ביאור ע״פ ועתה יגדל הנ״ל

The heading says this is a further explanation of a verse already discussed above: “And now, I pray, let the power of Ado-nai be great, as You have spoken, saying.” The discourse before this one in Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach (the third), opens with that verse, which Moshe said when he pleaded for the people after the report of the spies.

The two phrases “with all your soul” and “with all your might” are tied to two kinds of beings, “those who stand” and “walkers.” “Those who stand” receive G‑dly light only as it is enclothed in the vessels of their own world, so each world grasps it in its own measure, Beriah in one way and Yetzirah in another. This is because that light comes from Malchus of memalei kol almin, the light that enters each world and is fitted to its capacity.

The souls of Israel in this world are “walkers,” because here there shines a light too great to enter any vessel: sovev kol almin, the light that encompasses the worlds. It corresponds to “with all your might,” a love without limit, and to “beneath are the arms of the world,” the divine power that reaches down below everything. That is why all the work of refinement (birurim) belongs specifically to now, to life in this world: “today, to do them.”

Because sovev kol almin is revealed here, a thing can be changed in its very nature, from one essence to another, as when darkness itself is turned into light. The discourse above (Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach 3:15) explained that this is possible “now,” “today, to do them,” when a person has the choice to turn his heart to good, and that this is where sovev kol almin rests; this power to move from one state to a wholly different one is what makes the souls “walkers.”

In the higher worlds there is no such transformation: each thing remains as it is. The text sends the reader to its discourse in Parshas Bechukosai, “It is explained in Etz Chaim” (Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai 2:37), where the Alter Rebbe explains, from Etz Chaim, that the intellectual soul joins the G‑dly soul with the animal soul to carry out refinements, and that each person is given seventy years to refine in his measure, so that even “our iniquities” are turned around.

The full revelation of sovev kol almin, which now shines in this world in a hidden way, will come in the Time to Come, called “rest for the life of the worlds.” The text reads “the life of the worlds” as Malchus, which gives the worlds their life-force, and says that it will then be raised to a state of rest. Now, by contrast, it goes through ascents and descents, which differ between Shabbos, Yom Tov and Yom Kippur.

The maamar turns to Torah and mitzvos and begins with the mitzvos: they are “garments” for the soul, and garments are encompassing lights (makifim), which surround a thing rather than enter it. To show how such an encompassing light is formed, it quotes the morning blessing before the Shema, which calls G‑d “Master of our strength, Rock of our stronghold.”

Malchus of Atzilus, the lowest level of the highest world, becomes the Atik of Beriah: the hidden, innermost level that crowns the world below it; and the same holds for Yetzirah. That is why it is called “Rock”: like a rock that shelters from the rain, it covers the lower world from above, as an encompassing light.

The same pattern repeats inside Atzilus, which has its own Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah: Abba and Imma are its Beriah, Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes its Yetzirah, and Netzach, Hod and Yesod its Asiyah. Over these too stand encompassing lights, formed from Malchus of the Infinite One, also called Malchus of Adam Kadmon (the primordial level above all the worlds), and they become Atik.

The name Atik is read as “removed” (ne’etak): the Atik Yomin of Daniel’s vision, plainly “the Ancient of Days,” is the level removed from the “days” (yomin), the middos, and exalted above them, as the same root is used in “Who removes mountains.” The morning prayer’s “Who is uplifted from the days of the world,” plainly “exalted since days of old,” is read here as uplifted above the “days,” the middos, as Eliyahu says of G‑d in the Tikkunei Zohar, “not of any of these middos at all.”

Corresponding to these three encompassing levels there are three kinds of mitzvos: those that depend on thought, such as the love of G‑d (“And you shall love”), those that depend on speech, and, as the “etc.” implies, those that depend on action.

The Zohar’s saying “the Torah issues from Chochmah” is made precise: from the hidden Chochmah, the Chochmah of Arich Anpin (the outer level of Keser). In the Kabbalistic image of a head, the Torah comes from the “hairs” of this hidden Chochmah, in which the Gevurah of Atik is enclothed, while the mitzvos come from the Gulgalta, the skull of Arich Anpin, the Keser within Keser, in which the Chesed of Atik is enclothed and which is called “whiteness.” From there come the “paths of Havayah.”

A path through a field is a strip left open, and so these “paths” are places on the head that are clear of hair. They are the thirteen paths that branch out from there into Z’eir Anpin.

The Zohar speaks of one path that divides into the 613 precepts of the Torah and cites “All the paths of Havayah are kindness and truth.” So the mitzvos come from the open “white” paths of Chesed, while the hairs are contractions brought about by the five Gevuros, the source of judgment and limitation.

