והנה פרח מטה אהרן כו׳ ויגמול שקדים

After Korach’s challenge to the priesthood, Aharon’s staff blossomed overnight and bore ripe almonds, proving that the priesthood was his. The maamar asks why the sign came as almonds; the Midrash at the end of Parshas Korach, to which it points, plays on the same words (the staff “repaid,” gamal, all who were “diligent,” shoked, for the tribe of Levi) and says almonds were chosen because Israel are likened to them. The Alter Rebbe begins instead from a fact of nature: almonds ripen faster than olives, grapes, figs and every other fruit.

The Midrash on Koheles gives the almond’s mark: only twenty-one days pass from budding to ripeness; there it is tied to Yirmiyahu’s “rod of almond” and to the twenty-one days from the seventeenth of Tammuz to the ninth of Av. This speed is the key to the whole maamar.

The Hebrew word for almond, shaked, shares its root with shoked, “hastening,” as in G‑d’s play on words to Yirmiyahu: the almond rod he saw meant that G‑d hastens to fulfill His word. The name shows the nature: the almond is speed itself, and this hints at what the priesthood brings about.

The name Aharon (אהרן) is made of the same letters as nir’eh (נראה), “is seen,” because the Kohen’s task was to bring divine light into revelation, drawing it from above to below. The verse “in Your light we see light” uses the same word, and the Alter Rebbe points to two other discourses that develop it.

Here the connection is stated: what Aharon draws down travels from the highest levels to the lowest with great speed and without holdups.

The Grace after Meals says G‑d nourishes the world “in His goodness, with grace, with kindness,” that is, from a supernal, spiritual kindness. For such lofty kindness to become physical food and livelihood, it must pass down through many levels until it “thickens” into material form.

Through Aharon, the one through whom light becomes revealed, the flow does not get stuck at any of the many stations on its way down; it passes through them quickly and reaches below. This is the speed that the almond stands for.

The Alter Rebbe adds a reference to the Ramaz, the Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, on Parshas Emor, for a similar idea about speed. He then closes the first point: the almonds on Aharon’s staff allude to this swift flow.

To explain the idea more deeply, he raises a well-known question found in Tosafos (the medieval glosses printed with the Talmud): if a person’s year is decided on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, why do we pray every day in the Shemoneh Esreh for health (“Heal us”) and livelihood (“Bless for us”)? The answer will show that there is a second, daily judgment.

What is inscribed on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur is a kindness granted to the person’s soul, but it is still “above,” in Malchus of Atzilus, the lowest Sefirah of the highest world. Malchus of Atzilus is the source from which the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah come into being; at that level the kindness is not yet physical.

The Grace after Meals speaks of “His” kindness, His very own: a supernal, divine kindness, far beyond the very nature of anything physical.

Avraham, the very embodiment of kindness, called himself “dust and ashes,” because even his great kindness and love were nothing compared with the kindness of Atzilus. In Iggeres HaKodesh 15 the Alter Rebbe brings what he heard from his teacher: Avraham said it of his own attribute of great love (ahavah rabbah), which is to the supernal kindness as ash is to the tree it came from.

So for the kindness of Atzilus to become physical bounty in Asiyah, the lowest world, the things a soul needs while it lives in a body, it must descend through the many “chambers” (heichalos) of the four worlds, one after another, until it becomes coarse enough to take physical form. Its final forms are healing the sick and blessing the year’s produce, the very things we ask for each day in the Shemoneh Esreh.

The Alter Rebbe refers to four discourses in Torah Ohr that show how a spiritual quality becomes physical by descending level after level. In “Eliyahu opened” (Vayera), on the saying that every blade of grass has a heavenly force that tells it to grow, a fruit’s sweetness comes from Chesed and its bitterness from Gevurah; in the Chanukah discourse “The mezuzah on the right” (Miketz) Shlomo’s “three thousand parables” are three thousand levels, every one only a “parable” compared with G‑dliness itself. In “Their appearance and their workings” (Yisro) “kindness to thousands” means thousands of levels, contraction after contraction, and in “Take from among you an offering” (Vayakhel) the manna, rooted in the supernal “dew of lights,” became physical food by descending from level to level.

