כה תברכו את בני ישראל אמור להם יברכך…

The maamar opens with the Priestly Blessing: G‑d tells Moshe to have Aharon and his sons, the kohanim, bless Israel with three verses, “May Havayah bless you,” “May Havayah make His face shine,” and “May Havayah lift up His face.” How these three blessings follow one another is one of the questions the maamar sets out to answer.

The Talmud records the angels’ challenge: the Torah describes G‑d as One “who does not lift up the face,” that is, who shows no favor, yet the Priestly Blessing says that He lifts up His face to Israel. To “lift up the face” toward someone is the Hebrew idiom for showing him favor.

G‑d answers that Israel deserve His favor because they go beyond what the law requires. The Torah obliges Grace after Meals only when one has eaten and is satisfied, yet they bless even after eating as little as an olive’s bulk (the Talmud adds: or an egg’s bulk).

The Alter Rebbe notes that the Midrash on Parshas Nasso brings the same teaching, adding that G‑d lifts up His face to Israel because they lift up their face to Him. He then asks why this particular exactness, blessing G‑d over a small amount of food, should be what brings about the “lifting up of the face” above.

A second question is the order of the three blessings, which seem to follow no sequence. To answer both, he first explains what Grace after Meals accomplishes and why the Torah makes its obligation depend on being satisfied.

The Alter Rebbe begins with the verse of Grace after Meals, “And you shall bless es Havayah.” The small word es is spelled alef-tav, the first and last letters of the alphabet, so it stands for all the letters from alef to tav, the letters through which everything was created. The Zohar on Vayigash, which the text cites below, already stresses the word: “es Havayah, es specifically.”

The Mishnah teaches that the world was created with ten utterances. The letters of those utterances, through their combinations, substitutions and transpositions, are the life-force of every created thing, keeping it in existence and bringing it into being from nothing. In Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah (Tanya, Part II), chapter 1, the Alter Rebbe explains that if these letters withdrew for an instant, the thing they create would return to utter nothingness.

The human soul, too, is made of letters, because it comes from G‑d’s breath: the morning blessing says of the soul, “You breathed it into me,” and the Torah says that G‑d “breathed into his nostrils a soul of life.” That breath is “the breath of His mouth,” the creative speech that brings everything into being through the letters of the Ten Utterances. In Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai, the Alter Rebbe adds that Onkelos renders “a living soul” in this verse as “a speaking spirit.”

When Adam named the animals and birds, he was not merely labeling them. Each name is the combination of letters from the Ten Utterances through which that creature was created, and by calling it he drew it from concealment into revelation, so that the divine life-force in the creature would be revealed and the creature could be raised up and bound to its source. In Likkutei Torah, Matos, the Alter Rebbe refers back to this passage and compares it to a vow: by declaring a thing consecrated, a person’s mouth draws holiness into it.

Only man can do this, because he is the head of all the levels of creation: the inanimate, the vegetative and the animal. The parenthesis refers to the Midrash on Adam’s naming of the creatures, where the angels could not tell what each creature was called but Adam named every one.

This is why “by every utterance of the mouth of Havayah does man live.” The “utterance of the mouth of Havayah” within food is the letters that give it existence, which came forth from the breath of G‑d’s mouth, and these are what sustain a person.

In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation on the verse “And I will give you places to walk,” which distinguishes two levels in the letters: the letters as they have come forth from the mouth, and the letters as they are in their source. Human speech offers the analogy, and the same two levels exist in the letters of thought.

From this he clarifies the main text that follows: when the letters come “to their root and source, the mouth of Havayah itself,” they rise to the letters as they are in their source, not merely as they have come forth. He also refers to Tanya, chapters 20 and 21, which contrast human speech, felt as separate from the speaker once spoken, with G‑d’s speech, which never separates from Him.

The main sentence now resumes: the letters in food came forth to give life to man, so that through him they reach “the mouth of Havayah itself,” the single utterance that the Mishnah alludes to when it asks whether the world could not have been created with one utterance. That one utterance includes all ten, which branched out from it as particular utterances, and through man they return to it, because he is the one who draws down to them the revelation from there. In Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, the Alter Rebbe calls this one utterance “one thought,” the source of speech.

This is the inner meaning of “And you shall bless es (alef-tav)”: in blessing after food one draws down revelation from the root of all the letters, from the breath of His mouth, so that the letters in the food rise and bind with their source.

