ביאור ע״פ כה תברכו כו׳

The heading names the verse the maamar explains: “Thus shall you bless the children of Israel” (Numbers 6:23), G‑d’s instruction, through Moshe, to the kohanim that introduces the Priestly Blessing. The maamar goes on to explain its three verses: “May Havayah bless you,” “May Havayah make His face shine,” and “May Havayah lift up His face.” The Kehot note records that this explanation is the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript of the discourse, printed in Sefer HaMaamarim 5566, page 235.

The maamar opens with a question on the verse “And the man gave names to all the animals” (Genesis 2:20). Part Two of the Tanya (Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, ch. 1) teaches that a creature’s Hebrew name is the combination of letters, drawn from the Ten Utterances of Creation, that gives it life; a name, then, is not a label Adam could invent. In Likkutei Torah, Behar (“You shall keep My Shabbosos”), to which the text refers, the Alter Rebbe adds that what the Zohar calls “light,” a radiance from G‑d like the sun’s light, is also called a “name.”

Here is the difficulty. If a name is a creature’s life-force, every creature already had its name from the moment it was made, and man was made last, after all the inanimate, vegetative and animal creations. The Talmud makes the same point when it says that “even a gnat preceded you” in the order of Creation.

The answer is that Adam did not give the names their existence but called them out: he drew each creature’s hidden life-force from concealment into revelation. By revealing their names he raised the creatures up.

Man belongs to the World of Tikkun (Rectification), whose mark is bittul, while the rest of creation is rooted in the World of Tohu (Chaos), whose lights did not yield to one another. By calling out the creatures’ names, Adam drew the bittul of Tikkun into them.

The Talmud tells that the donkey of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair would not eat untithed barley (Chullin 7b): it was still at the rank animals had in the six days of Creation, when Adam rectified them by naming them. The source is the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah, a collection of his teachings on Scripture, in its reasons for the mitzvos (Taamei HaMitzvos) on Parshas Eikev; the Kehot note identifies the passage “When one cuts the bread.” At the end of the Mattos discourse “And Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes,” the Alter Rebbe compares a vow, which makes a thing holy, to this naming, which raised the creatures and sanctified them in their source.

After Adam’s sin the creatures fell from that state, so now they need our blessings to raise them again. This raising is a refinement (birur): a person eats food that comes from the inanimate, vegetative and animal realms and recites a blessing over it before eating and after.

Through these blessings the food is elevated and becomes part of the person, included in the level of man. In the Emor discourse on “And the kohen shall wave them upon the bread of the first fruits,” to which the text refers, the Alter Rebbe explains why man can do this: being of Tikkun, he draws the Infinite Light into Chochmah when he says “Blessed are You, Havayah,” and through Chochmah the food, rooted in Tohu, is refined.

“And I will sow the house of Israel” and “Light is sown” describe the G‑dly soul, which comes from the Name Mah of the World of Tikkun (the Name Havayah spelled out in letters that add up to 45, the source of Tikkun). Like a seed, it is planted in a body and an animal soul in order to raise and refine the 288 sparks of holiness that fell from Tohu. It does this when the person later prays the Shema, “One” and “You shall love,” with the strength he has drawn from his food.

Each day the body’s powers are renewed by the life-force of that day’s food, so each day they need to be raised again. That is why one must pray every day.

Prayer raises them as mayin nukvin, “feminine waters”: the offering that rises from below, given with self-sacrifice when one says “One” in the Shema and in prayer. Prayer is called “a ladder” because, as the Zohar reads Yaakov’s dream, it stands on the earth and reaches heaven. The bracket that opens here lists other discourses, beginning with “Who is enthroned on high” (Torah Ohr, Mikeitz).

The bracket continues with two more places: the sowing of “And I will sow her for Me in the land” (Hosea 2:25) is developed in Torah Ohr’s discourse “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh sent out,” and “Light is sown” in the Shir HaShirim discourse “There are sixty queens.”

The first verse of the Priestly Blessing, “May Havayah bless you and guard you,” is a blessing given at the start, over this sowing and growth. It is an arousal from above: G‑d grants in advance the power for man’s service, his arousal from below, to succeed.