This explains the Sages’ saying “A person is judged every day.” The daily judgment is not a new decree but a review of whether, by his conduct that day, he deserves that the kindness already granted to his soul on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur be brought down, level by level, from the spiritual into his physical life.

If he does not deserve it, the kindness is held back and remains in the spiritual realm. Even then it is not lost: since it was granted to him, it adds to his delight in Gan Eden; but nothing of it reaches him below.

A long parenthesis now opens. In the Talmud, “A person is judged every day” is the view of Rabbi Yose (Rabbi Nasan says “every hour”), while the other Sages there hold that a person is judged on Rosh HaShanah; the Alter Rebbe argues that even Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Nasan agree that the main judgment is on Rosh HaShanah.

His proofs are two verses: “For it is a statute for Israel, a judgment of the G‑d of Yaakov,” which the Talmud applies to Rosh HaShanah, and “The eyes of Havayah your G‑d are upon it from the beginning of the year,” from which the Talmud learns that the year’s judgment begins on Rosh HaShanah. No opinion could explain these verses another way.

A further proof comes from the prayers: the Malchiyos, Zichronos and Shofros (the sections of Kingship, Remembrance and Shofar in the Rosh HaShanah prayers), and the change to “the King of judgment” in the Shemoneh Esreh during the Ten Days of Teshuvah. If every day were judged equally, nothing would set these days apart.

So Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Nasan must also agree that Rosh HaShanah is the Day of Judgment. The Talmud’s teaching that a person’s sustenance is fixed from Rosh HaShanah until Yom Kippur points the same way (it appears on Beitzah 16a; the text’s reference reads 17a).

That teaching is undisputed, so it holds for every opinion; yet Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Nasan still say that a person is judged every day. The two judgments are about different things, as explained above: the yearly decree above, and the daily judgment of whether it comes down.

Likewise, even the Rabbis who disagree with Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Nasan must accept some kind of daily judgment.

The proof is that, on every view, we make all the requests of the Shemoneh Esreh every day, which would make no sense if nothing were decided daily. The Alter Rebbe leaves the exact nature of the dispute for another place.

He adds that Asarah Maamaros, the Kabbalistic work of Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano, discusses this at length, and the parenthesis closes. Returning to the main point: because each stage of descent involves judgment, the flow of kindness is delayed and lingers on its way down.

At every step from chamber to chamber the person’s case is reviewed: is he worthy for the flow to continue down? And there are accusers who argue that he sinned and does not deserve it, and this holds the flow back.

The Midrash illustrates this: when David named Shlomo as king, Benayahu answered “Amen, so may G‑d say,” although G‑d had already promised David a son who would be “a man of rest.” He prayed because many accusers could rise up between there and the Gichon spring, where Shlomo was to be anointed. (The verse itself reads “And Benayahu answered,” as the Kehot edition notes.)

The contrast follows: the flow that comes through Aharon and, after him, through his descendants the Kohanim, who raise their hands and bless the people, rushes through all the worlds with nothing to block it, and no judgment is examined at all. This is the almond’s speed: the Kohanim’s blessing passes over the review that slows other kindness.

A parallel: the Torah says that G‑d “would not listen to Bilam,” meaning He did not hear any accusation, “because He loved you.” Love sets the accuser aside.

That is why the blessing the Kohanim say before the Priestly Blessing ends “to bless His people Israel with love” (Sotah 39a): love lets the blessing pass with no accusation heard.

The verse “He sends His utterance to the earth; His word runs very swiftly” describes two ways the flow can come. “Sending” is a slow, gradual, measured descent, while “runs very swiftly” is the rapid flow described here.

The Midrash lists prayers answered after forty days (Moshe’s), after twenty days (Daniel’s), after one day (Eliyahu’s), and more, showing that answers come at different speeds. The Alter Rebbe also refers to the Torah Ohr discourse on the Purim saying “until he does not know between [cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai],” which reads the king’s “Hurry, take the garment” with the Sages’ “if they merit, I will hasten it”: a redemption hastened by Israel’s teshuvah turns the other side into a “garment” for holiness.

The Priestly Blessing itself shows this. The Midrash reads “Havayah bless you and keep you” as blessing with wealth and children and protection from harm; as a note in Sefer HaMaamarim Melukat explains, wealth and children show that the flow reaches every area of life, and protection from harm shows that it reaches very far down, even to where protection is needed.