The second section asks how man gains the power for this drawing down. It comes only through his battle with his animal soul.

The Hebrew lechem, bread, shares its root with lachem, war, as in the Song of Devorah, “then [there was] war in the gates.” Eating bread is thus itself a kind of battle.

In the Zohar (Balak), a wondrous child says that whoever wants bread must eat it “upon the edge of the sword.” The Alter Rebbe identifies the sword with prayer, for “the time of prayer is the time of battle”: the battle with the animal soul is fought in prayer. In Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, two discourses open with this saying, and the second explains that this war must be waged in a person’s soul every day, in prayer.

Prayer is the sword, as the verse says, “The exaltations of G‑d are in their throat, and a double-edged sword in their hand.” This is why the Shema says first “to love Havayah your G‑d and to serve Him” and only afterward “you shall gather in your grain”: the love of G‑d in prayer must come before eating.

Ahavah, love, is related to avah, to want: love is will. To love G‑d is to want, with all one’s heart and soul, that His G‑dliness and unity be revealed in the world and in one’s own soul. The same reading appears in Torah Ohr, Miketz, and in Likkutei Torah, Masei and Va’eschanan: love is the will of the heart that Havayah be “your G‑d,” openly revealed.

This is the desire that the world be as it was before creation, when G‑d alone was present and revealed in the very place where this lowly world now stands, since there was not yet a world to hide Him, and as it will be in the seventh millennium. The Kehot notes point to the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah, where Rav Ketina says that the world will stand for six thousand years and lie desolate for one, as it says, “Havayah alone shall be exalted on that day.”

Even now, from G‑d’s side, nothing has changed: all existence is as nothing before Him, as the verse says, “I, Havayah, have not changed.”

Only from our side does the world hide and conceal Him. Hence “And you shall love Havayah your G‑d” is a longing that concerns Havayah, the Name that combines “He was, is and will be”: the unchanging One, besides Whom nothing else truly exists.

The longing is that this Havayah become “your G‑d,” actually revealed in one’s own soul and in the world.

The world should then no longer conceal Him: just as above all is as nothing before Him and there is nothing besides Him, so it should be openly revealed below, free of the concealment caused by the animal soul, whose powers are drawn after the world’s physicality, which eyes of flesh see as an independent existence. Instead one serves G‑d “with all your heart,” written levavchem with a doubled letter beis, meaning with two hearts; the notes refer to the Mishnah in Berachos, which explains it as serving with both inclinations.

Prayer is Yaakov’s ladder, “set upon the earth, and its top reaches heavenward”: it begins at the lowest rung and climbs. So the morning blessings start with simple physical matters, such as “Who opens the eyes of the blind” and “Who straightens the bent.” The Zohar and the Tikkunei Zohar, to which the Kehot notes point, also read the ladder as prayer.

Every part of prayer takes the form of blessings, “Blessed are You,” and each blessing draws the revelation of G‑dliness into the world and the soul. That is why it addresses G‑d in the second person, “You,” as though He were directly present.

The ascent in prayer must go step by step, from the lowest levels upward, until one reaches the Shema’s “And you shall love”: giving over one’s soul in the word “One” (Echad) and loving G‑d with all one’s heart. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse “My dove, in the clefts of the rock” for more on this.

The climb from below is not for the G‑dly soul’s own sake. In its root, in the source from which it was “hewn,” it rises by its very nature and is absorbed in the One who emanated it.

The soul itself needs no rectification; the need comes from the animal soul, whose powers are clothed in this world and draw all their vitality from food. Food belongs to nogah (literally “glow”), the realm in which good and evil are mixed and which can be raised to holiness; since a person’s body and animal soul live from it, he himself is bound below.

So a person must raise and bind his soul to G‑d until the sitra achra is first subdued and then transformed (the full phrase speaks of darkness turned into light). Then he serves G‑d “with all your heart” in the sense of both hearts, the G‑dly and the animal.

That is why prayer starts below and climbs like the ladder “set upon the earth” whose top reaches heaven. It rises until it reaches “One,” the word Echad of the Shema.

Through this ascent, “angels of G‑d ascend and descend on him”: the verse’s “on it,” on the ladder, is read as “on him,” on man, as the Zohar too reads it. Man is the root of all, as Yechezkel’s vision of the Chariot shows: each of the chayos, the living creatures that bear it, has the face of a lion on the right and the face of an ox on the left, yet “the likeness of their faces” is the face of a man.

