ביאור על לויתן זה כו׳ הנ״ל

This is a further explanation (biur) of the maamar just before it, which opens with Psalms 104:26, “This Leviathan You formed to sport with.” That maamar spoke of two kinds of tzaddikim: hidden ones, the Leviathan and “the fish of the sea,” whose service is inward, and revealed ones, “the wild ox,” who serve through the practical mitzvos. In the Time to Come each will raise up the other: the Leviathan will “slaughter” the wild ox with its fins, and the wild ox will gore the Leviathan with its horns.

The first maamar compared the hidden tzaddikim to “the fish of the sea” and the revealed ones to “the wild ox.” That the fish of the sea are higher needs no proof: their souls come from the union of Abba and Imma, the intellectual configurations Chochmah and Binah, and they are called “brothers and friends.” The phrase echoes “for the sake of my brothers and friends” (Psalms 122:8); the Zohar on Vayikra (7b), which this maamar cites below, says that G‑d first called Israel servants, then children, and then, with this verse, brothers.

The real question is the reverse: in what way do the souls of the wild ox surpass the fish of the sea? To answer it, the Alter Rebbe first brings an explanation, given elsewhere, of a verse from the curses of the rebuke in Deuteronomy, “Your carcass shall be food for all the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth.” The Kehot note points to a discourse of the Mitteler Rebbe on the curses of the rebuke, printed in Or HaTorah (Ki Savo).

The curses of the rebuke, the Alter Rebbe explains, are aimed at the evil of nogah (“glow”), the kelipah in which good and evil are mixed. The word nivlascha, “your carcass,” is read as novlos, fruit that falls before it ripens: the sparks of holiness that fell in the shattering of the vessels and became mixed into nogah. None of them will remain there in the Future; “the birds of the heavens” and “the beasts of the earth” will gather them up.

The birds are angels: on the words “and let birds fly” in the account of creation, the Zohar says that “bird” is the angel Michael.

The parenthesis lists more places that treat birds as a spiritual level: passages of the Zohar, and the Arizal’s Etz Chaim in its gate on the “feminine and masculine waters,” the arousal from below and the response from above. In the Zohar’s passage on Shemini, read with the Mikdash Melech (a commentary on the Zohar by Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo) and the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto), “every winged bird after its kind” is the holy angels.

Other angels are called “the beasts of the earth”: the chayos, the holy creatures of Ezekiel’s Chariot, which have the face of a lion and the face of an ox.

Human souls come in the same two kinds, and some are called “birds.” The Zohar on Pinchas reads “where birds make their nests” (Psalms 104:17), said of the cedars of Lebanon, as the souls of the tzaddikim nesting in their shade; the Zohar on Vayeitzei reads the same verse of supernal birds nesting in the lofty “Lebanon.”

Other souls are called “beasts of the earth”: in the blessings of Yaakov and of Moshe the tribes are likened to animals, Yehudah to a lion’s whelp, Yissachar to a strong-boned donkey, and Yosef to a firstborn ox.

Each kind has an advantage of its own. The bird soars high in the air, as no beast can.

But the bird’s life-force is small and the beast’s is great, and the laws of slaughter show it: the Talmud teaches that a bird is made kosher by cutting one of the two simanim, the windpipe or the gullet, while a beast needs both.

The same contrast holds “above,” in the spiritual worlds. Angels and souls of the “bird” kind can fly upward, rising level after level to the highest heights; their wings are love and awe, the two emotions that carry a soul’s service of G‑d upward.

The parenthesis sends the reader to the Ramaz on the Zohar’s passage in Shemini for more on “flying,” and to the discourse “If all the fish of the sea” in Likkutei Torah, Beha’aloscha. At its end the Alter Rebbe explains that birds are higher than the meat of beasts: beasts come from “the face of an ox” in the Chariot, birds from the level of the Cherubim.

The “beasts of the earth” have a different superiority: great strength. The chayos of the Chariot “carry the Throne,” a saying Rabbeinu Bachya brings from Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, and upon the Throne is “the appearance of a man,” so their power is immense.

