ביאור על הנ״ל

The heading presents this discourse as a further explanation of the one just before it, the first discourse on Parshas Beha’alotcha. It returns to that discourse’s themes, the oil of the Menorah and the great love of Aharon, and explains where they come from.

The verse that commands oil for the Menorah calls it kasis, “crushed”: the oil comes out only when the olives are crushed. The Alter Rebbe explains why: the oil is the hidden Chochmah (Chochmah Stima’ah), a concealed wisdom above revealed intellect, and crushing, as the next paragraph explains, is refinement, which takes place in Chochmah.

A second verse supports this. The Torah calls the anointing oil shemen mishchas kodesh, plainly “holy anointing oil,” and the Alter Rebbe reads it as “oil that anoints the kodesh”; since kodesh (“the holy”) is the Chochmah of Atzilus, an oil that anoints it stands above it, and so it is Mocha Stima’ah, “the hidden brain,” the source from which Chochmah itself comes into being.

Crushing separates: the waste is set apart, and the good, the oil, comes out by itself. So oil drawn out by crushing points to birurim, “refinements,” the sorting of good from waste; above, this is the Zohar’s teaching that “through Chochmah they are refined.”

The main refinement takes place in Mocha Stima’ah. The lights of the World of Tohu (“chaos”) were too great for its vessels, which shattered and fell into the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah; the rectified order, the World of Tikkun, is refined out of that breakage, as letter 28 of Iggeres HaKodesh (the Alter Rebbe’s letters, printed as part of the Tanya) explains.

The same crushing has a counterpart in a person’s service of G‑d. The Midrash at the beginning of Parshas Tetzaveh compares Israel to the olive, which gives its oil only after it has been beaten and crushed.

A person’s “crushing” is to lower himself to the dust and feel bitter over his distance from G‑d. This draws down the “oil,” Mocha Stima’ah of Arich Anpin (Arich Anpin, “the Long Countenance,” is the outer level of Keser, the divine will above intellect, and its Mocha Stima’ah is the hidden wisdom within that will), and from it comes the raising of the lamps: the great love (ahavah rabbah) that Aharon kindles in Israel.

A parenthesis adds that, as the discourse “For You are my lamp” explains, the higher awe (yirah ila’ah) also flows from this oil, because its root too is in Mocha Stima’ah. The text then turns to Psalm 133, where the good oil on the head runs down upon the beard, the beard of Aharon.

This is why the oil runs down onto the beard. In Kabbalah, hairs grow from the “surplus” of the intellect (mochin): light of the hidden brain that is more than the head can hold within, and so it breaks out through it as hair.

The hairs come into being from the returning light (or chozer) of the refinements, the light that rises back up from what has been refined. The vessel cannot bear that light, so it comes out beyond it as hair; the parenthesis refers the reader to a discussion elsewhere of the Zohar’s phrase about the hidden brain resting “like good wine upon its lees.”

The hairs stand for the combinations of the letters of the Torah. The Sages read “His locks (kevutzosav) are curled (taltalim)” as tilei tilim, “mounds upon mounds” of halachos, expounded from every tip (kotz) of the letters.

The prayer at the end of the Amidah follows the same order. “Let my soul be as dust to all” is the crushing of the olives; “Open my heart to Your Torah” is the hairs, the halachos; and upon these flows “the good oil,” the anointing oil of Chochmah.

After the oil reaches the head and the beard, the psalm says that it runs down “over the edge of his middos.” Plainly middosav are Aharon’s garments, the oil reaching the collar of his robe, but the Alter Rebbe reads the word as middos, the emotive attributes, and says this descent is the raising of the Menorah’s seven lamps.

The Arizal’s Likkutei Torah (his teachings on the Torah as Rabbi Chaim Vital recorded them; the Kehot note finds the passage in its companion volume, Taamei HaMitzvos, on kindling the lamps) explains that raising the lamps “toward the face of the Menorah” draws light from above into Keser of Malchus, the will within Malchus. Here the Menorah is Malchus, and that light builds “her structure” into a full configuration. Why this is needed begins here: the Holy One, blessed be He, in Himself is exalted far above the worlds.

G‑d has no need to reveal Himself to the worlds, which before Him count as truly nothing, just as a man has no wish to lord it over a fly; and the gap between G‑d and the worlds is incomparably greater. Therefore an arousal from below, man’s own service, is needed to awaken above the will to be King over a people.

