לבאר הדברים הנ״ל

This maamar explains the discourse just before it in Likkutei Torah, which opens with Zechariah’s vision: “I saw, and behold, a menorah all of gold, with its bowl on its top” (Zechariah 4:2). It takes up that discourse’s themes: wisdom that “gives life,” and the bowl, the seven lamps, the pipes and the two olive trees of Zechariah’s menorah.

The verse “wisdom gives life to its owners” (Koheles 7:12) will be explained through the Mishnah’s reason for the order of the Shema. Its first section, “Hear, O Israel,” is the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven; only then does the second section, “And it shall be, if you listen,” accept the yoke of the mitzvos.

Accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven means treating the mitzvos as a King’s decree: one does them because He commanded, and takes this yoke on willingly. The motive is not to draw down the spiritual delight that is in each mitzvah, even though that delight is real, for to do them for the delight would not be service.

Yet the Torah faults those who did not serve G‑d “with joy” (Deuteronomy 28:47); the Alter Rebbe places that joy in the service itself, in the very fact of serving the King and carrying out His decrees. The parenthesis points to Torah Ohr, Mikeitz (“For with You is the source of life”) and Likkutei Torah, Shelach (“And now, I pray, let the power of my L‑rd be great”); in the second, the Alter Rebbe explains that doing the mitzvos only to draw down the Infinite Light would be like taking a remedy or doing business for profit, whereas done as a servant fulfills his master’s decree, they draw that light of themselves.

The verse (Deuteronomy 29:28) is read through the four letters of the Name Havayah. “The hidden things,” the first two letters, yud and hei, are awe and love, which live inside a person. The word for “and the revealed things,” vehanigalos, itself begins with the letters vav and hei, as if to say “vav-hei are revealed”: they are Torah and mitzvos, which are done openly.

The Torah is the vav, whose value is six, because it has the six extremities, the six emotive Sefiros from Chesed to Yesod: the Mishnah has six orders, the first of them, Zera’im (Seeds), corresponding to Chesed. The mitzvos are the final hei, Malchus, G‑d’s kingship expressed in action, and that hei receives its flow only through the vav: the mitzvos are given life through the Torah. In Torah Ohr, Vayeitzei (“And I return in peace”), cited here, the Alter Rebbe explains that the pillar Yaakov set up is the vav, through which the Supernal Chochmah is drawn down into Torah and mitzvos clothed in physical things.

Here is the question. “Service” implies that the master needs what the servant does, yet G‑d lacks nothing, as Elihu says to Job, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” How, then, can our deeds be called service of G‑d?

Yet the Torah commands “to serve Him.” The parenthesis lists other places on what service means: in Torah Ohr, Mishpatim, the end of “And these are the laws” and “None shall miscarry”; in Likkutei Torah, Balak, “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov”; and Sefer Shel Beinonim (the Tanya), chapter 15, which explains that “one who serves G‑d” is one still in the midst of the battle with his evil inclination, a theme this maamar takes up in section 3.

The answer: service does not supply G‑d with something He lacks. It draws a revelation of G‑dliness out of hiding, from a level higher than the chain of descending worlds.

The light that already comes down through that chain is clothed in many levels, until it becomes physical heavens and earth, which hide it so completely that the world seems to exist in its own right. That is how a person can come to say, as the Torah warns, “My strength and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.”

For service to draw down G‑dliness from beyond the chain of worlds, there must be a revelation like the one promised for the Time to Come, when, in Isaiah’s words, “the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll,” and the heavens that now hide G‑dliness will hide it no longer. At the resurrection of the dead even the physical body, risen from the grave, will sense G‑dliness.

Such a revelation can come only from above the chain of descent, like the spirit “poured out from on high” of which Isaiah speaks. The reason is that the chain of descent unfolds through the kav, which issues from the last and lowest level of what is above it, a radiance that has been greatly contracted.

An analogy: a great scholar who has many kinds of wisdom limits himself to the lowest expression of his wisdom, the wisdom that goes into speech or into practical action. In the same way, the chain of descent through the kav issues from the level called “Asiyah” (action), the lowest level of what lies above it.

Strictly, no divisions apply in what is above the kav: before G‑d all four worlds are equal, and even Atzilus, the highest, counts as Asiyah, for “all before Him is considered as nothing.”