The second verse, “May Havayah make His face shine upon you,” is the mayin duchrin, “masculine waters”: the flow from above that answers the mayin nukvin, the offering that rises from below. It comes after man’s service, not before it.

Raising the mayin nukvin is already called a refinement, but the refinement is complete only when the answering flow of mayin duchrin comes down upon it and refines it.

This is the Zohar’s phrase “to be one in One.” The “One” of the higher unity is revealed within the “One” of the service rising from below, the lower unity, and through that revelation the mayin nukvin is lifted into the higher unity itself. The text refers to its longer discussion in Torah Ohr, Vayeshev, on Yosef’s dream of the sheaves.

A second reading reverses the direction: not only is the lower One lifted into the higher, but the higher One is itself raised by the ascent of the mayin nukvin, the lower One.

The reason is that the name “Adam,” the complete human form, applies only where male and female are joined, as the Zohar on Nasso teaches; so the higher, “male” One is not whole without the lower, “female” One, and when the two join, “then it is called One.” That is why the Congregation of Israel is called tamasi, “My perfect one”: she brings about the completeness above (in the discourse “There are sixty queens,” Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, the Alter Rebbe cites the Sages’ reading of tamasi as te’omasi, “My twin,” for through the souls of Israel Z’eir Anpin and Nukva are united). Both readings are true.

In a person’s own service, raising mayin nukvin in prayer with self-sacrifice is a longing for G‑dliness to be revealed. In prayer the revelation is not yet actually there; there is only the desire and the yearning for it.

The mayin duchrin is the revelation itself coming down, and it comes through Torah and mitzvos. The text refers to its explanation of “For as the new heavens” (Isaiah 66:22), a discourse in Torah Ohr, Bereishis.

The Grace after Meals belongs to this second stage, the flow from above that follows the eating. In “And you shall bless es Havayah your G‑d,” es is the small word that marks the object of the verb, spelled alef–tav; the Zohar dwells on it, and the text explains that es is a name for Malchus.

Pri Etz Chaim (the Arizal’s teachings on the prayers and mitzvos), at the end of Shaar HaShabbos, says that the four blessings of the Grace after Meals correspond to the four mochin of Nukva: Chochmah, Binah, Chesed and Gevurah. Through these blessings intellect is drawn down to her from the Infinite Light, and this is the downward flow that follows the raising of mayin nukvin.

That is why the Torah requires three blessings: in essence there are three mochin, Chochmah, Binah and Daas. Daas, though, divides into two, the five Chasadim and the five Gevuros, which the Idra Zuta (the Zohar’s account of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s last teaching) calls “two crowns, the crown of Chesed and the crown of Gevurah.”

The Gevuros extend mainly to Nukva, the feminine counterpart of Z’eir Anpin, as Etz Chaim, the Arizal’s main work, teaches in several places. The text names Sha’ar 25 there, in its principles of Chesed and Gevurah, section 17.

Torah law corresponds to Z’eir Anpin and the Written Torah, so it needs only three blessings, drawing down the three mochin. The Sages’ law is the Oral Torah, which the Tikkunei Zohar calls Malchus, and they added a fourth blessing, which reveals the crown of Gevurah within Nukva.

The bracket adds further sources. The Zohar on Vaeschanan speaks of three brains (mochin) hidden in the skull of Z’eir Anpin, which, with the flow from Atik, become four; these four spread through the whole body, and they are the four compartments of the head-tefillin.

There, on the next side, the Zohar speaks of the letter shin of three heads and of four heads, the two shins of the head-tefillin. The division of Daas into Chesed and Gevurah is also explained in Torah Ohr’s explanation of “Remember what Amalek did to you” (Parshas Zachor).

Pri Etz Chaim mentions this in several places: on the four cups and the three matzos of the Seder (Shaar Chag HaMatzos, end of chapter 3), in Sha’ar Yud, chapter 6, on the Priestly Blessing, and in Shaar HaTefillin. The same pattern of three and four appears in the matzos and cups and in the shins of the tefillin.

