טוב לחסות בה׳ וגו׳

The maamar opens with a verse from Hallel (Psalms 118:8) that it will interpret only later (paragraph 7). It starts instead from the order of the Shabbos and Yom Tov Amidah: we first ask G‑d to sanctify us with His mitzvos and only then ask for our share in His Torah, because a real share in the Torah depends on first keeping the mitzvos. The Kehot edition dates this maamar to Shemini Atzeres 5557 (1796).

¶7 Hold the opening verse: paragraph 7 explains it.

To explain what “a share in the Torah” means, the Alter Rebbe turns to the verse that names the festival of Shemini Atzeres (Numbers 29:35) and reads atzeres as retention (kelitah), holding in, like a womb that retains the seed. The Torah is a “drop” of G‑d’s wisdom that has come down into physical form: the play is between nisgashmah (became physical) and geshem (rain), and “He causes the rain to descend” is the Amidah’s praise that is first said on Shemini Atzeres itself.

A Jew who learns, reviews and remembers the Torah “retains” it: this is the first way of retaining.

Prayer is the second way of retaining: through Daas, deep attentive connection, the knowledge of G‑d is fixed in both mind and heart until it is felt. “Recognize your Creator” is the Sages’ reading of Tamar’s plea to Yehudah, “Recognize, please” (Sotah 10b), and “the desire of the heart” is an Aramaic phrase of the Zohar for a longing from the heart’s depth, directed to G‑d alone.

An analogy from marriage law: a betrothal (kiddushin) by money takes effect when the man gives the woman a perutah, the smallest coin, or something worth a perutah (Kiddushin 2a). The Alter Rebbe adds the point his analogy turns on: small as it is, the gift must be something with which she could buy what sustains her life.

Likewise, the Community of Israel can “retain” Torah and prayer only after G‑d first draws down to her a gift of G‑dly life-force from above, a kind of betrothal.

The parenthesis refers the reader to the discourse “And I will betroth you to Me” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar), which explains that today’s betrothal comes from the level of the Supernal Man, Z’eir Anpin, with its rises and falls, while the betrothal “forever” of the time to come rises above it. Kiddushin is then defined by a verse about holiness (Leviticus 20:26): to be holy (kedoshim) is to be set apart by G‑d as His own.

The betrothal formula “you are mekudeshes to me” is read in the same light: mekudeshes shares its root with kedoshim, holy, and both mean set apart, so the bride is set apart for her husband alone. So too, the mitzvos set the Jew apart for G‑d.

This is why “mitzvos require intention (kavanah).” In the Gemara (Pesachim 114b), where the rule is disputed, it means intending to fulfill the commandment as one does it; here the Alter Rebbe reads it more inwardly: one should know what the mitzvos intend (hamechuvan), their aim. Their aim is to separate a person from cravings and bad character traits, which is what makes him “betrothed” and able to retain.

The blessing said before a mitzvah, “Who has sanctified us with His mitzvos,” expresses this betrothal. With it a person can “retain” the Torah and prayer; without it he is like a womb that cannot hold the seed and “expels” it, G‑d forbid.

The betrothal comes from sovev, the light that encompasses all worlds and is not limited by them. The ring of kiddushin, a circle without beginning or end, pictures that encompassing light, for which “was,” “is” and “will be” are one instant and nothing changes.

¶7 The encompassing light is pictured as a chuppah and tallis in paragraph 7.

The verse from Psalms (145:3) is brought to distinguish two things. Its first half speaks of G‑d’s greatness as it extends without measure or end (“exceedingly”), as the Talmud illustrates with the vast distances of the heavens and the feet of the Chayos (angels of the Chariot), equal to all of them (Chagigah 13a).

The second half, “His greatness is unsearchable,” goes further: in G‑d’s own essence the very idea of “greatness” is out of place.

This is why the Sages link G‑d’s greatness with His humility (Megillah 31a). In Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe cites the same saying for the descent in G‑d’s revealing Himself through many contractions, setting aside the essence of His light so that light may shine out of the supernal darkness.

From His own perspective, to be “great” over the worlds is a lowering of Himself. “Greatness” describes His light spreading infinitely; the Source of that light is not made great by towering over creations, for next to Him they are nothing at all, and to be “great” in comparison with nothing is no greatness.

The verse “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness” (I Chronicles 29:11) is read to mean that greatness belongs only to Havayah, read as havayah, bringing into being: the flow that came into being (nis’haveh) from “You,” G‑d’s own essence, which is beyond greatness. The letters of the Name trace that flow: the small yud is contraction (tzimtzum), and the letters after it are spreading forth and drawing down.

Contemplating that all of creation is only an outflow of G‑d, and nothing next to Him, breaks a person’s heart and humbles him. Everything bound by time then becomes equal and fleeting in his eyes, and he stops craving it.

The practical reflection: a few years ago I never thought about this thing, and a few years from now it will be gone and forgotten. Why then should it capture my heart now?

Since the thing did not exist before and will not exist after, the person sees it now as if it were already gone.

This is the Sages’ definition of a wise man, “one who sees what will be born” (Tamid 32a): he sees, as vividly as with his eyes, the outcome, that evil will be removed from the world in the time to come (Zechariah 13:2) and that every physical thing ends in decay. Seeing the end robs the temptation of its hold now.

The verse “You crumbled the sea with Your might” (Psalms 74:13) recalls the splitting of the sea; here “sea” is read as the depths where sins are cast, as in “the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).