The words “before Him” are the point: that is how it is from His side. From our side, since the light does reach us, we can describe it as coming from the last level included there. The text compares this to the “dark mountain” (tura chashucha), which it identifies as Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes in concealment: attributes that are present there, but hidden.

The parenthesis gives Kabbalistic parallels: Pardes Rimonim, Gate 11, and two passages of Etz Chaim that speak of “the lowest level” of a realm and of something “like Atik of Atzilus.” It adds the explanation of the Idra (the Idra Rabba, the Zohar’s “Great Assembly,” in which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai expounds the configurations of the divine) on Zohar III, end of 128b, where the letter tav “inscribed an impression” for Atik Yomin; that explanation, the text says, makes the same point, and it notes a comment there introduced “I found written,” from the Rav, the Arizal.

Elsewhere, the text adds, it is explained that the “ten hidden Sefiros” that Pardes speaks of are, in the Arizal’s Kabbalah, the level of G‑d’s holy Names.

That is, a person’s name exists for others to call him by; it does not touch his essence. So too the source of the kav is only a “name,” the lowest expression of what is above, and when it descends and is clothed in the worlds it becomes hidden. A true revelation must therefore be drawn from a higher level, above the kav.

Section 2 begins with a custom: a king is crowned with a royal crown. Since the ways of this world reflect their spiritual root, the king’s crown must have a root above.

The explanation is that the Ten Sefiros can be counted from Keser down to Malchus, and also from Malchus up to Keser. Counted from below, Malchus stands first and so is called Keser, as Pardes writes.

Malchus is called Keser not only because it comes first when the Sefiros are counted from below. It actually has a quality that makes it fit to bear the name Keser.

This is why Keser, the will with the Supernal delight inside it, is drawn specifically into the mitzvos, which belong to Malchus. The will is the “forehead of the skull,” as the Idra says: “This forehead is called will.”

As the forehead is a bone that covers what lies inside the head, the will covers the delight within it and clothes it so that it does not show.

As is known, Keser has two levels: an inner one, Atik (Atik Yomin, “the Ancient of Days”), the last level of the Emanator himself, and an outer one, Arich Anpin (“the Long Face”), the first level of what is emanated. Arich Anpin covers and surrounds Atik, the inner level within it.

Arich Anpin is the Supernal will, and within it is clothed the delight of Ein Sof, which has no end, just as its name says. That hidden delight is the level of “the reasons of the mitzvos,” the inner purpose of each command, which have no limit; of the Torah it is said, “Its measure is longer than the earth” (Job 11:9).

This explains why Malchus, the “Asiyah” (realm of action) within Atzilus, where the mitzvos are performed, is called Keser: there, specifically, the Supernal will is revealed together with the delight clothed in it. In Likkutei Torah, Balak, near the end of the explanation on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov,” cited here, the Alter Rebbe reads “I have even made it” as this fourth level, Malchus of Atzilus, the Asiyah within Atzilus, where the Supernal Keser is drawn down through fulfilling the King’s mitzvos.

The mitzvos are the final stage, the deed itself. The Torah is Chochmah: the wisdom of each mitzvah, the laws of how it is done correctly, so that the Supernal delight can be drawn into it; for this reason the Torah is closer to the Infinite One.

Hence the saying that things are “refined through Chochmah.” The physical substance of a mitzvah comes from kelipas nogah (the “glowing husk”), the realm of permitted physical things that can be raised to holiness or not: the wool of tzitzis comes from sheep, which people eat, and eating them can bring a gluttonous craving that stems from kelipas nogah.

Wisdom, by contrast, “gives life to its owners”: the discourse before this one reads “its owners” as the mitzvos, and through Torah study the Supernal delight comes to dwell in them. This is why the Sages said “Great is study,” for it brings to action, just as in a person the intellect first clothes itself in thought and speech and only afterwards in deeds.

The Zohar speaks of Malchus as a bride: “from here on,” once she is married, her husband is obliged to sustain her. In Kabbalistic terms Malchus is the moon, which has no light of its own and receives from the sun, Z’eir Anpin, the level of the Torah; so the mitzvos, which are Malchus, receive their life from the Torah.

That dependence describes Malchus only after it has descended, after its “marriage” with Z’eir Anpin. The Zohar reads “Havayah Elokim built the rib” as the work of Abba and Imma, who prepared the bride before she came to her husband; only “from here on,” after “He brought her to the man,” does the husband provide for her.