The mayin duchrin have their root in Abba, which is Chochmah: from there they come into Z’eir Anpin, for it is specifically through Chochmah that things are refined. From Z’eir Anpin the flow passes on to Nukva and refines her mayin nukvin.

That is why the blessing of mayin duchrin speaks of G‑d’s face shining: the light of the face is Chochmah, as the verse says, “A man’s wisdom makes his face shine.”

Section 2 turns to the third verse, “May Havayah lift up His face.” Once the mayin nukvin and mayin duchrin have joined, G‑d lifts them both to a source higher than either. The Raaya Mehemna (“the Faithful Shepherd,” the part of the Zohar in which Moshe explains the mitzvos) reads the eagle that “bears him on its pinions” with the same verb as “May Havayah lift up (yisa) His face,” and the text refers to its discussion of that verse in the discourse “As an eagle stirs up.”

The third verse of the Priestly Blessing is the subject of a Talmudic exchange. The ministering angels asked how G‑d can “lift up the face” to Israel when the Torah says He shows no favor, and He answered: I wrote that they must bless after they eat and are satisfied, yet they are exacting with themselves and bless for as little as an olive’s bulk or an egg’s bulk.

To explain this, the Alter Rebbe first introduces the measuring line (kav hamiddah), which the Zohar calls the botzina dekardinusa, the “lamp of darkness.” It is the hidden Chochmah, in which the Gevurah of Atik Yomin (“the Ancient of Days,” the inner level of Keser) is enclothed; these five Gevuros are the power of measure, as in “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand.” The Tanya (Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, ch. 4), to which the Kehot note points, traces the five Gevuros that divide breath and voice into the letters of speech to this same botzina dekardinusa.

This power sets the limit and measure of every flow of light and of every vessel. Chochmah is a power of contraction in this sense: it defines a thing so that it is exactly so, as wisdom requires, and not otherwise.

The bracket lists other places on the measuring line: Torah Ohr’s explanation of “the mezuzah on the right and the Chanukah lamp on the left” (Mikeitz), which explains that the form and shape of every creature come from Chochmah, whose root is the botzina dekardinusa; the Bamidbar discourse on “When Israel put ‘we will do’ before ‘we will hear’”; and two passages of the Zohar. It also cites the explanation of the twenty-eight cubits in the Shir HaShirim discourse “You have captured my heart”: each curtain of the Mishkan was twenty-eight cubits long, and there the cubit that measures “up to here Chesed, up to here Gevurah” is the measuring line.

The same measuring line also fixes how much is refined in every exchange of mayin nukvin and mayin duchrin. The Raaya Mehemna at the start of Ki Sisa, on the half-shekel, says, “A stone to weigh with: this is yud”; the Kehot note identifies the “elsewhere” that explains it as the Mitteler Rebbe’s Biurei HaZohar (53d).

The point is explained further in the explanation of the words of Baruch She’amar, the blessing that opens the morning psalms of praise (Pesukei DeZimrah), on “Blessed is He who says and does; blessed is He who decrees and fulfills.” The Kehot note locates it in the Siddur with Chassidic discourses (Siddur im Dach), 40c.

The measuring line is also the source of the exact measures in the laws of each mitzvah: the strings of tzitzis twelve thumb-breadths long, the tefillin two finger-breadths and exactly square. Such precision comes from Gevurah and the contraction of the measuring line. The Kehot note gives the halachic sources: the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 11:4) for the tzitzis, and the Tur (Orach Chaim 32), in the name of the Shimusha Rabba, for the tefillin.

The text refers to Iggeres HaKodesh, the Alter Rebbe’s letters printed as the fourth part of the Tanya, epistle 10 (as the Kehot note says), which explains that the light drawn down through the mitzvos is first enclothed in G‑d’s Gevurah so that it can be clothed in physical deeds, and that is why most mitzvos have exact measures, these of tzitzis and tefillin among them. It also refers to Torah Ohr’s discourse “And it came to pass, when Pharaoh sent out” (Beshalach) on “Longer than the earth is its measure,” where middah ends with a hei marked by a mappik: “its measure,” so that the Torah has a measure, though a very long one.