G‑d crumbles and scatters them, and “with Your might” is the contemplation above: through it evil loses its claim to be a real “something” (yesh), and the broken heart crumbles it.

The Alter Rebbe finds this in the Talmud’s mnemonic for Shemini Atzeres, PaZeR KaSheV (Rosh Hashanah 4b), whose letters stand for the six ways it is a festival of its own: its own lot for the priests (payis), its own blessing of the season (zeman), its own festival standing (regel), and its own offering, song and blessing. Read as two words, pazer, “scatter,” and kashev, “hearken,” it teaches that first one must shatter one’s sense of self and only then listen to G‑d’s words, since G‑d says of the arrogant person, who takes up room in the world, that He and he cannot dwell together (Sotah 5a).

The words “all wickedness will be entirely consumed in smoke” echo the High Holiday Amidah, where it vanishes “like smoke.” Evil is compared to smoke: it looks thick and real, but even a slight wind drives it away.

Ezekiel’s call to the wind (the Hebrew ruach is wind, breath and spirit) shows that a breath is enough; the Kehot note gives the verse’s full wording, “Come, O breath.” Evil has no real substance, and it vanishes as soon as a person “sets his heart” (words borrowed from Job 34:14) to the contemplation described above.

Now the maamar returns to its opening verses, which speak of both “man” and “nobles” (Psalms 118:8–9). The Zohar explains that they do not mean ordinary physical people.

¶1 This explains the opening verse from paragraph 1.

For if they did, the verse would imply that trusting them is good, only that trusting G‑d is better; yet other verses curse the one who trusts in man (Jeremiah 17:5) and forbid trusting in nobles (Psalms 146:3). So “man” and “nobles” here must mean something holy.

“Man” is the Supernal Man, the human likeness Ezekiel saw upon the Divine throne. This “Man” is the Written Torah, whose 248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions correspond to the 248 limbs and 365 sinews of the human body, as the discourse “And He fed you the manna” (Likkutei Torah, Eikev) explains; the Tzemach Tzedek notes in Yahel Or that this reading appears in Yalkut Reuveni, quoting the Tziyoni.

Cleaving to the Torah, the Supernal Man, is certainly good. Yet the verse says that taking refuge in Havayah is better still.

“Refuge” (lachasos, from machseh, shelter) means being covered and sheltered. The Alter Rebbe compares it to the wedding canopy (chuppah): in his lands it was a sheet held over the couple, and elsewhere a tallis was spread over them.

The Torah forbids a master to sell a Hebrew maidservant “bevigdo vah,” “in his betraying her” (Exodus 21:8), and the Talmud hears beged, garment, in the word: once he has spread his tallis over her in marriage, he can no longer sell her (Kiddushin 18b). So the covering makes a bond that cannot be betrayed, and G‑d too “wraps Himself in light as in a garment” (Psalms 104:2) and spreads it over His people.

This covering comes from sovev, the encompassing light, and its purpose is “to revive the heart of the crushed” (Isaiah 57:15). The parenthesis that follows begins a list of places where “He wraps Himself in light” is discussed, first the Iggeres HaKodesh in Tanya.

¶2 This develops the encompassing light from paragraph 2.

The list continues with the Midrash Rabbah (Shemos Rabbah, chapters 15, 17, 33 and 50, and on Emor, chapter 31) and with many passages of the Zohar on G‑d’s garment of light. According to the Kehot note, the Tzemach Tzedek cites all these sources in Yahel Or, on this verse.

The Kabbalistic work Emek HaMelech calls this garment “the World of the Garment,” which the text identifies with the letters of the Torah: the Torah is how G‑d “clothes” Himself so as to be revealed.

After two more references (the discourse “On the eighth day, an atzeres,” earlier in the book, and the explanation on “You shall keep My Shabbosos” in Likkutei Torah, Behar), the Alter Rebbe explains the “nobles”: on Yom Tov the sparks of the souls of Israel rise, and “to seat [him] with nobles” (Psalms 113:8) describes that elevation.

The “nobles” are the Patriarchs, of whom the Midrash says “they are the Chariot” (Bereishis Rabbah 47:6): they were wholly given over to G‑d’s will, as a chariot is to its rider. The verse “the nobles of the peoples… the people of the G‑d of Avraham” links “nobles” to the Patriarchs; the Tzemach Tzedek (Yahel Or) asks why “nobles” should mean them, and answers that just as “man” is the Supernal Man, “nobles” too is a holy level.

Even so, taking refuge in Havayah is better than the “nobles,” and the reason is in the next verse of the same psalm: “All nations surround me.” Even at the holy levels of “man” (the Torah) and “nobles” (the Patriarchs) a person can fall, and the forces opposed to holiness can close in on him; the Tzemach Tzedek quotes this point in his Biurei HaZohar.

“In the Name of Havayah,” the encompassing light beyond these levels, one can “cut them off.” As in the preceding maamar, amilam is also read as “I will circumcise,” removing the heart’s coarse covering, as Moshe commands, “circumcise the foreskin of your heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16).

This level also revives, as in the Amidah’s “He revives the dead” and Ezekiel’s “breathe into the slain, that they may live”: it is “dew,” the tradition’s image of the resurrection. According to a Kehot note, the manuscript without the Tzemach Tzedek’s glosses ends the maamar here, so the long parenthesis that follows comes from the version with his glosses; it begins with the manna, “which your fathers did not know,” as coming from a level above the Supernal Man.