The very existence of Malchus, though, is rooted higher, in the Supernal will, above Z’eir Anpin and the Torah. The parenthesis cites the discourse “See, I set before you” (Likkutei Torah, Re’eh) on words of Lecha Dodi, the Friday-night hymn to the Shabbos: “from the beginning, from of old, established; last in deed, first in thought.” There the Alter Rebbe reads “from the beginning” as the start of the whole chain of worlds and “from of old” as before it, where G‑d is beyond all worlds.

Because her root is in the Supernal will, even after the marriage Malchus becomes “the crown of her husband,” above Z’eir Anpin. Malchus has an outer configuration (partzuf), which receives from Z’eir Anpin, and an inner configuration in its source, which the Alter Rebbe links to the menorah, citing the Likkutei Torah of the Arizal (a collection of the Arizal’s teachings on the Torah, not this book).

The parenthesis cites Etz Chaim’s gate on the formation of Nukva (Malchus), a discourse on “One is my dove” about the inner configuration of Malchus, and the Zohar. At that inner, root level Malchus, the level of the mitzvos, comes before the Torah, the reverse of the order that holds below.

In the menorah of Zechariah’s vision, the “bowl on its head” is contemplation, Binah, called “the mother of the children” (Psalms 113:9). Her children are the seven lamps: the seven emotive attributes, the “seven shepherds” (Micah 5:4), which the verse “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness, and the might, and the beauty…” lists one by one.

Section 3 turns to the “two olives by it” (Zechariah 4:3; in the vision, two olive trees, one on each side of the bowl). An olive is bitter, and its bitterness hides the oil inside; the oil comes out only when the olive is ground and crushed. The image will stand for the struggle with one’s own nature that releases a higher light.

The Zohar teaches that when the sitra achra, the side opposed to holiness, is subdued, G‑d’s glory “is elevated,” which the Alter Rebbe reads as light drawn from a higher place. This is one reason the Torah was given to people and not to the angels; another reason, mentioned only briefly, is that the souls of Israel come from the inner dimension.

A person below must subdue his nature (iskafya) in everything he does, and that arousal from below draws an arousal from above from a higher place.

The proof is G‑d’s word through Jeremiah, recalling how Israel followed Him in the wilderness, “in a land not sown”: the stress falls on “not.” For in “This is My Name (shemi)… and this is My remembrance (zichri)” (Exodus 3:15), shemi (350) with yud-hei (15) makes 365, the number of the prohibitions, the “do nots,” while zichri (237) with vav-hei (11) makes 248, the number of the positive commandments; so the prohibitions are joined to the higher, hidden letters of the Name.

Doing a positive mitzvah, the level of “yes,” draws down light of a kind that can be grasped. Refraining, the level of “not,” draws down something that cannot be clothed in the level of “yes” at all and stays only in the level of “not”; light of this kind cannot be drawn down at all within the realm of “one opposite the other” (Ecclesiastes 7:14), where every force of holiness has its counterpart.

It follows that this light is the opposite of the realm of “one opposite the other”: it is supremely high and has no counterpart. Only the children of Israel can draw it down, as the next part explains.

Angels have a body of a kind, but it does not hide G‑dliness from them; even that body is nullified as they proclaim “Holy.” Since nothing in them resists, they cannot achieve the subjugation that draws the higher light.

That is why the Torah was given only after the Exodus, after Israel had been crushed by hard labor “with mortar and with bricks.” Such crushing (bitush) arouses the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (the thirteen qualities of compassion G‑d revealed to Moshe, Exodus 34:6–7), lights higher than the chain of descent; this is “Your abundant mercies.”

The parenthesis applies the image of Psalms 133, “the good oil running down upon the beard.” The thirteen tikkunim (features) of the supernal beard are the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, and the oil is their inner dimension, revealed through striking as oil is pressed from a crushed olive; Shemos Rabbah, at the start of Tetzaveh, likens Israel to an olive that gives its oil only after it is beaten and pressed.

Now the olives are explained as they are above. Oil stands for Chochmah, as in the verse “Oil and incense gladden the heart.”

Oil is what gives the light: the color of a flame depends on the purity of the oil. The oil gives the white light, while the wick gives the dark light at the base of the flame; so the revelation of the light comes from the olive.