That measure comes from the hidden Chochmah, the measuring line, which is why Chochmah is sometimes called judgment (din), as Etz Chaim teaches (the Kehot note gives Sha’ar Abba v’Imma, chapter 6). In Likkutei Torah, Re’eh, the Alter Rebbe explains that it is called so because the supernal Gevurah of Atik, enclothed in the hidden Chochmah, lets the Infinite Light be revealed only in proportion to bittul.

Now the Talmud’s answer can be explained. The Torah obliges Grace after Meals only when a person has eaten and been satisfied; when he eats less than a satisfying amount physically, the spiritual element in the food is also less than the required measure.

That spiritual element is the good hidden in the food, from the 288 sparks of Tohu. When there is too little of it, its ascent as mayin nukvin is too small to call down the abundant flow of mayin duchrin.

The Zohar says, “Blessing does not rest on an empty place.” A small meal is not truly empty, since some sparks do rise, but they are not enough for the flow from above to come down upon them.

The bracket explains why: the mayin duchrin come down only when the rising mayin nukvin form a vessel that can hold the blessing. In the psalm said three times a day (Ashrei), “The eyes of all look hopefully to You” is the raising of mayin nukvin.

“You open Your hand” is the answering flow of mayin duchrin; the text reads yadecha, “Your hand,” as yudecha, “Your yuds.” The flow “satisfies every living thing” with what it desires, filling the recipient’s longing and quenching his thirst; where the mayin nukvin fall short of the proper measure, the mayin duchrin do not come down.

This is why, by Torah law, there is no obligation of Grace after Meals for less than a satisfying amount. Such a meal does not draw down the mayin duchrin, the flow that the psalm calls “satisfying every living thing.”

All these measures follow the measuring line. That the mayin duchrin come down even when the mayin nukvin rise from less than a satisfying meal is what the verse means by “May Havayah lift up His face.”

“His face” was explained above as the higher Chochmah, which is rooted in the hidden Chochmah. To “lift up” the face is to raise it to a level above even the hidden Chochmah.

That level is the inner dimension of Arich Anpin, the configuration of Keser: the “Keser within Keser,” higher than the hidden Chochmah, which is the Chochmah within Keser. Chochmah is judgment and the measuring line, and it is where Atzilus begins, as the Kehot note points out from Etz Chaim (Sha’ar 47, chapter 1).

But the essence of the Infinite Light is beyond all measure. Of it the psalm says, “Who is enthroned on high, Who looks down low upon heaven and earth”: for Him the highest world, Atzilus, and the lowest, Asiyah, are entirely equal.

Because it is above all measure, it is from there that the “lowering” comes: the flow of mayin duchrin descends even upon the small rising of a meal below satiety. Even the little is gathered up, “one by one,” in the prophet’s words.

“May Havayah lift up His face” means that G‑d raises the light of Abba, the higher Chochmah, higher and higher into the Infinite Light itself. There no distinction of “face” and “back” applies at all.

From there “Havayah commands the blessing,” in the psalm’s words, and the mayin duchrin flow down. Then “He satisfies every living thing” with ratzon, read here as the supernal will.

This happens even when what rises is less than the measuring line requires. That is the meaning of the Talmud’s “How shall I not lift up the face to Israel,” when they are exacting with themselves down to an olive’s bulk or an egg’s bulk.

Israel can draw down from so high because the Congregation of Israel is Malchus of Atzilus, the last of the Sefiros, and in the words of Sefer Yetzirah, “their end is wedged in their beginning.” The lowest level is bound to the highest, so Israel can draw from Keser, above Chochmah.

The Talmud tells that the Congregation of Israel said to G‑d, “The words of Your beloved ones are more pleasing to me than the wine of Torah”: what comes from the Sages, the words of the Scribes, reaches higher than the Torah’s own measure. In Likkutei Torah, Masei, the Alter Rebbe reads alai, “to me” (literally “upon me”), as the encompassing level above, which is why the blessings over the mitzvos are Rabbinic. Even so, the Sages also set a measure for the Grace after Meals, an olive’s bulk or an egg’s bulk.

They set a measure because even this supernal flow, which is above the chain of worlds and above the measuring line, must pass through the measuring line on its way down.

