ויקחו אליך פרה אדומה תמימה אשר אין בה…

The maamar opens with the Torah’s command about the red heifer, whose ashes, mixed with water, purified one who had become impure through contact with the dead. The Alter Rebbe will read the verse word by word, and above all its words “to you,” addressed to Moshe.

The Midrash reads the verse’s words as the kingdoms that ruled over Israel: the heifer is the exile of Egypt, which the prophet calls “a very fair heifer”; “red” is Babylon, the golden head of the statue in Nevuchadnetzar’s dream; “perfect” is Media. The “etc.” stands for the rest of the Midrash, in which “no blemish” is Greece and “no yoke” is Edom. The Midrash is the Pesikta on the red heifer (Pesikta DeRav Kahana 4:9), and the Zohar (Pekudei, 2:237a) reads the verse the same way.

The words “to you” are taken precisely: the heifer is brought to Moshe, and Moshe stands for Daas, the knowledge that binds a person to what he knows. So the verse asks a person to bring himself out of the ways of Egypt, which the maamar will later identify with bodily cravings, up to the level of Daas.

On a Shabbos shortly before Pesach the Torah’s section on the red heifer is read as Parshas Parah, so that all Israel would purify themselves in time to bring the Pesach offering in purity. The Alter Rebbe asks why no such reading was instituted before Shavuos and Sukkos, which also had offerings that required purity.

To answer, he begins with the verse that names the offering: G‑d “passed over” the houses of Israel in Egypt. Since everything is revealed before Him, He did not need to skip over anything to tell them apart, so the “passing over” must mean something deeper, which the Song of Songs explains.

The answer is that G‑d is as the Song of Songs describes the beloved: he comes leaping over mountains and skipping over hills to reach his bride, and then calls her to arise and go. Pesach, “passing over,” is this leaping, a coming that does not go step by step.

The three pilgrimage festivals correspond to three emotive attributes, and Pesach is love: the love of the Song of Songs, which is read on Pesach and opens with the bride’s plea, “Let him kiss me.” Following the Zohar (2:124b), the Congregation of Israel asks G‑d for a kiss in the sense of a cleaving of spirit to spirit, a union in which her spirit cleaves to His.

The analogy is a father who kisses his son out of the heart’s affection: the love rises from his heart as breath and comes out through his mouth.

So it is, as it were, above: every spark of G‑dliness in each Jew is to cleave, spirit to spirit, to G‑d. This cleaving comes about through the soul’s three faculties of expression: a person’s thought, speech and action are joined with the thought, speech and action of G‑d.

A person’s thought and speech are joined with G‑d’s through Torah study and prayer, and his action through charity. The bracket refers to the discourse beginning “For on this day He shall atone” in Likkutei Torah, Acharei Mos, where the Alter Rebbe pairs Torah with speech and charity with action and shows that Torah, prayer and charity all need one another (Likkutei Torah, Achrei Mot 1:13–16).

G‑d is called “Maker of heaven and earth” because His “making” is the drawing down of His flow of influence to the worlds. One who gives charity likewise bestows and acts, so his deed matches G‑d’s deed; this is the kiss for which the Congregation of Israel always asks.

What stands in the way of this union is the body, which separates the soul from G‑d and hides its love through worry over livelihood and other concerns.

The way out is the principle that Israel is redeemed only through faith, and the faith meant here is that G‑d creates something from nothing.

If a person could make a thing from nothing, that thing would be utterly nullified before its maker, since all its existence would come from him alone. In the same way, all of creation is as nothing before G‑d.

The Alter Rebbe illustrates it with human speech: a word comes from the soul, as shown by the fact that a sleeping person does not speak at all, and yet speech is not the soul itself. It is only an intermediary garment through which the soul expresses itself, and it is nullified before the soul’s own being.

G‑d’s speech is the same: the heavens were made “by the word of Havayah,” and the light of the first day came into being when He said, “Let there be light.” That light is itself only a garment, as the Psalm says that G‑d wraps Himself in light as in a garment.

Through this speech He gives life to all the worlds, higher and lower, Gan Eden and what is above it, yet all of them are nullified before Him; and since they are as nothing before Him, bringing them into being makes no change in Him: “I, Havayah, have not changed.” The Zohar’s words “before Him” (Zohar 1:11b) are read as His speech, His intermediary garment: even next to that speech the worlds are as nothing.