“Man” is the general and collective expression of the four chayos, the one that includes them all, so when a person’s soul rises in its cleaving to the living G‑d, in “to love Havayah,” they all rise with it. Only after this love does the Shema say “and you shall gather in your grain,” read here as gathering the scattered sparks of life in minerals, plants and animals out from under the dominion of nogah into the level of man.

That is why one may not eat before praying, as the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch rule: until he has prayed, a person is himself still bound below and cannot raise anything else.

So he must first “correct himself” by reaching the level of adam, man, whose letters add up to 45, the value of mah, “what,” the word that expresses self-nullification. Only from this bittul can he rectify the lower creations; the Kehot notes refer to the opening of the introduction to Tikkunei Zohar for this gematria.

A further reason: the souls of Israel “arose in thought” before creation, as the Midrash says, so they come from the letters of thought, and their ascent goes higher still. The text refers to its explanation on the verse “And I will make your windows of kadkod,” a precious stone (Isaiah 54:12).

The lower creations, mineral, plant and animal, were made from the letters of speech, “the utterance of the mouth of Havayah” discussed above. The question is how the letters that descended into them can be raised back to their root.

This is done by man, whose soul was taken from the letters of thought, which are above the letters of speech. Therefore the ascent depends on his first rectifying himself.

As the Sages say, “Correct yourself, and only afterwards correct others.” First a person’s soul, rooted in the letters of thought, must rise into the source of the power of thought and higher still; only then can it raise the letters of speech in the world.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourses “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov” and, in Parshas Vayechi, “Binding his foal to the vine.” In the second (Torah Ohr) he explains that in exile a person cannot raise the animals of the offerings to their source, since he himself is bound below; that will come in the days of Mashiach, when the souls of Israel are raised.

The third section returns to the Priestly Blessing. A person rises through prayer because wherever his aim, desire and longing are directed, there his whole essence is absorbed; and this ascent from below is the first blessing, “May Havayah bless you.”

The blessing is an increase in the sparks that rise each day through prayer: the powers of a person’s G‑dly and animal souls, and the sparks in his food, drink and other needs, which are “renewed every morning” (the notes point to Lamentations 3:23). They rise as an arousal from below, through the intense love of the Shema and prayer. The printed text reads “angels” (מלאכים) here, evidently a transposition of the letters of “foods” (מאכלים), which the pairing with “drinks” requires.

Blessing is described, by analogy, in terms of a seed growing from the field. First the kernel is sown and lies hidden and covered in the soil.

A seed is blessed when it succeeds, sprouts and yields far more than was sown; for the phrase “a great increase over the original” the Kehot notes point to the end of the first chapter of Bereishis Rabbah. Israel are compared to such seed: “I will sow the house of Israel,” and “I will sow her for Myself in the land.”

Israel are a sowing of G‑dliness, as in “Blessed is Havayah, the G‑d of Israel”: G‑dliness is planted in them. Their souls were drawn down into the physical world and covered, as it were buried, in the animal soul and its desires for physical things.

Like a buried seed, the soul is hidden so that it can sprout with increase: the powers of the vital, animal soul also rise and are included in the “One” of the Shema.

The Sages say the same of exile: Israel were exiled only so that converts would be added to them, for exile, like sowing, is for the sake of the increase. For the same reason G‑d placed man on the earth, to draw his life-force from physical things; in Torah Ohr (Megillas Esther), to which the notes point, the Alter Rebbe explains that a person eats food that comes through nogah and with its strength gives over his soul in the Shema, so raising the divine spark in the food.

In this way the powers and life-force of all the lower creations, which give life to every living being, are included in man’s soul and spirit as they rise in the Shema and prayer. That is why a person must pray every day: each day brings new life-force to raise.

The first blessing, “May Havayah bless you,” is the arousal from below: the love awakened in prayer. “And guard you” is the protection that this love needs, so that the external forces and the sitra achra draw no nourishment from it.

Guarding the love means that once it has been aroused, a person must not take credit for it, grow proud of it, or let any other self-serving motive into it. Only one “clean of hands and pure of heart” may ascend G‑d’s mountain; the notes compare the Mishnah’s warning in Avos not to credit oneself for one’s Torah learning.