The analogy shows that the bird’s advantage is flight, rising higher and higher. The beast of the earth has an immense advantage of its own: abundant strength.

The Alter Rebbe has explained elsewhere why the chayos of the Chariot have the strength to carry the Throne: they come from what was refined out of the shattering of the vessels. Those vessels belonged to the World of Tohu (Chaos), where the light was too abundant for its vessels, and what is salvaged from there carries that great power.

Birds lack this strength, it may be said, because they come from the “union of kisses,” a more inward union in Kabbalah that takes place even when nothing needs to be refined from the broken vessels. But the Alter Rebbe leaves the point open (“this needs examination”), since Etz Chaim seems to say that all the angels come from the union of kisses, the chayos among them.

Whatever the reason, the conclusion stands: the “beast” has the advantage of strength and might, even though the “bird” has the advantage of flight.

In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe compares this to two Divine Names found in the first two sections of the Shema: the Name of forty-two letters and the Name Av, whose numerical value is 72. The Name of forty-two is a power of ascent, like the seraph that “with two would fly,” and corresponds to “with all your might,” love without limit; the Zohar on Terumah says that it rises without coming down, and so it is loftier than Av.

The Name Av, by contrast, is the drawing down of G‑dliness from above to below through Torah and the practical mitzvos. The Tikkunei Zohar reads the word esev, “grass” (ayin, shin, beis), as Av (ayin, beis: 72) and shin, and the verse speaks of grass for the “beasts,” the image of those who serve through practical deeds.

Applied to souls: the “fish of the sea” swim upward in ascents and bring about supernal unions (yichudim) through inner, spiritual service, their counterpart to the birds’ flight. But the fish live in the sea, “the hidden world,” and their service stays hidden.

Even so, the souls called “beasts of the earth” have an advantage of their own, expressed in Proverbs: “much produce comes by the strength of the ox.”

On Psalms 50:10, “the beasts (behemos) on a thousand mountains,” the Aramaic Targum, which the Alter Rebbe calls Yonasan’s, renders: “and the wild ox that grazes every day on a thousand mountains.” So the Behemos of the Midrash is the wild ox of the first maamar.

The Zohar on Pinchas and on Bereishis explains this grazing on “a thousand mountains.” The wild ox, “the great beast,” is Malchus (sovereignty), the last of the Sefiros, whose word behemah, “beast” (beis, hei, mem, hei: 2+5+40+5), equals 52, the Name Ban; it refines the sparks that fell into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and the “thousand mountains” on which it grazes are in Beriah. The Kehot note quotes Or HaTorah: the Name Kel Sha-dai, which brings the World of Beriah into being, totals a thousand when its letters are spelled out.

This, the Alter Rebbe adds, may be why it is called tor bar. In tor bar, “wild ox,” bar means “of the open field,” but the word is also the Aramaic for “outside,” and the maamar reads it that way; the first maamar had read bar as “pure,” as in “pure of heart.”

Malchus is “the revealed world,” the level of speech, which comes out into the open, while the sea is “the hidden world,” the level of thought. The parenthesis points to the discourse on Song of Songs 8:1, which discusses “I would find you outside.”

“A righteous man knows the soul of his beast” refers, as the Mikdash Melech explains the Zohar on Pinchas, to Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, the Sefirah called “righteous” (tzaddik), which is joined to Malchus, the “beast.”

Yesod is the “one pillar” on which, the Talmud says, the world stands, “and Tzaddik is its name.” The Zohar likewise speaks of “that man who rides and rules over this beast,” the higher level that guides Malchus.

The Talmud tells that when Rabbi Akiva returned with thousands of students, neighbors urged his poor wife to borrow fine clothes to greet him; she answered with this verse, sure that he would know her. Souls born from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the Alter Rebbe adds, are also called “beasts of the earth,” the wild ox; essentially they are souls of Beriah, born from Malchus of Atzilus.

This follows Tanya, Iggeres HaKodesh, epistle 20, “He and His life-forces are one”: the souls are created from Malchus to be a yesh, an independent existence, in the World of Beriah. That coming into being is called “birth”: the Nukva gives birth to souls and angels into Beriah.

