the higher Chochmah directly, as the emotive attributes do now. Speech will then be included in Chochmah and raised up into it.

Moshe told G‑d, “For I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.” The Alter Rebbe explains that Moshe’s soul came from the very essence of the higher Chochmah, so his power of speech could not descend fully into outward expression; it stayed absorbed in Chochmah and was raised up into it. In Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, he says the same: Moshe stood above Malchus, the level of speech, and could not lower himself into it.

Above, this corresponds to the ascent of Nukva, the supernal speech, to receive from Chochmah and Binah themselves. The Kehot note suggests that this also means receiving without Z’eir Anpin in between.

There is also an opposite kind of silence, a great lack: of the time of the Temple’s destruction the verse “I was mute with silence” is said.

That silence is a flaw: the kelipos conceal so much that speech cannot be revealed, “like a ewe (rachel) that is mute before her shearers.” In Likkutei Torah, Masei, the Alter Rebbe explains that Malchus is called Rachel, the ewe that lets herself be shorn without resisting, and that speech drawn down into Asiyah, where the kelipos conceal, is in exile and “mute.”

Moshe’s heaviness of speech is the very opposite: he could not speak because supernal Chochmah was revealed in him. That is the ascent of speech, not its fall.

So too “the mute dove” in Psalms is said in praise, and the Sages say that if a word is worth a sela, silence is worth two. But a question arises: if there is no speech at all, how can this be called the ascent of Malchus, of speech?

The answer comes from Iggeres HaKodesh 5, the letter beginning “And David made a name”: letters have form, their inner dimension (the distinct shape of each sound, which comes from the hidden intellect and will of the soul), and matter, their outer dimension (the breath and voice that carry them). The essence of Malchus is the inner dimension of speech, which shines in the higher worlds; only in Asiyah is it clothed in the outer “body” of the letters, like human speech that goes out through the voice.

In the future, when the worlds rise, speech will no longer need that outer clothing, and this is its ascent. The Talmud’s story of two spirits conversing shows that speech can exist without voice: their speech is as subtle as our thought.

That is how speech can rise without being heard. He refers to the explanation in Parshas Noach on “Many waters,” on “the day that she is spoken for (sheyedubar bah)”: the speech is “in her” (bah), held within, not drawn down below.

He also refers to the explanation on “These are the journeys” (Likkutei Torah, Masei), which reads the journeys as an ascent and points to a discourse explaining the Name of forty-two as seven attributes each of six, like the seven lines of six words of the prayer Ana b’choach. This too, he says, is like the ascent of speech on Shabbos.

The Zohar on Terumah reads Psalms 19, “There is no speech and there are no words,” as a supernal speech unlike the utterances of this world: “their voice is not heard,” and yet “their line has gone out through all the earth,” for its flow reaches below. He adds a passage of the Zohar on Bereishis.

Along the same lines, the Ramaz, on the Zohar’s comment on “Enough for you” in Va’eschanan, explains “And he heard the voice speaking to him,” the voice Moshe heard in the Tent of Meeting: it spoke not through the instruments of speech but inwardly, as the root of speech in its inner dimension. The Alter Rebbe suggests this is the inner partzuf (configuration) of Malchus, and refers to a discourse on the Zohar’s opening words, “Like a rose among thorns, so is My beloved among the daughters.”

Elsewhere the ascent of speech is explained differently: now speech receives Chochmah’s light only through the emotive attributes, but in the future it will receive from the higher Chochmah itself, without them.

That explanation is found in the discourse on “And it shall be, from new moon to new moon” (Likkutei Torah, V’Zos HaBerachah), which says that on Rosh Chodesh the supernal speech receives from Chochmah itself rather than through the attributes, and in the Siddur’s discourse on the wedding blessing “Gladden the beloved companions,” on “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,” which speaks there of joy.

Still, he concludes, the explanation given here, in which speech itself receives from Chochmah and Binah themselves, describes a higher level.

Malachi says, “Then those who fear Havayah spoke (nidberu) to one another,” and the form nidberu suggests speech that happens of itself, “was spoken.” It is the speech of “My words that I have put in your mouth,” where a person’s tongue only echoes G‑d’s word.

One reaches this through bittul, setting oneself aside, while studying Torah. The heavenly Maggid told Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Beis Yosef, “I am the Mishnah that speaks in your mouth,” and it is said that “the Shechinah speaks from the throat of Moshe”: in Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe explains that Moshe, who stood above Malchus, the level of speech, could not lower himself into speech, so the Shechinah spoke from his throat.

“The day that she is spoken for” can be read the same way, as the self-arising speech of nidberu. And the verse “Who spreads out the earth above the waters” describes the future, when “earth,” the Name Ban, will stand above the “water” and no longer need to receive from the Name Mah, Z’eir Anpin.

The verse in Jeremiah speaks of “a new thing in the earth: a female shall encompass a male.” In the future the feminine, Nukva, will surround and rise above the masculine, Z’eir Anpin, and will no longer need his “water.” The text quotes the verse as “Behold, I create,” while Jeremiah reads “For Havayah has created,” as the Kehot note points out.

Section 4 returns to the maamar’s verse from Hosea, which speaks of a “number” that can be neither measured nor counted, a seeming contradiction. Counting applies only to things that are divided and separate from one another.