The world can receive only through the measuring line: there must be lights and vessels, a light fitted to a vessel that can hold it, for otherwise it could not receive the flow at all.

So there must be a measure in what rises from below. Yet a small amount, an olive’s bulk or an egg’s bulk, is enough for the little to hold the blessing as well as the much, because Israel drew the root of this supernal flow from above the chain of worlds.

The text now explains why the olive is the measure. The Torah praises the Land of Israel as “a land of olive oil,” and the Sages read this as “a land most of whose measures are olive-sized”; the Raaya Mehemna, in Pinchas and in Eikev, gives the inner meaning.

The olive is the yud, the first letter of the Name Havayah. It is also Yesod, called Tzaddik, which draws the drop from the higher Chochmah, the “beaten oil”; that drop, and the Ateres, the crown, are also the yud.

The Biurei HaZohar (Chassidic explanations of the Zohar) on Parshas Acharei, on G‑d’s words in the Talmud, “Bring an atonement for Me” for having made the moon smaller, explains that the yud of the Name Havayah is not a complete contraction. It contracts only in the sense of the Talmud’s advice, “A person should always teach his student in a concise way”: brief, yet holding everything.

So the Mishnah stands to the Gemara: concise, yet containing it. And the Midrash reads Yitzchak’s blessing, “of the fatness of the earth,” as the Mishnah.

Oil works the same way: it can be drawn from anything, and the whole bulk of the liquid is concentrated in the little oil drawn out of it; that is why the drop from which a child grows is also called oil, for the drop contains the whole child. The Kehot note traces the idea that oil can be drawn from anything to the Pardes (of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero) and other books, and Torah Ohr’s explanation of “Who is enthroned on high” (Mikeitz) gives the reason: all things were made with Chochmah, and Chochmah, enclothed in them, is their oil.

That is why the olive is called “the oil of yud,” and why the measure for eating became the olive’s bulk: the Sages found in it a small measure that nevertheless contains a great deal.

This is the quality of the yud of the Name described above. So this mighty flow from above can come even when a person eats only a little, an olive’s bulk.

The flow itself comes through a contraction into the yud, a single point. But that point holds a great deal within it.

Still, to awaken this level a person must contract himself as well. The discourse on “And Havayah your G‑d was not willing to listen to Bilam,” in Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, explains that the yud in the soul is Chochmah, a contraction into a single point, and that it is drawn down when a person contracts himself and sets aside his own will, “nullify your will.”

So the Midrash on Tetzaveh asks why Israel are likened to an olive. Just as the olive gives its oil only when it is beaten and pressed, Israel in distress return to G‑d, as the verse says, “When you are in distress… you will return.”

Jeremiah’s “A leafy olive tree, fair with goodly fruit” alludes to the drawing down of the 375 lights from the level of “May Havayah lift up His face,” which come because Israel are exacting with themselves down to an olive’s bulk. The shining of the face depends on Yesod, called Tzaddik.

In the Talmud “the glory of the face” is the beard, which a eunuch lacks (Yevamos 80b; Bava Metzia 84a): without Yesod the face does not shine. The text adds references to Me’orei Or, an alphabetical dictionary of Kabbalistic terms, to the Tikkunei Zohar, and to its discourse on Zechariah’s vision of the golden menorah with two olive trees beside it; there, in Likkutei Torah, Beha’alosecha, the Alter Rebbe explains that olives give their oil only when crushed, so a person needs a “crushing” of the soul, and that the two olives, right and left, are love and awe.

The same idea, a supernal flow from above the measuring line, is explained in Likkutei Torah, Tazria, in the discourse on “The barren one shall surely rejoice,” words of the wedding blessings: by the measuring line the flow from above answers the service below in proportion, but the joy of a mitzvah awakens a supernal joy in which the light comes beyond the order of descent, as a king in his joy shows himself to small and great alike. It is also explained in Torah Ohr’s explanation of “Who is enthroned on high” (Mikeitz).

Elsewhere, however, it is explained that even this supernal blessing comes through the measuring line, for from there too come the blessing and the added revelation beyond the ordinary order of the worlds. Torah Ohr’s discourse on “See, the fragrance of my son” (Toldos), on Yitzchak’s blessing of Yaakov, says the same.