Oil comes out of the olive by crushing, which corresponds above to the striking of the vessel. And Chochmah itself comes into being through many Gevuros (powers of restraint) from the botzina dekardinuta, the Zohar’s “lamp of darkness,” the line that measures and gives everything its bounds.

The parenthesis cites the explanation on “But Havayah your G‑d was not willing to listen to Bilam” (Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei), where the Alter Rebbe explains that even the hidden Chochmah comes into being only through contraction, the Gevurah of Atik clothed within it, and reaches Chochmah of Atzilus only through a great contraction. The Gevuros are bitter, like the olive, and their bitterness covers the oil until it is pressed out.

The two olives are the Gevuros of Abba (Chochmah) and the Gevuros of Imma (Binah), Imma being “the mother of the children.” Through them the oil, the intellect (mochin) of Abba and Imma within Z’eir Anpin, is drawn down to light the seven lamps, the seven attributes.

The parenthesis lists further discussions of the olive: the Chanukah discourse “On the twenty-fifth of Kislev” in Torah Ohr, Vayeishev, the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on Eikev, passages of the Zohar, the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) in his commentary on the Zohar, and the entry “Kasis” (crushed) in Pardes. The Alter Rebbe notes that they explain it in a somewhat different way.

Section 4 explains the “seven and seven pipes” of Zechariah’s vision. Following the Zohar at the end of Mikeitz, the Alter Rebbe reads them as two sets of seven, fourteen in all, and not, as Rashi and the Radak explain, seven pipes for each of the seven lamps, forty-nine.

The two sets of pipes carry two things: one carries oil, the other gold, as in the vision’s “golden spouts” that empty out the gold. Gold is Binah, as in Elihu’s words “out of the north comes gold,” and it brings joy; the fiery fervor of the Levites’ service, “flashes of fire,” comes from Binah. For what are Gevuros (heat and restraint) in Abba become Chasadim (kindness) in Imma, so Binah’s fiery love is the second pipe.

Here a parenthesis opens that runs to the end of the paragraph. It points to the explanation on “Sing and rejoice” (Torah Ohr, Mikeitz, on the haftarah of Shabbos Chanukah) and notes that Pardes reads the two spouts as Chochmah and Binah.

If the spouts are Chochmah and Binah, the two olives must be the sources of Chochmah and Binah: the two mazalos (channels of flow in the supernal “beard”), named “preserving [kindness]” and “and cleansing” among the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. The Midrash reads the two olive branches as Moshe and Aharon, and the text points to discourses on their levels: “And you shall command” (Torah Ohr, Tetzaveh) and “you shall count them by their hosts, you and Aharon” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar).

The text then cites the discourse “The matter of Chanukah” (Torah Ohr, Mikeitz) on Aharon’s “raising up” and “making good” of the lamps, and turns to how all this connects to accepting the yoke of Heaven in the first section of the Shema.

The connection: the first section of the Shema, from “And you shall love” to “and on your gates,” has forty-two words, matching the Name of forty-two letters in the prayer Ana Bechoach, as Pri Etz Chaim says. Forty-two is also the number of Israel’s journeys out of Egypt, and that exodus must happen every day, as a person goes out of the narrow straits (meitzar, a play on Mitzrayim) of the animal soul’s cravings.

The Shema itself ends with the Exodus. The discourse “These are the journeys” (Likkutei Torah, Masei) explains that Ana Bechoach is made of seven lines of six words each, and these seven lines are the seven lamps of the menorah.

The Name of forty-two is a power of ascent, like the wings with which the seraphim “fly.” This is “When you raise up the lamps” (plainly, “when you light the lamps”): the soul rising in “And you shall love… with all your might.” The word ve’ahavta, “and you shall love” (414), equals twice or, “light” (207): the two lights of the raising up and the making good of the lamps.

The “bowl on its head” is contemplation, which is the first verse of the Shema: “Hear” means to contemplate, and the letters of “Israel” (Yisrael) rearrange into li rosh, “a head for Me.” The oil, Chochmah, is self-nullification (bittul) that flows into Binah and Daas, the faculties of contemplation.

Thus the oil on the head, Psalms’ “good oil upon the head,” is Chochmah flowing into the mind, and this is how “wisdom gives life,” for “with You is the source of life.” The parenthesis that opened in part 3 closes here with references to the Zohar.