So the Priestly Blessing draws the supernal kindness at once into physical life: children and sustenance. “Havayah make His face shine” is the shining of the divine countenance, and “and be gracious to you” carries it all the way down to the lowest level.

Having shown that the kindness drawn down through Aharon arrives quickly and without hindrance, the Alter Rebbe gives the root reason, in the Zohar’s words (quoted in Iggeres HaKodesh 10): “there is kindness and there is kindness.” One is chesed olam, “everlasting kindness”; the other is v’rav chesed, “and abundant in kindness,” a phrase from the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.

The flow through Aharon comes from “abundant in kindness.” In Likkutei Torah, Beha’aloscha, the Alter Rebbe explains that Avraham’s love is called “everlasting love” because it is drawn from the world, a service from below upward, while Aharon’s is from above downward, his whole desire being that G‑dliness be revealed below as it is above; a little further he calls the Chesed of Z’eir Anpin chesed olam and the Chesed of Arich Anpin (Keser, above the intellect) rav chesed, the source of great love (ahavah rabbah).

The text also points to the Torah Ohr discourse on “And you shall make holy garments” (Tetzaveh), which explains that everlasting kindness belongs to the ordered chain of cause and effect, while “abundant in kindness,” the level of Aharon the Kohen Gadol, is far above that chain. So it is kindness without limit, which “descends over His attributes,” in the words of the psalm about the oil running down Aharon’s beard, and no judgment at all can hold it back. In the psalm midosav is the collar of Aharon’s garments; Likkutei Torah, Korach 1, reads it as G‑d’s own attributes (middos), from which great love is drawn down through Aharon.

“Everlasting kindness,” by contrast, has a force of judgment standing opposite it that can hold it back, as with the daily judgment described above. The explanation of “The kindnesses of Havayah, for we have not ceased” to which the text refers is, the Kehot note says, Iggeres HaKodesh 10 of the Tanya, which opens with the Zohar’s “there is kindness and there is kindness”: everlasting kindness, and the higher kindness that is “abundant in kindness.”

An analogy: a very great river flows with such force that its water cannot be held back.

Smaller rivers can be held back with wood, earth and the like, so much so that people build a mill or bridges on them. This is the picture of the kindness that judgment can hold back.

A very great river is not stopped by such obstacles; it keeps flowing in its usual way and sweeps them away.

So too the flow from “abundant in kindness”: it runs down swiftly, and all the forces of judgment pass away and are nullified before it. This is why the blessing through Aharon arrives without delay.

A parenthesis connects this to Shabbos. The Zohar reads “Day to day utters (yabia) speech” as each level hastening to illuminate the next, and links yabia to mabba, the word the Targum uses for “hasten” in the verse “and the things to come upon them hasten.”

So on Shabbos too the light and the flow come down swiftly, because all judgments pass away from it; the Siddur, cited in the Kehot notes, explains that on weekdays the flow meets holdups, but on Shabbos it comes quickly. The Zohar in Parshas Shemos (15b) says that some almonds are bitter and some sweet, and that the word shaked itself hints at strict judgment, as in “Havayah hastened (vayishkod) upon the evil”; and Yirmiyahu’s words, “as I hastened over them to uproot… so will I hasten over them to build and to plant,” show that G‑d’s hastening can be for ill or for good.

Another example of divine haste is Yosef’s word to Pharaoh, “For the matter is established by G‑d, and G‑d hastens to do it”: the years of plenty came, and so did their opposite, the years of famine. For more, the Alter Rebbe refers to the book Magen David, on the letter gimmel.

The almonds of Aharon’s staff are almonds “for good,” as in the prayer “G‑d Most High, who bestows (gomel) good kindnesses,” where gomel echoes vayigmol, “it ripened.” “Good” means the light of which it is said “the light, that it was good”; and since Aharon’s name has the letters of nir’eh, his role is to bring that light down so that it is seen below.

For more on the Priestly Blessing the Alter Rebbe refers to the discourse on “Who gladdens the groom.” He also cites the Ramaz on Parshas Shelach about two kinds of flow, a passage that, according to the Kehot notes, is explained in Sefer HaMaamarim 5664.