לויתן זה יצרת לשחק בו

The maamar opens with a verse from the psalm of creation, “This Leviathan You formed to play with,” read as the Talmud reads it: G‑d Himself plays with the great creature of the sea. It then cites the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 13:3) that in the Time to Come Behemoth, the great beast of the land, and the Leviathan will be a kenigon for the tzaddikim, a Greek loanword for a hunt or a contest of wild animals held as a spectacle. The parallel transcript of this maamar, a Kehot note reports, compares it to the sport of nobles who set a lion against a leopard and see to it that neither destroys the other completely.

The Midrash describes the contest: Behemoth gores the Leviathan with its horns and tears it, and the Leviathan strikes Behemoth with its fins and stabs it. It then objects that the Mishnah (Chullin 1:2) forbids slaughtering with a harvesting sickle, whose jagged edge tears instead of cutting, so a slaughter with fins should be invalid.

The Midrash answers by reading Yeshayahu’s “Torah will go forth from Me” as “an innovation in Torah will go forth from Me”: in the Time to Come G‑d will give a new ruling. The maamar spells out what it is: G‑d will then permit this very slaughter, the Leviathan slaughtering the beast with its fins.

Behemoth is the shor habar, the “wild ox,” of the Sages’ tradition. In the verse “the behemos on a thousand mountains” (Psalms 50:10), G‑d says that the cattle on all the hills are His; the Aramaic Targum on Psalms reads the word as one great creature, “the wild ox (tor bar)” that grazes a thousand mountains every day. The Talmud in Bava Basra (74b–75a) says that Behemoth is kept for the righteous in the Time to Come and tells of a future hunt (kenigya) of the Leviathan.

To explain the contest, the Alter Rebbe distinguishes two kinds of tzaddikim. The first serve G‑d hiddenly and inwardly: their service is the heart’s intent to bring about yichudim, unifications of the divine attributes above, and to ascend from level to level. Other transcripts, cited in the Kehot notes, add that they are unknown to people, and compare their service to that of the Patriarchs, whose deeds, like digging wells, were supernal unifications.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the sage of the Zohar, hid in a cave from the Roman decree for thirteen years, and there he simply could not perform a number of the mitzvos that require a physical act. In a maamar of 5747, cited in a Kehot note, the Rebbe asks why a miracle did not provide him with a sukkah and the like, and explains that the physical mitzvos must be kept within the natural order of physical things.

The Talmud (Shabbos 33b) relates that a carob tree and a spring of water were created for him and his son by a miracle, and that was all they ate. So he could not eat matzah on Pesach, make Kiddush over wine, take an esrog or sit in a sukkah.

The Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the sixteenth-century master of Kabbalah in Tzefas) also had this level, along the lines of the Zohar on Yaakov’s blessing, “may they multiply like fish (veyidgu, from dag, a fish) in the midst of the land”: ordinary fish die on dry land, but these “fish” multiply on land. Tzaddikim like the Arizal are such fish, spiritual in their service yet living on land, in bodies, while the fish that are only in the sea are the angels. Another transcript of this maamar (Sefer HaMaamarim 5571) names the Baal Shem Tov beside the Arizal, and says the Arizal had this level as well, not this level alone.

The second kind of tzaddikim serve openly, through the physical mitzvos; the example is the command to rejoice on the festival, which another transcript (Sefer HaMaamarim 5571) spells out as joy “with meat, real meat, and with wine, real wine.” This joy too draws down supernal light, for the festivals are “the appointed times of Havayah,” and the joy is the revelation of the Infinite Light coming down into the world, as was explained earlier in Parshas Tzav.

This drawing down depends on actual physical deeds: the Sages taught (Pesachim 109a) that while the Temple stood, festival joy came only through eating meat.

That meat came from the shalmei simchah, the peace-offerings of rejoicing brought on each festival. Now that the Temple is gone, the Sages said, the joy is through wine.

Each festival’s light is drawn down through its own physical mitzvah: matzah on Pesach, the Giving of the Torah on Shavuos, and the sukkah and the four species on Sukkos. Without these deeds the light cannot be drawn down at all.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was the exception. As one of the “Leviathan” souls, “fish of the sea that go on dry land,” he drew down the festivals’ lights in the cave through unifications and ascents alone, without the physical mitzvos.

Now the Alter Rebbe states the deeper point: G‑dliness itself cannot be reached through physical service, only through the spiritual service of the first kind of tzaddikim. The Yiddish an rirn, “to touch,” shows that he means actually touching G‑dliness, not only drawing its light down.