The Torah Ohr discourse on “See, the fragrance of my son” explains that for a great light to shine, it must come specifically through Yitzchak, the root of the Gevuros, who is the measuring line.

The Alter Rebbe suggests that both explanations mean the same, as explained here: the flow is rooted above the measuring line but must pass through it. That is why Yaakov’s blessing came specifically through Yitzchak, and even then without Yitzchak’s knowledge.

The Alter Rebbe leaves the matter open for further thought and points ahead. This also explains “Longer than the earth is its measure”: there is a measure, but a very long one, and that is the supernal blessing within the measuring line.

The same idea explains the Midrash on “The voice of my beloved, behold, he comes.” When Israel in Egypt objected that the four hundred years foretold to Avraham had not yet passed, Moshe answered that since G‑d desires their redemption, He does not look at the reckonings.

By the measuring line, the exile in Egypt had to last four hundred years, as G‑d told Avraham. But the redemption was drawn from above the order of the worlds, so G‑d did not look at that reckoning.

This is the “leaping” of the verse, “leaping over the mountains”: a flow from above the chain of worlds, which leapt over the end of the exile from four hundred years to two hundred and ten. The text writes 210 as רד״ו, which spells redu, “go down,” Yaakov’s word to his sons (Genesis 42:2), in which Rashi finds a hint of the two hundred and ten years in Egypt. Yet because the flow passes through the measuring line, some reckoning still had to be kept.

The Midrash ends with the same point, about the final redemption that King Mashiach will announce. When Israel ask how they can be redeemed, since the Holy One, blessed be He, swore to subjugate them among the seventy nations, he answers that when one of them is exiled to Barbary, a distant land, it is as though all of them had been exiled.

The little counts in place of the much, just as an olive’s bulk counts in place of a satisfying meal. This is possible only because the flow is rooted above the order of the worlds, even as it passes through the measuring line.

The three verses of the blessing, “May He bless you,” “May He make shine” and “May He lift up,” correspond to three levels of arousal from above explained in the discourse “The barren one shall surely rejoice” (Likkutei Torah, Tazria).

The first is an arousal from above that awakens the arousal from below: the blessing given at the beginning, “May He bless you.”

The second is an arousal from above that answers the arousal from below: “May He make shine.” The third is an arousal from above that in essence transcends anything from below: “May He lift up,” together with “and I will bless them,” the blessing at the end.

For more on the Priestly Blessing the text points to two discourses. In Likkutei Torah, Tzav (“Who gladdens the groom”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the Priestly Blessing is an arousal from above with no arousal from below, and that “May Havayah lift up (yisa) His face” means raising to where no arousal from below reaches; in Likkutei Torah, Korach (“Behold, the staff of Aharon had blossomed”), that the flow drawn through Aharon and the kohanim comes down through all the worlds swiftly, like the almond, which ripens fastest of all fruits.

Section 3 turns to the last words of the blessing, “And may He grant you peace.” The power to draw from above the chain of worlds is given through peace, for, as the Mishnah says, peace is the vessel that holds blessing.

Because peace is such a vessel, it receives the supernal blessing from above the chain of worlds. Through it even the little holds the blessing as well as the much.

“And may He grant you peace” comes through the study of Torah, as Isaiah says: “All your children shall be taught by Havayah, and great shall be the peace of your children.”

The Talmud teaches that whoever engages in Torah makes peace in the household above and in the household below. The Alter Rebbe explains: peace is the intermediary that joins two opposites, which among the Sefiros is the middle line of Daas, Tiferes and Yesod.

Daas is the chief intermediary, for at the highest level it joins Chochmah and Binah, and their union is the “peace in the household above.”

The two it joins are opposites: Chochmah is ayin, “nothingness,” a flash of insight that is not yet a defined thing, while Binah is yesh, “something,” the insight grasped and developed.