Division comes from the Gevuros, the powers of restraint that set limits and distinctions. So the single breath and voice divide into the twenty-two letters at the five places of articulation in the mouth, through the five Gevuros associated with the five letters that have final forms, mem, nun, tzadi, pei and kaf.

The mitzvos, too, have a number, 613, because the Torah comes from Gevurah: it was given as “a fiery law,” and fire is Gevurah.

Psalms says of G‑d, “to His understanding (tevunah) there is no number.” The Alter Rebbe explains: the division of levels into distinct, countable things begins only where the Yesod of Imma (Binah) ends.

That point is the chest of Z’eir Anpin. Below it the Chasadim and Gevuros are revealed and the Chasadim spread into the three lines (right, left and center), so number has its root there; and Malchus, which is built from the chest down, receives from there.

“His understanding” is Binah, where the Chasadim and Gevuros are still covered within the Yesod of Imma. There all the Chasadim of the three lines are truly one.

So there they are “without number,” above counting, which applies only to what is divided. In the hidden world everything is united, included and nullified in the Infinite Light; this is why the verse says “to His understanding,” specifically, “there is no number.”

Binah is the concealed (setim) level, above the revealed (galya). The Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on this verse and the Zohar at the end of Terumah, which applies it to G‑d who counts the stars, discuss it further.

He refers to the explanation on “These are the journeys” (Likkutei Torah, Masei) that opens “To explain the concept of the journeys,” where he expounds “A fool does not desire understanding”: the “fool,” the forces outside holiness, can draw nothing from the emotive attributes while they are still included in Binah. There it is explained that this concealed level is where Atik, the inner level of Keser, is revealed, and that it is called the Tree of Life.

The Ramaz, commenting on the Zohar’s discussion of “And the number… shall be” in Parshas Bamidbar, explains the verse exactly as here.

Now Malchus, the supernal speech, receives from Z’eir Anpin only from the chest downward, where the “building” of Nukva begins.

That is why the verse speaks of “the number of the children of Israel”: Malchus, the source of the souls, receives from the place where number begins. Time comes from there too, as the Arizal teaches, for time is also measured and divided.

In the Time to Come Malchus will rise to receive from Chochmah and Binah themselves, the level of “to His understanding there is no number.” Then Israel will have a “number” and yet be beyond all measure and count, just as the verse says.

Even the revealed world, which is now counted and divided, will then stand at the level of the hidden world, which is beyond number.

This comes through teshuvah, which is Binah, “the heart,” beyond number. That is why, in the very place where it was said “You are not My people,” they will be called “children of the living G‑d”: through teshuvah intentional sins themselves become merits (Yoma 86b), as the preceding discourse explained (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar 6:9).

Yom Kippur, the day of forgiveness, works the same way: on that day Malchus rises to Binah, the level beyond number. The Zohar on Emor says that on Yom Kippur the supernal Mother shines into the lower Mother, two lights shining as one.

Zechariah says, “On that day Havayah shall be (yihyeh) One.” The Arizal reads the word yihyeh (יהיה), yud-hei written twice, as the future form of the Name Havayah.

The second half of the Name, vav-hei (Z’eir Anpin and Nukva), will become like the first half, yud-hei (Abba and Imma). This is the same idea as the verse about a number “which cannot be counted.”

Now Malchus, the last hei of the Name, “the word of Havayah,” receives through the vav. The vav is the yud drawn downward, a letter whose head is a yud with a line extending below it, like water flowing from high to low; the discourse on “And I return in peace” discusses this.

So the vav is not the yud’s essence: it narrows into a line much thinner than the yud at its head.

This is the “thinning” of the light, which the opening discourse of Torah Ohr, Chayei Sarah (the place the Kehot note gives), explains as “doubled and thinned” (kefila uklisha): the yud drawn out into a vav. From the vav the flow continues to the lower hei, Malchus.

The first two letters relate differently: the hei of yud-hei is not a drawing down from the yud; the yud itself is revealed in it, so they are a single level.

Ateres Zekeinim, a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, discusses at section 32 how the first hei of the Name is written. He also refers to his explanation on “But Havayah your G‑d would not listen to Bilaam.”

In the Time to Come the world will rise: the revealed world will reach the levels of the hidden world, and Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the emotive attributes and speech, will stand at the level of yud-hei, Abba and Imma, as Etz Chaim says of the moon receiving from Imma herself, cited above.

This is also the meaning of the next verse in Hosea, “And the children of Yehudah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together”: the lower unity will reach the level of the higher unity.

Yehudah is Malchus: the name Yehudah holds the letters of hod and speaks of acknowledgment (hoda’ah), and Malchus is “in Hod.” Yisrael, whose letters also spell li rosh, “a head for Me,” is Z’eir Anpin above the chest, where the intellect of Abba and Imma shines.

In the future Malchus will stand at the level of Z’eir Anpin, “the light of the moon like the light of the sun.” In Torah Ohr, Vayigash, the Alter Rebbe explains that now Yosef (Z’eir Anpin) gives and Yehudah (Malchus) “approaches” to receive, but in the future Yehudah will rise above Yosef; he also refers to his discourses on “Yehudah, you” and on “When you listen to the voice… to do what is right in the eyes.”

Hosea continues, “and they shall appoint for themselves one head”: Tiferes of Imma will be a single crown for both Z’eir Anpin and Nukva equally. He refers to his discourse in Parshas Terumah on the cherubim.