These tzaddikim are called “fish of the sea” because, as the sea covers the fish, they belong to the alma de’iskasya, the hidden world; such hidden tzaddikim exist in every generation. Earlier in Likkutei Torah (Vayikra 5:67), citing Biurei HaZohar, the Alter Rebbe explains that the souls called “fish of the sea” are souls of Atzilus, of the hidden world, like Moshe, “drawn from the water,” while souls from “dry land,” the revealed world, can rise into that sea only in the “ships” of Torah and mitzvos.

Their task is to connect the worlds to the Infinite One, as the Zohar says that King David “would connect the Torah above with the Holy One, blessed be He.” The name livyasan, Leviathan, itself means joining, from the same root as Leah’s words when Levi was born: “This time my husband will be joined (yilaveh) to me.” The Alter Rebbe’s shorter maamarim and the Tzemach Tzedek’s Or HaTorah, a Kehot note adds, also bring “a garland (livyas) of grace for your head” (Proverbs 1:9) for this meaning.

Here begins a gloss (hagahah), a long note set into the main text. It cites the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3b): G‑d’s day has four quarters of three hours, and in the fourth He “sits and plays with the Leviathan”; and the Midrash (Shemos Rabbah 15:22) that the waters were gathered to the place of “this Leviathan.”

The gloss lists more Zohar passages on “This Leviathan You formed to play with,” in which the Leviathan is tied to joining, to the joy of the upper and lower worlds, and to the Tzaddik. It also points to Emek HaMelech, a seventeenth-century work on the Kabbalah of the Arizal.

The fourth quarter of the day, when G‑d plays with the Leviathan, is the late afternoon, the time the Gemara calls “close to Minchah.” Minchah, the afternoon prayer, was instituted by Yitzchak, whose name comes from tzechok, laughter, as Sarah said, “G‑d has made laughter for me”; so the hour of Yitzchak is the hour of divine play. In Torah Ohr, Vayetzei (the discourse “And I will return in peace”), the Alter Rebbe explains Yitzchak as the supernal laughter and delight that will be revealed in the Time to Come, brought about by refining the world below, since delight comes from what is new and unexpected.

That is why G‑d plays with the Leviathan at that hour. The discourse cited on minchah (Torah Ohr, Vayishlach) explains that when something physical is raised up it is new and precious above, and so it raises mayin nukvin, the “feminine waters,” a yearning from below that draws a response from above; the first letters of minchah, mem and nun, stand for mayin nukvin. Yitzchak’s digging of wells is likewise the raising of mayin nukvin, and the Zohar on Toldos (1:141a) speaks of his digging a well.

The gloss now recalls the Gemara in Berachos (35b): the second section of the Shema, “And it will be, if you will listen,” speaks of a time when Israel does not yet do G‑d’s will as fully as it should be done. Tosafos, the medieval commentators on the Talmud, explain there that it speaks of people who do His will, but not completely, since they are not complete tzaddikim.

The reason is that this section lacks the words “with all your might” (bechol me’odecha) of the first section of the Shema. To “do the will of the Omnipresent” in full means drawing the light that encompasses all worlds into the light that fills them, so that the transcendent is revealed within the world, and that needs “with all your might,” a love without limit like the light it draws. In Likkutei Torah, Beshalach, the Alter Rebbe brings the same Gemara and explains that the light drawn by the mitzvos alone stays hidden, encompassing, while “doing His will” is the encompassing light shining within the inner light, the purpose of a dwelling place below.

This is the level the maamar calls “This time my husband will be joined,” the bond that the Leviathan stands for. Reaching it and drawing it down comes only through the spiritual service of the tzaddikim called “fish of the sea.”

Without the limitless love of “with all your might,” that bond is not reached, even by the obedience described in “if you will diligently listen.”

Along the same lines, the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3b) says that since the Temple was destroyed there is no more divine “play.”

The Zohar in Parshas Terumah (2:166b) applies the verse “and the river is parched and dry” (Job 14:11) to the exile, when the flow from above is cut off, yet the light “sown” from the beginning keeps bearing fruit of itself. In its introduction (1:6b) the Zohar reads the same verse: “parched” in the destruction of the First Temple and “dry” in the Second; the text also points to the comment of the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a seventeenth-century Kabbalist who annotated the Zohar) on folio 6a, where “to the far one” is Yaakov.

The Alter Rebbe offers another explanation from the Arizal’s writings. Torah and mitzvos bring about the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the divine emotions with Malchus; but the higher union of Abba and Imma, Chochmah and Binah, draws a new light from the Infinite One and requires mesirus nefesh, self-sacrifice.

This is the meaning of the Shema, in which a person gives over his soul to G‑d at the word Echad, “One.” In Likkutei Torah, Emor (the explanation of “And I will be sanctified”), the Alter Rebbe explains why: Torah and mitzvos are themselves “vessels,” so they draw down a light already present in the vessels of Atzilus, while a new light from the Infinite One needs self-sacrifice, a going out of the vessel entirely.