The maamar now explains why the Torah is from Chochmah and the mitzvos from the higher Gulgalta. The Torah as a whole explains and spells out the mitzvos: on tzitzis, for example, the Oral Torah has a whole chapter of tractate Menachos, the chapter “HaTecheiles.”

Shabbos, with its command and its prohibitions, fills an entire tractate. It is the Torah’s wisdom within each mitzvah that defines and narrows it, so that it must be done in exactly this way and no other.

The mitzvah itself, as the written Torah states it, carries no proof that it must take exactly this form. Correspondingly above, the Gulgalta, called the “620 pillars of light” (620 is the numerical value of כתר, Keser, and the number of the mitzvos: 613 of the Torah and seven of the Sages), is the drawing-down of G‑dliness into a mitzvah such as tefillin.

That drawing-down is simple will, with no reason behind it. Only afterwards, in the hidden Chochmah, the “brain” (Mocha), comes the wisdom of the mitzvos, and that wisdom narrows the will so that the mitzvah must be done in exactly this way.

Because the Torah is wisdom, every person can grasp it, though at very different depths. The distance between the understanding of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and ours is an example.

At whatever level, the Torah can be understood, because its root is the Mocha, which is Chochmah. The mitzvos themselves, which come from the will above wisdom, cannot be grasped at all: they are chukim, decrees beyond reason.

The maamar turns to Moshe’s request. When G‑d threatened to destroy the people after the report of the spies, Moshe prayed, “And now, I pray, let the power of Ado-nai be great, as You have spoken, saying: Havayah is slow to anger…”, and the maamar will explain these words in terms of Torah and mitzvos.

Man was placed in Gan Eden “to work it and to guard it”: to draw into Gan Eden a revelation of G‑dliness that the created beings there can grasp, as the Sages describe the righteous who “sit … and delight” in the radiance of the Shechinah. The discourse above (Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach 3:11) says the same: it is man who draws the radiance of the Shechinah into Gan Eden.

This drawing-down comes through the Torah, which is called “strength” (oz): its root is the hidden Chochmah, from which the middos flow, and so through it G‑dliness is revealed in Gan Eden. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (“In the third month”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the Torah is called “strength” because it gives the G‑dly soul strength to prevail over the body and the animal soul; in Iggeres HaKodesh (epistle 1), on “She girds with strength,” that “there is no strength but Torah,” which issues from Chochmah but is rooted in the supernal will above it. The parenthesis also points to the Ramaz on Parshas Emor.

Here is how this comes about. Malchus of Atzilus becomes Atik, the hidden source, for Beriah: what is “speech” in Atzilus becomes, as it were, “thought” for the world below; and the verse “And G‑d spoke (vayedaber) all these words, saying (lemor)” uses two words for this: dibbur, open speech, and amirah, an inward “saying,” speech that has become hidden, which is what is called Atik. In the discourse above (Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach 3:10) the Alter Rebbe compares this to a teacher’s spoken words, which become thought in the student.

There is an Atik in Beriah as well, as is known from the mystical intentions (kavanos) of Baruch She’amar, the blessing that opens the morning Verses of Praise: it comes before the Shemoneh Esreh, yet it is the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, those of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The Thirteen Attributes said after the Shemoneh Esreh, beginning “And Havayah passed,” are those of Atzilus.

From the Thirteen Attributes of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah the light is drawn into Gan Eden, and this comes through the Torah, which turns “speech” (dibbur) into “saying” (amirah).

Moshe’s request is now explained in full. Through the Torah, divine speech becomes “saying,” the drawing-down into Gan Eden described above; through the mitzvos, “the power of Ado-nai” is made great. The one verse asks for both.

Ado-nai is the Name of Malchus, sovereignty, as in the Talmud’s rule “the law of the kingdom is law,” and the mitzvos, the decrees of the King, are drawn from it; yet their root is in the Gulgalta. When someone throws a stone, the power hidden in his hand shows itself in the stone’s rising; so Moshe asked that the power behind Ado-nai, which is in the Keser of Arich Anpin, be revealed. The discourse above (Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach 3:10) uses the same image and says that Moshe asked for this power to reach so far down that even what had fallen very low, through the sin of the spies, would be lifted.

There are two aspects in the mitzvos. The first is the mitzvah’s own effect: through the esrog or the shofar a union is made above; but since that has a reason, it is not yet service in the full sense, just as taking a remedy or a segulah (something that works by its own hidden property) is not.