The arousal from below is the great love (ahavah rabbah) that Aharon the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) kindled in the Congregation of Israel: as the previous discourse explained, a wondrous yearning that the Infinite Light be revealed below, in this world. That is Aharon’s own level, for his name, אהרן, has the letters of nir’eh (נראה), “seen”: his whole desire is that light be seen below.

This love, kindled in Israel, arouses the Supreme Will above, Keser, “the Will of all wills,” to be drawn down and revealed in Keser of Malchus, the will within Malchus.

That is, there comes to be the will to be King. This, says the Alter Rebbe, is the meaning of “toward the face of the Menorah.”

Aharon’s love, drawing the Supreme Will into Malchus, is the oil running “over the edge of His middos,” the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. In a person’s own service, serving with this love draws a revelation of G‑dliness into his soul that transforms his own emotive attributes, until he becomes a new creation who guards himself carefully from evil.

The Menorah stood on the south side of the Sanctuary, and this alludes to an order in service: one cannot reach Aharon’s great love without first attaining ahavas olam (everlasting love). The previous discourse calls it ahavas olam because it is drawn from contemplating the world (olam), its space and time, and how it is nullified before G‑d.

Ahavas olam is the level of Avraham, of whom the Torah says that he went “going on and journeying toward the south (hanegbah).” The text points to its earlier discussion of hanegbah (Likkutei Torah, Beha’alotcha 1:3: Avraham rose from rung to rung, from below upward, until he cleaved to hanegbah, the love that longs to cleave to G‑d), to the Midrash on Lech Lecha, and to the Zohar there, which reads the journey as rising rung after rung until he reached the south, his portion.

It also points to the Zohar on Vayigash, on the verse “to cause those who love me to inherit,” and to the Zohar at the beginning of Yisro. There, beneath the King above stands a Kohen “called Gadol,” and beneath the King below a Kohen who serves Him, “Michael the great priest”: Michael’s priesthood, and above it a higher one, in the rank of Kohen Gadol.

Michael is ahavas olam, drawn from Chesed, “kindness to Avraham”; and this is the meaning of “toward the south,” the right, the side of kindness.

Michael’s place on the right, the side of kindness, is stated in Bamidbar Rabbah. Only after this level comes Aharon the Kohen Gadol, who kindles the Menorah with great love, the oil that runs down “over the edge of his middos.”

The previous discourse said that Aharon’s great love can come from the very same contemplation that brings ahavas olam, provided one also feels bitter over the darkness that conceals G‑dliness. The Alter Rebbe now explains why the bitterness makes the difference.

The source of this love is the hidden Chochmah, where “through Chochmah they are refined.” Refinement is precisely the crushing of the olives.

Bitterness and crying out to G‑d in distress (the words echo Psalm 107, where those in trouble “cried out to Havayah in their distress”) are that crushing. Through them in particular the good oil is drawn down from Mocha Stima’ah, the root of Aharon’s great love.

The discourse “I will greatly rejoice” (Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim) explains that the shofar’s “groaning groans” (genuchei ganach), weeping over the Infinite Light’s distance from revelation, arouse the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy and draw down the inner supernal delight. Aharon’s great love is rooted there, in the attribute “and abundant in kindness.”

The Alter Rebbe now turns to the meaning of “when you raise up.” He bases it on the Zohar on Bamidbar, which explains “where the tribes went up” as the twelve tribes, “twelve boundaries below.”

“Where” refers to Yerushalayim in the same psalm, which stands for Malchus. The tribes, as twelve boundaries in the World of Beriah, ascend to it.

The Zohar on Vayeishev explains “a city that is joined together” as Imma (Binah) joining with the Daughter (Malchus) so that they become one. The text refers to its fuller treatment in the discourse “These are the accounts of the Mishkan.”

The joining of Imma with the Daughter, just described, is like the Zohar’s phrase “to bind the seventh to the seventh.” A gloss of the Companions, the Arizal’s disciples, at the end of the Gate of the Shema in Pri Etz Chaim (the Arizal’s teachings on prayer as Rabbi Chaim Vital recorded them) explains this binding as reaching from Malchus up to Binah.

The tribes’ ascent is like what Pri Etz Chaim says on “it is like an extended prayer,” the Talmud’s phrase (Berachos 4b) for “Ado-nai, open my lips,” said just before the Amidah, which therefore does not interrupt it. Pri Etz Chaim explains it as the ascent of the Holy of Holies, the highest chamber of Beriah, into Atzilus, until it becomes Atzilus itself.