Section 5 offers a second reading of “wisdom gives life.” The inner dimension of Abba (Chochmah) is the inner dimension of Atik, the inner delight within Keser; compared with that delight, even the Supernal will is only the “back,” an outer side. The text points to the explanation on “And I was with Him as a nursling” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar).

The 310 worlds that the righteous will inherit (Mishnah, end of Uktzin) are drawn from thirty-one of the thirty-two paths of Chochmah, while the first path stands above them all. The source is the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, on Parshas Metzora.

That first path is the inner dimension of Abba. Sefer Yetzirah counts the thirty-two paths as the Ten Sefiros and the twenty-two letters, so the first path is the highest of the Ten Sefiros within Chochmah itself.

This first path is what Isaiah means by “No eye has seen, O G‑d, except You”: it is beyond every created vision. The thirty-two paths correspond to the thirty-two times the Name Elokim appears in the account of creation, and the text adds that for this reason the Torah is called “light.”

Because of this power in the inner dimension of Abba, which holds the Supernal delight, “wisdom gives life to its owner”: the same word, be’aleha, that section 1 read as the mitzvos is read here as the Supernal will, the “owner” of wisdom, which is given life through the revelation of the Supernal delight. The parenthesis cites the Zohar on Chukas, which expounds this verse.

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) explains “gives life” as the drawing down of chayah, the second-highest of the soul’s five levels, and Emek HaMelech likewise reads techayeh, “gives life,” as the flow of chayah: the word for “gives life” is read as “gives chayah.” The Zohar on Pinchas, also cited, calls Chochmah “the life of the King.”

Section 6: all this is then drawn down into Malchus through Z’eir Anpin, in the second section of the Shema, “And it shall be, if you listen,” the acceptance of the yoke of the mitzvos. The 248 positive mitzvos are the 248 “limbs” of the King.

As light and life flow into a limb, so that the intellect is present in the hand that writes, so 248 streams of light are drawn into the 248 mitzvos. Their root is the five Chasadim, the Name Av (72; chesed too equals 72): Pardes Rimonim (Gate 21, chapter 5), cited by the Kehot note, brings Rabbi Nechunya’s teaching that the Name of seventy-two belongs to Chesed and divides into seventy-two “bridges,” passages over the waters of Chesed. The note also points to the Ramak’s Shi’ur Komah, section 94.

That is why “with all your might” appears only in the first section of the Shema: the first section is the Name of forty-two, a movement of ascent, as in the seraphim’s wings, “with two he would cover…” (the verse ends “and with two he would fly”). The second section draws down; the first goes up.

For the same reason Ana Bechoach, the prayer that holds the Name of forty-two, is said with the Shema at bedtime, so that the soul may ascend during sleep, and also before welcoming the Shabbos. Pri Etz Chaim, to which the Kehot notes point, gives the intentions for both: at bedtime, raising the soul from world to world through the Name of forty-two, and at the welcoming of Shabbos, the Name of forty-two in the seven “voices” of Psalm 29.

Ascent must reach the level of the infinite. So each person must find in his own will something infinite, beyond his measured self; otherwise a physical act such as putting on a tallis would have no way to arouse anything above.

So too charity: reviving “the spirit of the lowly” below draws life-force down above. Below and above can connect only through “with all your might,” going beyond the limit one’s own vessel sets; this is also the meaning of “From the depths I called You.” In Tanya’s Kuntres Acharon (essay 4), cited by the Kehot note, the Alter Rebbe likewise writes that raising the arousal from below without limit is called “your might,” so as to arouse the level of Ein Sof.

Yosef “gathered all the silver,” and through it gathered Chesed (in the Kabbalah silver corresponds to Chesed). But how can money be connected to Chesed? The same question applies to Yosef as the ruler who sold grain to all the people of the land.

The answer: Yosef had been in Egypt, in the depths, and called out “from the depths.” From there one can draw down, in the second section of the Shema, the five Chasadim, the Name Av, the seventy-two bridges of Chesed.

This brings “the rain of your land,” where “your land” is Malchus, whose “feet go down” to the lowest realms. Matar (rain) recalls matronisa, the queen, which is Malchus, of whom it is said “His kingdom rules over all.” The rain comes from drawing the five Chasadim into the 248 mitzvos, where the Supernal delight is clothed; then “you will gather in your grain”: Malchus gains the power to refine what is held in kelipas nogah.