The second aspect of the mitzvos is “the command of the King,” done without any reason. Even if no union were brought about above, one would still do it, just as one would carry out a king’s order to chop wood, an act with nothing in it to understand. The Kehot note, citing Likkutei Sichos (vol. 15, p. 312), stresses that “without reason” means not only beyond our grasp but a will that has no reason at all, not even a hidden one.

That is why it is called the King’s command: one looks for no reason at all and simply accepts the yoke (kabbalas ol).

The ground for this: in His own essence G‑d is “exalted alone,” above any relation to the worlds, and this is the level of the Gulgalta, the “skull” that covers over the “brain”: the will that stands above wisdom. What chiefly connects Him with created beings is that He is their King, as in the words of the morning prayer, “the King Who is exalted alone.”

It follows that this level can be drawn down only through accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, the bond between a people and its King. And it is precisely this acceptance that also brings about the union above.

The Sages’ rule that “mitzvos require intention” is read here as the intention of accepting the yoke: doing the mitzvah because it is the King’s command. This leads back to “the power of Ado-nai,” for there are two levels: Ado-nai itself, and the “power” of Ado-nai.

Ado-nai is the Malchus of Atzilus, and its “power” is the Malchus of the Infinite One. On the verse “If You keep account of iniquities, Yah, Ado-nai, who will stand?” the Zohar notes a difficulty: if the sins reach as high as the Name Yah, which is Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah), how can Ado-nai, a much lower level, help?

The answer is that the Ado-nai of this verse is not the ordinary Malchus but the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah, above Atzilus. That is why it is joined to “who” (Mi), a word that points to what is hidden and beyond grasp: “Ado-nai Mi” names this one hidden level.

This is the sense of the next verse, “For with You is forgiveness, so that You may be held in awe”: forgiveness comes from the well-known “ten depths,” the ten Sefiros as Sefer Yetzirah describes them, each a “depth” without end (the psalm itself opens, “Out of the depths I called You”). Moshe asked that this higher Ado-nai, the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah, be drawn down and made great within the Ado-nai of Atzilus.

A long parenthesis now gathers related sources. The Zohar on Parshas Balak finds three levels of mercy in the verse: if sins rise as high as Abba and Imma, there is Ado-nai, and if even that is closed, there is “Mi” (“who”), from which all the paths of teshuvah open. The Ramaz there explains Ado-nai as a level in the beard of Arich Anpin.

The text reconciles the Ramaz’s reading with its own: the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah is the encompassing light of the first of the thirteen tikkunim of Arich Anpin’s beard, the thirteen “rectifications” that correspond to the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, as Etz Chaim explains in Sha’ar Arich Anpin; so the two readings meet. It receives from the head, the Malchus of the Gulgalta, and this is the level of “From the straits I called Yah.”

That is why this level is drawn down specifically through accepting the yoke, as the text explains elsewhere on “And all the people saw”; there (Torah Ohr, Yisro 74b) the sound of the shofar at Sinai is called “from the straits,” the source of delights, from which the revelation flows down. The Ramaz reads “who (Mi) will stand” as the Binah of Atik, and he writes more on it in Parshas Vayikra, on page 15b.

The text then points to a passage of the Zohar (Part I, 42a) on “great,” suggesting that it speaks of this same “power of Ado-nai,” and to the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, at the start of Parshas Tzav, on “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever,” the line said quietly after the first verse of the Shema.

The text adds that on its own reading “Ado-nai” and “who” are not two levels, as in the Ramaz, but one, “Ado-nai Mi,” and that one is what the verse calls “the power of Ado-nai.”

Further places in the third part of the Zohar on “the power of Ado-nai” follow: pages 161b, 220a (with the Ramaz there), 245a and 295b, and the end of 140a; the discourse above (Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach 3:15) gave the same list. On 161b the Zohar explains Moshe’s very words: when the hidden Atik shines into the brain and the brain into the heart, this is the “power” he spoke of, the force that comes from the holy Atik, and “let it be great” means that it should grow on high and be drawn down below.

The Zohar relates that King David was given seventy years of life by Avraham, Yaakov and Yosef, twenty-eight of them by Yaakov, who lived 147 years instead of 175. Twenty-eight is written כ״ח, the letters of koach, “power,” so this gift too is a drawing-down of “the power of Ado-nai” into David, the embodiment of kingship.

So too in “Blessed be the glory of Havayah from its place” (plainly, “from His place”): “glory” is Malchus, and the blessing is that it be blessed from its place, its root above, which is “let the power of Ado-nai be great.” The same idea lies in the angels “mighty in power (koach), who do His word,” as explained elsewhere.