להבין מפני מה יו״ט דפסח הוא ביום שנעשה…

The maamar opens with a question about the dates of the festivals. Pesach is kept on the very day of its miracle, the night Egypt’s firstborn were struck and Israel went free, while Purim and Chanukah are kept on the day the Jews rested after the fighting, not on the day of the victory itself.

The parenthesis sends the reader to a discourse in Torah Ohr on “I will give you places to walk” (Zechariah 3:7), which also observes that Chanukah and Purim came first through war and then on a day of rest. To answer the question, the Alter Rebbe first explains two modes of G‑dly light: memalei, which fills the worlds, and sovev, which encompasses them.

Memalei is light that descends in stages, each level receiving from the one above it: from the world of the souls to the angels, and from them to this physical world. In the tradition, this world receives its life through the seventy heavenly princes, the angelic ministers over the seventy nations, and they receive from higher angels, as Koheles says, “one higher than the high watches” (Ecclesiastes 5:7).

Sovev, by contrast, does not pass down from level to level; it reaches every level at once and equally. The soul offers an analogy: one kind of life-force descends in order, from the intellect to the emotions, from the emotions to thought, and from thought to speech, each stage born of the one before.

The second kind of life-force shines on all the faculties at once, without passing through intermediate stages.

Everyday experience shows it: when a person decides in his mind to move his foot, the foot moves instantly. If the brain’s influence had to travel down through the stages one after another, there would be some delay; since there is none, the brain must also shine directly into the foot, bypassing the order of levels, and this is the human model of sovev.

The same two modes exist above. Memalei is the revealed light that descends level by level; the seraphim proclaim, “the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3), and “glory” is only a ray (ziv) of G‑d’s light.

Sovev is not revealed within things; it touches them only from outside, as an encompassing light, and since it does not descend in stages, everything stands equally before it: souls and angels, the spiritual and the physical, even the kelipos. This is “I fill the heavens and the earth” (Jeremiah 23:24): “I,” G‑d’s very being and essence, fills all alike, whereas “His glory” fills the earth only as a ray. In Likkutei Torah, Korach, the Alter Rebbe reads the two verses the same way and explains that “encompassing” does not mean that sovev stays above, for no place is empty of Him: it is present in all things equally.

The name Pesach means “passing over”: G‑d “passed over” the doorways of Israel (Exodus 12:23), and Rashi (on Exodus 12:13) gives the word two senses, “had pity” and skipping and leaping, for G‑d skipped from the houses of Israel to the Egyptian houses among them. The Alter Rebbe reads this as a mode of light that leaps over the intermediate levels instead of descending through them one by one.

Such a leap is sovev, and so the Haggadah reads “I will pass through the land of Egypt” as “I, and not an angel.” The destruction of Sennacherib’s army, when “an angel of Havayah went out and struck the camp of Assyria” (II Kings 19:35), and the defeat of Sisera (Judges 4–5) were carried out through messengers, because there the mission was simple and already defined, a whole camp to strike. The Kehot note compares the wording “go and strike them” to Shaul’s command, “Turn and strike the priests” (I Samuel 22:18).

In Egypt, by contrast, the plague was to strike “every firstborn” (Exodus 12:29), which demanded fine discernment. Who was his father’s firstborn could not be known by any outward sign, since, as Rashi explains on Exodus 12:30, Egyptian women bore children to men other than their husbands, so that one woman might have several firstborn sons, each the firstborn of his father.

Even who was the firstborn of the mother was hard to know, since some of the firstborn were old men, whose order of birth could hardly still be known; such discernment is beyond an angel.

Some books explain instead that an angel cannot descend into so impure a place as Egypt, but the Alter Rebbe calls this forced: an angel did descend to strike the camp of Assyria.

Whatever the reason, the conclusion is the same: the Exodus came from a revelation of sovev, G‑d’s “I,” His very being and essence, and not from the graded light of memalei that works through messengers.

Now the opening question can be answered. A festival is the resting of supernal holiness, and holiness can rest only after the outer forces, the forces of concealment that block it, have first been removed, as the Torah commands, “You shall eradicate the evil from your midst” (Deuteronomy 13:6).

So on Purim the Jews first fought and killed seventy-five thousand of their enemies (Esther 9:16), together with the ten sons of Haman. These were Amalekites, a mighty kelipah: “Amalek was the first of the nations” (Numbers 24:20), and its memory is to be blotted out (Exodus 17:14; Deuteronomy 25:19); only after it was removed could the holiness of the festival be revealed.

Only after the war did the Jews make Purim “a day of feasting and gladness, and sending portions” (Esther 9:19), the revelation of holiness. The analogy: a king who wants to live in a new house first has it cleaned of all dirt, and only then moves in. The same parable appears in Likkutei Torah, Balak, where the cleaning is the negative commandments, which remove the evil, and the furnishing is the positive ones, which prepare the dwelling for the Infinite Light.