This is why the Oral Torah calls the Creator “the Holy One, blessed be He”: to be “holy” is to be set apart. G‑d as “holy,” set apart, is the light that encompasses all worlds, while only the level of His speech is enclothed within them.

Holding this faith, a person brings himself out of Egypt: he gives himself over with abandon, not holding back his money or anything else, beyond reason and calculation, in the spirit of Iyov’s words, “come upon me what may.” It is what a Jew declares twice every day in the Shema, when he undertakes to love G‑d “with all your soul”; but it must be meant in truth, as real self-sacrifice.

The counsel that follows is that a person bind his soul to the One G‑d through his thought, speech and action, that is, through Torah, prayer and charity, as explained above. This is teshuvah: the Gemara describes a true penitent as one who withstands the same temptation “in that same place,” and the verse “from there you will seek” teaches that the return begins from the very place where a person is, however far it is.

One who is far away should not try to climb level after level, but find a way to leave his place at once and bind himself truly on high, just as G‑d “leaps over the mountains.” Following the Sages, the mountains are the Patriarchs; the hills are read here as Chochmah and Tevunah, divine wisdom and understanding (Tevunah is the lower aspect of Binah).

G‑d’s leaping is above intellect: it does not follow the orderly chain of cause and effect. Since His greatness cannot be searched out and His understanding is beyond number, no orderly chain of steps could bring His light down to our lowly world; it must come by a leap.

The beloved’s “voice” is the drawing-down of G‑d’s light to us. It does reach us, but in the manner of leaping over the mountains, which is above intellect.

G‑d’s leap shows us how to respond: we too should give ourselves over without calculation and beyond reason and understanding. The text sends the reader to the Tanya, chapter 49, which teaches that just as G‑d set aside His infinite light for man’s sake, a person should set aside all he has, body, soul and money, to cleave to Him.

The beloved spoke “to me,” to me precisely. As the Mishnah teaches, every person must say, “For my sake the world was created,” so the call to arise is addressed to each person himself.

“Arise for yourself” (kumi lach) is read as “your stature” (komah shelach): through this leap a person reaches his own true stature. Pesach, too, is named for G‑d’s passing over, His leap beyond every step.

This is also why Parshas Parah is read before Pesach: the heifer stands for a low level. In Yechezkel’s vision of the Chariot the face of the ox is on the left, and a heifer ranks below an ox; and since the Sages teach that there is no death without sin, the impurity of death, which comes from sin, is purified by the heifer, which is itself of a low level.

Death, in this inner sense, is a fall: a screen that separates a person from his Father in Heaven. The Zohar likewise says that whoever descends from the level on which he stood is called “dead” (Zohar 3:135b), and the Midrash says that death means only lowering; the question is how a soul could come to fall so far.

The answer is that eating and drinking without Daas, like an animal, can lead a person who grows used to it to outright sin.

Such eating is fully permitted, but that freedom is safe only for one who has already gone out of Egypt, that is, out of the cravings of the body. One who is still bound up in his cravings and wants to return to G‑d needs extra fences.

This is why chametz on Pesach is forbidden even in the slightest amount, even where no taste of it can be detected: Pesach is the time of the going out of Egypt, which calls for extra care. For the same reason Parshas Parah is read before Pesach, to purify, and through this purity a person comes to the attribute of love, which is Pesach.

The verses of the red heifer are now read in the light of all this. The heifer, the low level discussed above, is burned before the kohen’s eyes until only ash remains of the four elements it was made of.

Then cedar wood and hyssop are taken: two opposite qualities, the very great and the very low, as in the verse about Shlomo’s wisdom, which reached “from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that is in the wall.”

Next comes the dipping in water, which the maamar reads as “the source of living water”: in Yirmeyahu G‑d calls Himself by that name.

And “to you” refers to Moshe, who was named for being drawn out of the water (meshitihu) and who stands for Daas; so the purification means that everything a person does be done with Daas. This is the meaning of the prophet’s promise that G‑d will sprinkle pure water upon Israel and they will be pure.