“Pure of heart” means a love with no foreign admixture at all; in Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe repeats these words and refers back to this discourse on “and guard you.” In a parenthesis he lists places in the Zohar (among them the Raaya Mehemna, the “Faithful Shepherd” section of the Zohar) and in the Midrash that explain “May Havayah bless you and guard you.”

An arousal from below calls forth an arousal from above: “if one sets his heart toward Him,” G‑d’s spirit is drawn to him, for “spirit brings spirit.” This response is the second blessing, “May Havayah make His face shine upon you,” a light that comes from above to below.

The response matches the request. A person longs for the Infinite Light to be revealed below as it is above, with nothing besides Him, and that very revelation is drawn down to him from above.

A shining face is the sign of Chochmah, as the verse says, “A man’s wisdom makes his face shine.” So “May Havayah make His face shine” means the revelation of divine Chochmah; the parenthesis adds places in the Zohar on Nasso that explain this blessing.

The word Chochmah (חכמה) divides into koach mah (כח מה), “the power of what”: it is pure self-nullification, open to the nothingness from which it comes. Its revelation is the awareness that there is nothing besides Him.

The Talmud says, “Who is wise? One who sees the nolad,” plainly one who foresees what will come of an action; here it is read as one who sees with actual sight how each thing is born, coming into being from nothing, and how all is as nothing before G‑d. By contrast, the arousal from below is “Hear, O Israel”: hearing means understanding, reached through one’s own contemplation.

But “hearing does not compare with seeing”: the sight of Chochmah comes only as a revelation from above. The saying echoes the Mechilta, where Israel at Sinai ask to see their King, since one who hears is not like one who sees. This revelation is found in the Torah, for “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah.”

The Torah is G‑d’s own wisdom above, but below it is clothed in physical subjects, such as the laws of agriculture and of the festivals, the orders Zera’im and Mo’ed of the Mishnah. That is why the Torah is likened to water, which flows from a high place to a low one, and to the rain of “I will give the rain of your land.”

Yeshayahu compares G‑d’s word to the rain and snow that come down from heaven. Through this “rain” of Torah comes “you shall gather in your grain”: the gathering in of what is below.

The purpose is that the lower world become a dwelling and an established place for G‑d, where the Infinite Light from above rests “one in One.” This is “and be gracious to you” (vichuneka), read both as grace (chen) and as encamping, resting (chaniyah), as in “Israel encamped there.”

Chaniyah, encamping, also appears in “the city where David encamped.” To be gracious in this sense is to fulfill “And I will dwell within them”: to make “a dwelling place among the lower realms,” where the Infinite Light itself rests openly below as it does above.

This is what Grace after Meals does: it draws revealed G‑dliness from above onto the new powers and life-force that a person has gained from his food. Grace after Meals has three blessings of Torah law and a fourth that is rabbinic.

Its four blessings each say “Blessed are You,” drawing a revelation into the soul and the world as though G‑d were directly present. Through this the life-force from the food is refined, separated from nogah and included in holiness, becoming a vessel and a dwelling for the Infinite Light.

The fourth section explains why satiety matters. When a person eats his fill, “bread sustains the heart of man”: the bread truly gives life to his soul.

That life-force is the very thing that is included in holiness, as the soul rises into the revelation of the Infinite Light that rests in Chochmah, koach mah. It can rise because such a full measure of life-force carries much holiness from “the utterance of the mouth of Havayah,” the source of life.

The parenthesis lists places in the Zohar on “And you shall eat and be satisfied” and on the meaning of satiety. In the first, on Parshas Vayigash, the question is why one blesses after eating, when G‑d is blessed in prayer before one eats; the answer is that the blessing over food shows satiety before the level of faith above.

It also cites the Zohar on Pharaoh’s dream, “And behold, from the river,” which speaks of the river from which all the levels below are blessed; the Zohar on “and we were satisfied with bread and were well,” with the commentary of the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) there; and the Pardes (Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero), in its section Erchei HaKinuyim, under “Ratzon” (will).

But if a person eats less than his fill, his soul takes in only a little life-force. That small amount carries only a little holiness, too little to be included in the Chochmah revealed in the soul, to be refined from nogah and to unite with holiness.

For this case the verse says, “May Havayah lift up His face”: what cannot rise by its own strength is lifted from above.