This explains what was said above, that the drawing down comes only through the Leviathan’s spiritual service. That service is “joining the yesh to the ayin,” the “something” to the “nothing”: uniting a created being, which feels itself to exist, with G‑dliness, which is beyond all grasp and so is called “nothing,” by giving oneself over at “One.”

Through this the bond of “my husband will be joined to me” is drawn down. At the end of “And Lavan had two daughters” (Torah Ohr, Vayetzei) the Alter Rebbe explains Levi as attachment and self-nullification born of thought, which is Leah; Leah wanted this to be the main path, but Yaakov knew that for most of Israel the main service is through speech and deed, and that both are needed. In “Take a census of the sons of Gershon” (Likkutei Torah, Nasso) he ties Leah’s words “for I have borne him three sons” to the three Levite families who carried the Mishkan.

A further way to understand the service of the Leviathan souls comes from the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law (Orach Chaim 98:1), on intention in prayer: the pious men of old would seclude themselves and concentrate in prayer until they reached a stripping away of physicality, close to the level of prophecy.

Pri Etz Chaim, the Arizal’s teachings on prayer from the writings of his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital, records that the Arizal heard in the heavenly academy, in his Shabbos sleep, teachings so wondrous that he could not expound them in eighty years. In Likkutei Torah, Tzav, the Alter Rebbe explains that his grasp was a “seeing” of Chochmah itself, above understanding in words, so that what he saw in an hour would need eighty years to put into words.

The gloss returns to the Talmud: since the Temple’s destruction G‑d no longer plays with the Leviathan in the fourth quarter of the day. Instead, “He sits and teaches Torah to schoolchildren.”

The parenthesis links this to the verse “And all your children shall be taught of Havayah,” and, through the Pardes (Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero), to the word keruv, cherub, explained as ke-ravya, “like a child,” for the cherubim had the faces of children; it also points to the Zohar on Vayetzei with the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar. With this the gloss ends.

Back in the main text: because this world is physical, tzaddikim who serve through physical mitzvos are needed as well; the Sages call such a tzaddik the “one pillar” on which the world stands. Of the discourses cited, “I will sing to Havayah” (Torah Ohr, Beshalach) explains that one who keeps the mitzvos in deed is called tzaddik, from tzedakah, for he draws life and the Infinite Light into them like a soul into a body; and “The land is very, very good” (Likkutei Torah, Shelach) traces the spies’ refusal to enter the Land to the “world of thought,” unwilling to descend to the world of speech and deed.

The Sages said (Chullin 127a) that every creature on land has a counterpart in the sea. So too both kinds of tzaddikim, the land animal and the sea creature, are needed.

The tzaddikim called “fish of the sea” move in a wondrous way: as a fish glides through water, they rise in a single flight to the highest levels. This far surpasses service through physical joy, which stays on a lower rung.

The image is of a fish crossing the whole sea, from one end of the world to the other, in one movement; so these tzaddikim rise to the highest levels. The Yiddish mit ein shup, “with one push,” makes the picture vivid.

Their ascent has none of the excitement and “boiling blood” of the second kind of tzaddikim, whose joy comes through meat and wine and burns like “flashes of fire”; instead they rise with cool blood and in calm. Another transcript adds that that fervor “comes from refining the nogah of the foods,” the mixture of good and evil in physical things.

The parenthesis refers to the Mitteler Rebbe’s Biurei HaZohar on Vayera, on the Zohar (1:112a) that reads Avraham’s words “she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father” as said of the Shechinah, the daughter of supernal Chochmah. It also refers to a discourse on “When you kindle the lamps” (Likkutei Torah, Behaalosecha), on G‑d’s words to Aharon, saddened that he had no part in the princes’ offerings: “By your life, yours is greater than theirs.” There the Alter Rebbe explains that the princes’ offerings rose from below with fire and fervor, while Aharon raised the souls through self-nullification drawn from Chochmah, a higher ascent: the same contrast as between fiery and calm service here.

The text returns to its point: these tzaddikim reach the highest levels in a single flight. Such service cannot be put into words, neither how it works nor what it is; another transcript (Sefer HaMaamarim 5571) says it cannot be explained well in writing.

That is why Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, in the cave, did not perform a number of practical mitzvos: his service was entirely spiritual, above the level of joy through meat.

This is what the Leviathan’s fins represent, called flosh-federn in Yiddish: with them it swims from one end of the world to the other in a single sweep.