A little earlier in the same epistle, the Alter Rebbe writes that the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of Atzilus itself, even when they came down into this world to the early tzaddikim, perhaps never changed their essence to become something separate from G‑dliness.

Souls of Atzilus are like the fish of the sea: the sea covers them, and they cannot live apart from it, just as these souls never become separate from their source. The parenthesis points to the Torah Ohr discourse “And Israel saw” (Beshalach), which explains that the sea is the hidden world and dry land the revealed world, and to an explanation of the Zohar on Beshalach (48b), which describes the supernal “sea” and its fish.

Souls created from Malchus of Atzilus into Beriah as separate beings are “the beasts of the earth,” like the land creatures that the earth brought forth, “the living soul after its kind.”

Land animals live from the earth and eat what grows from it, yet each is a separate being, unlike fish, which can never leave the sea. So too these souls draw their life from Malchus and still exist as distinct beings.

The Alter Rebbe now examines the Kabbalistic sources on where souls born of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva come into being. Etz Chaim (gate 47, chapter 4) says that the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Beriah gives birth to the souls of the angels of Yetzirah, not to the souls of the people of Beriah.

By the same pattern, in which a union in one world gives birth into the world below it, the souls of the tzaddikim that Etz Chaim says are born of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus are also souls that come into being in Beriah. The reader is sent to that chapter and the next.

Mishnas Chassidim, a Kabbalistic work by Rabbi Immanuel Chai Ricchi arranged in tractates like the Mishnah, says the same: Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus are given power to give birth to the souls of the tzaddikim “into the World of Beriah,” and Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Beriah to give birth to the souls of the angels into Yetzirah.

The Zohar on Vayeitzei, which teaches that whatever the lower world gives birth to belongs to the realm of separation, says the same, as does Pardes Rimonim, the Kabbalistic work of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero.

On the other hand, the Zohar on Vayikra clearly speaks of souls drawn from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus that are called a nefesh “of Atzilus” itself, not of Beriah.

Other Zohar passages say the same when they explain “You are children to Havayah your G‑d”: such souls are truly “children.” The Alter Rebbe lists passages on Yisro, Vayikra and the beginning of Mishpatim, the last read as Etz Chaim (gate 38) interprets it and as the Zohar’s plain words suggest; there the Zohar says that one who merits more is given a nefesh “in the manner of Atzilus” and is called a king’s daughter.

He adds Sefer HaGilgulim (the Arizal’s teachings on reincarnation), his own explanation of “I am black, yet beautiful,” and another Zohar passage on Mishpatim, and then breaks off: “this is not the place for it.”

Whatever the case with these exceptional souls, ordinary souls born from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus into Beriah become souls of Beriah through their birth from the Nukva, Malchus.

This is why the Zohar calls the twelve tribes in Beriah “twelve oxen,” like the twelve oxen on which Shlomo’s Sea stood in the Temple; the Zohar on Vayeitzei cited above links the tribes to that verse. Oxen are strong: as a Chariot they carry the Throne and “the Man of Atzilus” upon it.

Their strength comes from the refinements of the World of Tohu, as was said above of the chayos that carry the Throne.

The Alter Rebbe now cites his explanation, in Torah Ohr (Mikeitz), of Zechariah’s “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion”: the “daughter” is Malchus of Atzilus, which descends into Beriah, and in the Future it will rise with surpassing eminence and become “a woman of valor, the crown of her husband,” higher than Z’eir Anpin, her “husband.” The reason is the great power of what it refines, which comes from the Name Sag (63), one of the spelled-out forms of the Name Havayah. In Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai, he brings from Etz Chaim that now the Name Mah refines the Name Ban, and when Ban is refined in the Future “a woman of valor” will be “the crown of her husband,” for the shattering was in the Name Sag.