The higher Daas joins and unites the two, so that the bittul of Chochmah is present even in the yesh of Binah; that is the peace in the household above. In the explanation of “Nasso” (Likkutei Torah, Nasso), the Alter Rebbe reads Leah’s words at Levi’s birth, “This time my husband will be joined (yilaveh) to me,” the same way: the root of Levi is Daas, which joins Chochmah and Binah so that they never part.

The same holds lower down. The union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva is, in general terms, the joining of Atzilus with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, which are also ayin and yesh; but in those worlds the yesh is truly a separate existence.

Here union means that the light of Atzilus shines into Beriah, so that the lower worlds too have bittul as Atzilus does. This comes through the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva in Atzilus, which draws into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah and their Heichalos, the chambers of those worlds, a union like the one in Atzilus.

The Infinite Light is drawn to the lower worlds as well, so that they too have bittul and inclusion. This is the “peace in the household below.”

This lower peace too comes through Daas, as it extends into the emotive attributes. That is why Scripture speaks of “a G‑d of de’os,” in the plural: there are two levels of Daas, one that joins Chochmah and Binah and one that spreads into the middos. Daas can do this because its root is higher than Chochmah and Binah.

Daas is rooted in the avira, the “air” above the kruma, the “membrane” that covers the hidden brain of Arich Anpin; there the Daas of Atik is hidden. In the Mattos discourse “Arm from among you,” to which the text refers, the Alter Rebbe explains that the cure for attributes that stand apart like fire and water is inclusion, through Chochmah entering the middos, as when the mind rules the heart.

The parenthesis cites the Zohar HaRakia, a Kabbalistic commentary on the Zohar, on Terumah: Chochmah, Binah and Daas are rooted in the three heads of Atika Kadisha, and Daas in the highest of them, the Reisha deLo Isyada, “the head that is not known.”

That is why Daas is a vessel that holds blessing from above the measuring line.

The measuring line is the hidden Chochmah, as the Arizal explains the words of the Sifra DiTzniusa, the Zohar’s “Book of Concealment”: “This scale hangs in a place that is not.” The scale is the hidden Chochmah, which hangs on Atik, called ayin, the place “that is not”; the scale is not Atik itself, it only hangs from it.

Daas, though, draws from the true ayin, the avira above the membrane and the hidden brain. So what Daas draws down comes from above the measuring line.

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a seventeenth-century Kabbalist, in his commentary on the Zohar), at the beginning of Korach, reads “More desirable than gold, than much fine gold” as what is above the Chochmah and Binah of Arich Anpin. That too is above the measuring line.

This is why the verse says, “And they shall place My Name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” The word ani, “I,” has the same letters as ayin, “nothingness,” and this blessing is drawn from that very level.

In general, ayin is Keser, which is above Chochmah. The text refers to its explanation in the Behar discourse “You shall keep My Shabbosos.”

This explains the blessing at the beginning and the blessing at the end. The first verse, “May He bless you,” is the blessing on the growth, the raising of mayin nukvin from below.

That growth belongs to Malchus of Atzilus, as Ezekiel says of Israel, “I made you a myriad, like the growth of the field.” Growth is or chozer, “returning light,” which rises from below to above.

Because “their end is wedged in their beginning,” Malchus’s rising reaches all the way to Keser. Then comes the blessing at the end, “and I will bless them,” from Keser, as or yashar, “direct light,” coming down from above.

Now one can see why the blessing before eating has no minimum amount. It is an arousal from above that wakes the arousal from below, like waking a sleeping person, and since it comes entirely before any service from below, a minimum does not apply.

The blessing after eating is an arousal from above that comes in response to the arousal from below, so it needs a minimum: by Torah law, a satisfying meal. Israel were exacting with themselves to draw it down even for an olive’s bulk, and that comes from the level of “and I will bless them.”

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) on Eikev cites earlier authorities: the letters of sevarchu, “you shall bless,” rearranged, spell bechisro, “in His crown.” This hints that the blessing brings the light down from Keser to Malchus, called koh, “thus,” and from there it rests on Israel, who are rooted in Malchus.

The maamar closes with further references: the Zohar on Terumah with the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar by Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo, and the Midrash on Lech Lecha, which asks how Israel merited the Priestly Blessing and links its “thus” to the “thus” said to the Patriarchs.