Therefore, as the Sages teach (Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 9), the whole world rests on the Leviathan, which encircles it, and the Zohar identifies this Leviathan with “the tzaddik, the foundation of the world”: the world is upheld by the tzaddikim it stands for. In the Time to Come the Leviathan will fight the wild ox and slaughter it with its fins.

The second kind of tzaddikim are called the wild ox. In Yechezkel’s vision of the chariot the ox is the face on the left, the side of Gevurah, of fire and intensity; yet this ox is bar, a word that in shor habar plainly means “wild,” of the field, but is read here as “pure” and refined.

Even the physical service of these tzaddikim, rejoicing on Yom Tov with meat, is not, G‑d forbid, eating beef to fill one’s stomach and enjoy it, but a service of elevation. The parallel transcript, quoted in a Kehot note, explains that the point is not the physical substance of the meat but its refinement, from which G‑dly knowledge and joy are born.

It is like the peace-offerings of rejoicing, physical meat raised up to G‑d, which in Temple times were literally “a pleasing fragrance to Havayah.”

The festival meat of today is similar. So the festival prayer says, “And may they rejoice in You,” in You specifically, phrased as a request because our Temple has been destroyed.

The plain sense of bar in shor habar is “wild,” of the field, but the maamar reads it as “pure,” as in “pure of heart” (bar levav, Psalms 24:4): their meat is refined and pure, and what is meant is the joy in G‑d that it gives rise to, a joy that burns like flashes of fire. The parallel transcript explains “pure of heart” as one who has only one heart, for his Father in Heaven, whose very heart of flesh is wholly refined for G‑d alone.

Even so, this service is small beside the wondrous movement of the tzaddikim called Leviathan, because it comes from something physical and therefore limited.

Their movement, by contrast, reaches the highest levels in a single flight, coolly and calmly, and is infinitely greater.

That is why the Leviathan will “slaughter” the wild ox, and to slaughter here means to elevate: the Leviathan will lift the wild ox up through its own flight. That is why it does so “with its fins,” the very means of its own ascent.

This elevation brings the wild-ox tzaddikim to a height they could not reach by their own strength. The parenthesis refers to the Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, in its section explaining Kabbalistic terms (Erchei HaKinuyim), on the Leviathan’s fins; part of that entry, quoted in the Tzemach Tzedek’s Yahel Or, says the fins are Chesed and Gevurah.

Yet the wild ox will also elevate the Leviathan, because in one respect the service of the second group is higher.

This is so even though theirs is a physical service, for physical service is exactly what the Torah commands: to rejoice on the festival, and that joy comes through meat and wine. Because it carries out the Torah’s own command, this service can raise even the Leviathan.

In the Time to Come G‑d will show the tzaddikim their service in this world as a whole: in the words of Koheles, “both alike are good,” and each is superior in its own way.

A gloss gives another reason for the name: the ox is the source of the field’s produce, for “much produce comes by the strength of the ox” (Proverbs 14:4), and Rabbi Yose called his ox “my field” (Shabbos 118b); bar means both the open field and its grain. The Torah is called “the first of His produce,” words Yirmeyahu says of Israel, and all this comes through the strength of the ox; so these tzaddikim are called shor habar.

A second reason: these tzaddikim, the “one pillar” on which the world stands, are of the level of Yosef the Tzaddik, whom Moshe’s blessing calls an ox, “His firstborn ox, majesty is his.” The Zohar on Parshas Shemini, cited here, says the ox comes from the left side; with this the gloss ends.

Today a slaughter with a fin would be wholly invalid: it is “flawed” (pegumah, the halachic term for a nick in the slaughtering knife), because its cut is interrupted. In the Time to Come, however, it must be done precisely this way.

This slaughter is really the ascent of the wild ox, carried by the Leviathan’s fins to the highest levels. An interruption is needed because the whole ascent cannot happen at once.

The Zohar (Pekudei) describes a series of heichalos, chambers, among them the Chamber of Merit and the Chamber of Will, through which prayer rises; in the Arizal’s Siddur, a Kehot note points out, the Chamber of Merit is reached at “who in His goodness renews” in the blessing before the Shema, and the Chamber of Will at “True and firm” after it. One cannot pass through them all at once; there is a pause between one chamber and the next.

So the Holy One, blessed be He, will permit this “flaw,” since the interruption belongs to an ascent that must go chamber by chamber. The text points to the explanation of “the mezuzah on the right” (Torah Ohr, Miketz), where the letters of prayer rise through the angels appointed over each chamber, from world to world, until they reach their root in Keser. The paragraph ends with the other side: the wild ox will raise the Leviathan by piercing it with its horns, which the parallel transcript explains as the ox’s Keser, above the Leviathan’s Chochmah.