Malchus will rise even above Imma, which is Binah. This is explained elsewhere on the Zohar on Shelach, on Zechariah 14:8: “living waters shall go out from Jerusalem,” which is Malchus, “half of them toward the eastern sea,” hayam hakadmoni, a word that also means “the former sea,” Binah, which comes before Malchus. The Zohar there asks how waters from Jerusalem can flow up to the source of all waters, and answers with a nursing child whose mouth fills and pours milk back into its mother’s mouth.

Malchus can reach so high because it refines, in the lower worlds, sparks of Keser, Chochmah and Binah of Tohu, the highest levels of that world.

Another reason for Malchus’s greatness: “their end is wedged in their beginning” (Sefer Yetzirah) and “last in deed, first in thought” (the Shabbos hymn Lecha Dodi). So Malchus, the last, is Keser in the order of “returning light,” in which the Sefiros are counted from below upward, as is explained elsewhere on “Let me see your countenance.” Iggeres HaKodesh 20, quoted above, says the same: Malchus of Atzilus is called “Keser” from below to above.

For this reason, too, the souls born from Malchus of Atzilus, from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, have an advantage over the souls from Imma, “the fish of the sea,” which come from the union of Abba and Imma.

There is a further advantage that comes from Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus, and it applies even to souls of Atzilus proper that come from Z’eir Anpin and Nukva.

The Idra Zuta, a section of the Zohar, teaches that Abba and Imma come forth from “this brain,” the hidden intellect above them, but Z’eir Anpin “hangs on and is held fast in Atika Kadisha,” the Holy Ancient One, the innermost level of Keser, higher still. So Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes of Atzilus, is rooted higher than Abba and Imma, the intellect, even though it is drawn down below them.

The same is true in a person: emotions are born from the mind and follow what one understands, yet their essence is rooted higher than the intellect. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (73a), the Alter Rebbe gives the same analogy and notes that there are natural love and awe that do not come from understanding.

Because the emotions are rooted higher than the intellect, they can carry a force and intensity greater than the understanding that gave birth to them. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (“Set me as a seal”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the straps of the tefillin, which hang down over the heart, stand for the supernal emotions: emotions begin from the intellect, but once aroused they grow beyond it, like the joy of seeing a friend after many years, because their source is above the intellect.

He also refers to his explanation of “These are the journeys” in Likkutei Torah, Masei, which speaks of emotive attributes above Atzilus, “whose ways are far loftier” than those of Atzilus, and to the Tosefta in the Zohar on Beshalach, about “three spirits that are included in three.”

This is why the Sages said, “The Patriarchs are themselves the Chariot.” The Patriarchs are Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes of Atzilus, emotive attributes, yet they act as a Chariot that raises “the Man,” Chochmah of Atzilus, just as the chayos of Beriah carry the “Man” upon the Throne.

The full explanation is in the Torah Ohr discourse “To understand the explanation of ‘The Patriarchs are themselves the Chariot’” in Parshas Yisro. There the Alter Rebbe explains that the emotions, rooted higher than the intellect, fall lower, as the highest stone of a falling wall lands lowest, and that once refined they raise Chochmah itself, for “the son’s strength exceeds the father’s.” A discussion of the Zohar on Sarah’s “hundred years” also shows the advantage of Z’eir Anpin over Abba and Imma.

For the same reason the souls of the wild ox raise up the Leviathan, the souls of Abba and Imma, just as Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes of Atzilus raise Chochmah into the Infinite Light that is above Chochmah. This answers the maamar’s question: here the lower raises the higher.

The analogy: a beast has more physical strength than a man because its root was taken from a higher place. “Beast” stands for the emotive attributes and “man” for Chochmah.

The Mikdash Melech, on the Zohar about the offering of “an ox and a ram” in Shemini, explains “ox” as Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, as in Moshe’s blessing of Yosef, “His firstborn ox, majesty is his.” Yosef is the tzaddik, the Sefirah of Yesod.

All the more does this apply to the root of the wild-ox souls in the Nukva, Malchus, which refines in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah the sparks fallen from the World of Tohu.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of “I am black, yet beautiful”: precisely through the descent of Malchus into the lower worlds an exceedingly lofty ascent comes about. There (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim) Malchus, the source of the souls of Beriah, tells the souls of Atzilus, “I am black” because of its descent into limitation, “yet beautiful,” for through it comes a greater revelation than the soul had in the palaces of Atzilus. All this applies here to the souls called the wild ox.