So Purim needed two days: the day of battle to remove the evil, and the next day for the revelation. The reason is that this revelation came from memalei, which works in stages: first the removal, then the revelation, never both at once.

Pesach was different. Its miracle came from sovev, which is not divided into stages and shines on everything as one, so the very same act could strike Egypt with the plague of the firstborn and reveal holiness to Israel, who said Hallel that night.

Some books say that the plague came before midnight and the revelation after it, but the Alter Rebbe rejects this: both happened at the same moment, as befits sovev.

The parenthesis compares this to “Remember” and “Keep,” the two wordings of the Shabbos commandment, which the Sages say were spoken in a single utterance; the end of the Torah Ohr discourse on “Remember the Shabbos day” explains that in the future both will be one, through the revelation of sovev, before which all is equal.

Sovev, as said, is “equal and makes equal,” a phrase from the High Holiday prayers: before it “darkness is as light” (Psalms 139:12), and “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” (Job 35:7). How, then, could sovev itself make a distinction, striking Egypt while saving Israel?

The answer comes from Pri Etz Chaim, a work of the Arizal’s Kabbalah, on the Haggadah’s “We were slaves to Pharaoh … and Havayah our G‑d brought us out.” There “Havayah our G‑d” is read as Abba and Imma, the configurations of Chochmah and Binah, which enclothe the “arms” of Arich Anpin, the outer dimension of Keser.

Israel is rooted in the “face” of holiness, G‑d’s inner, willing giving, as in the Priestly Blessing, “May Havayah make His face shine upon you” (Numbers 6:25). Egypt is rooted in the “back” (achorayim), the nape of the neck; as the Kehot note shows from the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah, at the beginning of Shemos, the letters of Pharaoh (פרעה) spell ha-oref (הערף), “the nape.”

After Yosef and his brothers died (Exodus 1:6), G‑d’s face was hidden, and His flow reached the world only from the “back,” “like one who throws something behind his shoulders,” giving without goodwill, as Tanya explains in chapter 22. In that state Israel was enslaved to Pharaoh, who himself draws from the nape.

Then “Havayah our G‑d,” Abba and Imma enclothing the arms of Arich Anpin, brought Israel out, so that the flow came from the face, as in “May Havayah make His face shine.” Through this was fulfilled “may He make His face shine with us, selah” (Psalms 67:2).

This answers the difficulty. Sovev in itself is beyond all distinctions, “darkness is as light,” but it does not reach the worlds on its own; it shines through memalei. So in the Arizal’s account of creation, after the tzimtzum left a vacated space (chalal), the light that surrounds the space enters it as the kav, a thin line, and through the kav reaches all that is within it.

Because the light of sovev was clothed in memalei, in Abba and Imma enclothing the arms of Arich Anpin, it could distinguish, strike Egypt and bring Israel “from slavery to freedom.”

The parenthesis lists further discussions in Torah Ohr. The discourse on Yaakov’s wrestling (Genesis 32:25) explains “If you soar like the eagle … from there I will bring you down” (Obadiah 1:4) and teaches that the encompassing lights, which come from Binah, repel the outer forces; the discourse “For with You is the source of life” (Psalms 36:10), on “Look down from Your holy dwelling … and bless Your people Israel” (Deuteronomy 26:15), explains that the seven lamps of the menorah shine from above upon every soul as an encompassing light, in which all are equal.

More is found in earlier discourses of Likkutei Torah on Parshas Tzav: at the end of the discourse on “This matzah,” on the Haggadah’s “I am He, and not another,” and in “And you shall eat, eating,” on “who has dealt wondrously with you” (Joel 2:26); and also at the end of the discourse “Set me as a seal” (Song of Songs 8:6). How sovev shines through memalei is explained in the Torah Ohr discourse “Let them bring royal apparel” (Esther 6:8), which contrasts sovev, which shines by leaping, with memalei, which descends level by level, and shows that the light of sovev is drawn down and shines within memalei.

The last reference concerns the Zohar at the beginning of Vayikra on Yeshayahu’s words to King Achaz, “Ask for yourself a sign … ask it in the depth, or in the height above” (Isaiah 7:11). Miracles come on two levels: those “in the depth,” from the final hei of the Name, Malchus, are clothed in natural events, while those “in the height above,” like the Exodus and the Splitting of the Sea, break the ways of nature entirely.

The higher miracles come from a revelation of sovev, yet even they shine through memalei. “In the height above” is the yud of the Name Havayah, Chochmah, the level of Abba; so this, too, is Abba and Imma enclothing the arms of Arich Anpin, as explained above.