In ordinary Hebrew, to “lift up the face” is to show favor; here yisa is read literally, to raise on high. “Face” is influx given openly, while “back” is influx given with the face hidden, grudgingly, “like one who throws something over his shoulder.”

That is, G‑d raises His face, the influx, above the chain of descending worlds, to the level described as “Who is enthroned on high, Who lowers Himself to look upon heaven and earth.” From that height heaven and earth, spiritual and physical, are equal, and the verse says “Who lowers Himself” of both alike.

“To you” means that this influx from above the chain of worlds, the level of “May Havayah lift up,” is drawn openly to the person. Through it all the scattered and banished sparks of life-force are gathered “one by one.”

Even sparks whose holy life-force is the slightest amount are included and united with the supernal holiness that is the source of all life and holiness in the lower worlds. The parenthesis points to the Raaya Mehemna in Parshas Pinchas, which discusses “May Havayah lift up His face.”

The question is how an influx from above the chain of worlds can reach below at all. The verse answers: “and grant you peace.”

Peace joins two opposites, as in “He makes peace in His heights”: Michael, the prince of water, and Gavriel, the prince of fire, do not harm each other. They are joined through their self-nullification to a level far above both of them, which unites them.

To explain how “and grant you peace” comes about, the Alter Rebbe brings the Talmud’s teaching that Torah scholars increase peace in the world, from the verse “All your children shall be taught of Havayah, and great shall be the peace of your children.” He begins to explain what “taught of Havayah” means.

The bracketed note explains that limudei, “taught,” is passive. Torah scholars study the halachah because it is G‑d’s word, in self-nullification, so that each time they are receiving the teaching from G‑d, Who Himself teaches them, as in “I am Havayah, Who teaches you.”

Studied this way, the halachah is truly “the word of Havayah,” and the Mishnah itself speaks through their mouths, as in “My words that I have put in your mouth”; the notes trace this image of the Mishnah speaking to Maggid Meisharim. This brings peace, like the middle bar of the Tabernacle, which ran through all the boards from one end to the other and joined them.

That joining is the meaning of “a G‑d of knowledges,” in the plural: two kinds of knowledge, the view from above to below, in which all is as nothing before Him, and the view from below to above. It comes through Torah study in this manner of bittul, of which it is said, “And you shall not profane [My holy Name],” as explained elsewhere.

This is why the Sages say that whoever engages in Torah makes peace in the household above and in the household below. The Alter Rebbe identifies these with the higher unity, in which the world is nothing before G‑d, and the lower unity, in which G‑d is present within the world’s existence.

So “great shall be the peace of your children”: Torah scholars, talmidei chachamim (literally “students of the wise”), bring peace to both because they receive from Chochmah, koach mah, the level of self-nullification. This is the blessing “and grant you peace.”

G‑d gives a person the quality of peace, so that Torah scholars increase peace in the world through “the word of Havayah,” the halachah, and the Mishnah that speaks through them. The parenthesis points to the Midrash on Toldos and on Nasso, which speak of peace as G‑d’s gift to Israel.

The last words of the Mishnah say that the only vessel that holds blessing for Israel is peace. Peace is thus the vessel for the supernal blessing of “May Havayah lift up His face,” which is above the chain of descending worlds.

This explains the opening question. The Sages could require Grace after Meals even for less than the Torah’s measure of satiety because their authority comes from the level of “May Havayah lift up His face,” above hishtalshelus, received through peace.

The verse that closes the Priestly Blessing says, “And they shall set My Name upon the Children of Israel, and I will bless them.” G‑d’s Name rests on them when their Torah and service are “taught of Havayah,” in self-nullification.

Then comes “and I will bless them”: ani, “I,” has the same letters as ayin, “nothing,” for Chochmah “is found from ayin.” In Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar, the Alter Rebbe explains that one turns ani into ayin by setting aside one’s own existence, even in Torah study, and this draws from above into Chochmah, which is ayin. So the blessing of “I” comes from the level of “May Havayah lift up His face,” far above the chain of worlds: this is “a blessing at the beginning and a blessing at the end,” for which the notes cite the Zohar and, in Sefer HaMaamarim 5566, Sefer Yetzirah.

The blessing at the beginning, “May He bless you,” is the ascent from below to above, through prayer; the blessing at the end, “and I will bless them,” is G‑d’s own blessing from above to below. The parenthesis lists places in the Zohar that discuss “and I will bless them.”