This explains the Sages’ teaching in the Midrash that in the Time to Come “Behemos gores the Leviathan with its horns.” The Talmud describes the heavens level above level: “the feet of the chayos are equal to all of them” beneath, and so on up to “the horns of the chayos are equal to all of them,” the highest part of the chayos.

The feet of the chayos are Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the lowest attributes, while their horns are at the level of Keser, the crown, because horns grow out of the skull. So the horns with which Behemos gores the Leviathan are a power from Keser, above the Leviathan’s Chochmah and Binah.

This is the point made above: Malchus, “the great beast,” is the level of Keser counted from below to above. Through it the souls of the wild ox lift the Leviathan, rooted in Chochmah and Binah, into the light of Keser above Chochmah.

The Alter Rebbe compares this to his explanation of Chanah’s words “My horn is exalted” and of David’s anointing with a horn of oil, in the Torah Ohr discourse on the root of the Giving of the Torah (Yisro): David, anointed with a horn, is at the level of “exalted,” Atika, where there is no change, and so his kingship endures. The Sifra DiTzniusa (“the Book of Concealment”), a brief and very hidden section of the Zohar, says that there is no anointing except with a horn, and calls the horn “the tenth of the King,” Malchus, crowned through the “jubilee,” Imma.

This is the meaning of Psalms 112:9, “He has scattered, he has given to the needy … his horn shall be exalted with honor,” said of the G‑d-fearing man who gives freely. Charity is a practical mitzvah, and through the practical mitzvos the “horn,” the level of Keser, is raised high.

The Zohar on Beha’aloscha expounds this verse: whoever gives to the poor joins the levels above and draws down blessing, and so his “horn” is raised “with the honor” above. The Zohar (I, 96a) reads the “horn” of “on a horn, son of oil” (Isaiah 5:1), the fertile hill of the vineyard, as the horn of the jubilee, and says that royal anointing is only with a horn; the Zohar on Tzav also brings this verse.

The same “horn” is in Moshe’s blessing of Yosef, “His firstborn ox … his horns are the horns of a re’em,” a wild ox, and in Psalms 92:11, “You have exalted my horn like a re’em’s; I am anointed with fresh oil.” The Zohar on Bamidbar speaks of the kohen who “comes to the horn” of the altar, and calls the secret of the horn the yoke of the holy kingdom.

Here begins a further explanation of how the wild ox can raise the Leviathan, though in general the fish of the sea are higher souls than those named after the earth. The same reversal is found in sea and dry land themselves.

Ordinarily the sea, the hidden world, is above dry land, the revealed world, but that holds only within the order of hishtalshelus, the chain of descending worlds. When a great illumination from beyond that order is revealed, “He turned the sea into dry land,” as at the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, for at that level sea and dry land are equal.

Indeed, in G‑d’s primordial thought “the earth came first,” for what is last in the order of descent is first in His intention. The Alter Rebbe refers to the end of the discourse “Six days you shall eat matzos” and applies this to the souls drawn from sea and from dry land.

Within the order of hishtalshelus, from above to below, the Leviathan raises the wild ox. But from below to above, where in G‑d’s thought “the earth came first,” the order is reversed and the wild ox raises the Leviathan.

The discourse on “And the number of the children of Israel shall be” (Hosea 2:1), in Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar, explains that in the Future “earth” will be above “water.” There “like the sand of the sea” is read through teshuvah, which comes from beyond the order of hishtalshelus: as the sand is above the sea, so “earth” will be above “water.”

This is the meaning of Psalms 136:6, “To Him who spread out the earth over the waters”: the earth above the water. The discourse on “The voice of my beloved,” where the Patriarchs and Matriarchs are called “mountains” and “hills,” makes a related point.

Here the Alter Rebbe begins another explanation of the Leviathan and the wild ox.