The same kind of ascent of the worlds takes place at Kabbalas Shabbos, the prayers that welcome Shabbos on Friday evening.

The text lists further passages of the Zohar on the twelve tribes and on the verse “where the tribes went up,” in Vayechi, Vayeitzei, Pekudei and Acharei.

Aharon’s “raising” of the lamps goes beyond the ascent the tribes make on their own. Their ascent, “where the tribes went up,” reaches only as far as Malchus, Yerushalayim.

Aharon does more than bring the tribes up to Malchus: he raises Malchus herself, by drawing into her the light of Chochmah.

The Zohar on Emor distinguishes two states of Malchus: when she shines from the Supernal Abba (Chochmah), and when she receives from “the house of Imma” (Binah). The first is the higher, and it is what Aharon’s lamps bring about; the text also refers to Biurei HaZohar, a Chabad commentary on passages of the Zohar.

This is the difference between the offerings of the twelve Nesi’im, the princes of the tribes, who each brought a gift at the inauguration of the altar, and Aharon’s kindling and tending of the lamps: the offerings raise the tribes to Malchus, while the lamps raise Malchus herself.

The discourse on the matzah of the Haggadah (Likkutei Torah, Tzav) explains the difference between the mochin of Imma and the mochin of Abba, the intellect drawn from Binah and from Chochmah, and calls matzah the mochin of Abba. The text also points to discussions of the Sages’ remark that Yechezkel’s description of the altar “began with the altar and concluded with the table” (Berachos 55a: while the Temple stood the altar atoned, and now a person’s table atones), and of the verse on “wine that gladdens” and “oil”; all this helps explain “when you raise up.”

In the Midrash HaNe’elam, a section of the Zohar, Rabbi Tanchum cites “He waters the mountains from His upper chambers (aliyosav)” and asks which is the aliyah, the upper chamber: it is Eden. The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, the seventeenth-century kabbalist whose glosses on the Zohar the Alter Rebbe often cites) elaborates there; and since Eden is the higher Chochmah, “when you raise up,” from the same root as aliyah, means raising to Chochmah.

Each of the twelve Nesi’im brought his own offering and through it raised his own tribe. Aharon’s seven lamps, which stand for the souls of Israel, raise all of them together.

The Zohar on Beha’alotcha sets the Nesi’im’s twelve offerings for the altar beside the Menorah’s seven lamps. The same contrast appears in the Splitting of the Sea, where, as the Midrash says, the sea split into twelve parts, a path for each tribe.

In the future, Yeshayahu says, G‑d will wave His hand over the River and strike it into seven streams. The Splitting of the Sea was at the level of Malchus: it raised the twelve tribes, who are in Beriah, and joined them to their root in Atzilus, the “twelve diagonal boundaries” of Z’eir Anpin (a Sefer Yetzirah term for the twelve edges between the six directions), and so the sea split into twelve. Likkutei Torah, Tzav (12:3) gives this explanation at length.

The River of the future, however, is Binah, which conceals the light of Chochmah; striking it uncovers that light, as the next paragraph explains.

Striking the River (Binah) reveals the light of Chochmah, in which the Infinite Light is clothed. Because this revelation comes from the seven lower Sefiros of Atik, the inner level of Keser, the River splits into seven streams, corresponding to the three Patriarchs and the four Matriarchs. The proof is “beyond the River your fathers dwelt”: the fathers’ place is beyond the River, that is, above Binah.

The same difference holds between the Nesi’im’s offerings and the lamps. The offerings are “where the tribes went up,” from Beriah to Atzilus, so each tribe had its own offering, receiving from its own root in Atzilus; the text points to the explanation in Torah Ohr on “Yehudah, you, your brothers shall acknowledge you.”

The raising of the lamps comes through the light of Chochmah, above Binah, the source of the oil. That is why it comes as seven lamps, like the seven streams of the future.

It is known that the root of the oil in Chochmah lies in Atika Kadisha, the innermost level of Keser, as is written elsewhere in the name of the Zohar HaRakia (a commentary on the Zohar drawn from the Arizal’s writings) on “Like the good oil.”

The Ramaz, on the Zohar’s words “That oil” in Emor, distinguishes two kinds of oil: the oil for the light, from the Supernal Keser, and the anointing oil, from Mocha Stima’ah. So the oil for the Menorah’s light reaches back to Keser itself.