He starts from his explanation elsewhere of Song of Songs 6:8–9, “There are sixty queens … One is my dove.” The Sages read the “sixty queens” as the sixty tractates of the Oral Torah, and “One is my dove” as the Congregation of Israel; since the one dove is praised above the sixty queens, the souls of Israel would seem to be higher than the Torah.

Elsewhere the opposite seems implied: the Zohar says that the souls are bound to the Torah and the Torah to the Holy One, blessed be He, so the Torah is the link above the souls. The Midrash at the beginning of Vayakhel says the same on “Who created these?”: the world stands in the merit of Israel, and Israel stands in the merit of the Torah.

The answer is a Midrash: a king who loved his only daughter called her “my daughter,” did not cease to cherish her until he called her “my sister,” and then until he called her “my mother.” So G‑d first called Israel “daughter” and in the end “mother.”

A daughter receives: as “daughter,” the souls receive from the Torah; as “mother,” they give to the Torah and are a source for it. In Torah Ohr, Mikeitz (“Sing and rejoice, O daughter”), the Alter Rebbe explains “daughter” as one who must still receive love from above, and “my mother” as one who, through self-sacrifice, “gives birth” to the revelation of G‑dliness.

These two stages are the wild ox and the Leviathan. The ox has great strength for the yoke, and its yoke is the yoke of the mitzvos.

The ox bears the yoke as a servant, as in “to serve Him” (Deuteronomy 11:13). As the discourse “And now, let the power of Ado-nai be great” explains, this self-nullification and yoke draw down to the soul an encompassing light and a garment that lift it and make it one of the “walkers,” who keep rising from level to level.

The Midrash on Va’eira says that G‑d’s garment is “strength,” as in “Havayah is clothed, He has girded Himself with strength,” and that He gave it to Israel: “Havayah will give strength to His people.” That is the root of the garments drawn down through the mitzvos, which bring about “the glory of Havayah will gather you in.”

At this level the soul receives from the mitzvos, and precisely through their garments it becomes one of the “walkers among those who stand” (Zechariah 3:7): unlike the angels, who stand at fixed levels, it keeps rising.

The garments of the mitzvos are the “boats and ships” in which, and through which, souls can travel in the sea, the hidden world, as explained in the discourse “And you shall not omit the salt.” The image recalls the Leviathan’s own verse, “There go the ships; this Leviathan You formed.”

But there are very lofty souls with the “desire of the heart,” the level of “with all your might,” love without limit. Such were the early pious ones of the Talmud, who waited an hour before prayer, prayed for an hour, and waited an hour after it.

This level is above the Torah, as the Talmud there hints: it asks how their Torah was preserved when they spent nine hours a day in prayer, and answers that because they were pious, their Torah was preserved. Of such a level the Sages said, “There is one who acquires his world in a single hour.”

The desire of the heart comes from Keser, the will above the intellect, which is the source of the Torah. For the Torah, the Zohar says, “came forth from Chochmah,” and Keser is above Chochmah.

Of these loftiest souls the Sages said, “until he called her ‘my mother’”: they give to the Torah, not only receive from it. This is also the meaning of “One is my dove,” praised above the “sixty queens,” the tractates.

This is the Leviathan, which swims in the sea and encircles it in a moment. It is above the “boats and ships,” the garments formed by the performance of the mitzvos.

Through those garments souls are raised into the encompassing light, “the sea of Chochmah.” The Leviathan, instead, encompasses the sea itself and draws into the sea of Chochmah from what is above Chochmah.

The name Leviathan comes from a word for “joining,” as in Leah’s “this time my husband will be joined (yilaveh) to me,” and as David is said to have joined the Torah above to the Holy One, blessed be He; the first maamar explained this.

The Alter Rebbe grants that this level of “my mother,” the Leviathan, is truly higher than the wild ox, the level of “my daughter.”

Even so, of the Time to Come it is written, “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion … and I will dwell in your midst”: G‑d will dwell specifically in the “daughter.”

As explained elsewhere, this matches “Behold, My servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up”: the servant, who serves “like an ox to the yoke,” has a surpassing quality, for “their end is wedged in their beginning,” and the lowest is bound to the highest.