הים ראה וינוס כו׳

The maamar opens with two verses of Psalm 114, the psalm of the Exodus said in Hallel: at the Exodus “the sea saw and fled” and “the mountains danced like rams.” The question is why one and the same revelation made the mountains dance and made the sea run away.

The Shelah (Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz, called after his work Shnei Luchos HaBris), in the section of that work called tractate Pesachim, answers that fleeing stands for serving G‑d out of awe, and dancing for serving Him out of love. These are the two ways of standing before a king: the minister, who serves out of love, and the servant, who serves out of awe.

A minister serves the king with joy, so when the king appears his joy only grows. The “mountains” are the middos, the emotive attributes, of Atzilus, the root of the souls called “brothers” of the Omnipresent (HaMakom, “the Place,” a name of G‑d); such a soul stands, in the Talmud’s phrase, “like a minister before the king,” and that is why the mountains danced.

A servant serves out of awe, so when the king is revealed his dread and fear become even greater. The “sea” is the root of the souls that stand “like a servant before the king,” and therefore at the revelation it “saw and fled.”

The parenthesis first sends the reader to the end of the Torah Ohr discourse “Sing and rejoice, O daughter” (in Mikeitz), where the Alter Rebbe explains that “my sister,” the masters of Torah, who refine, are “like a minister before the king,” while the “daughter,” the mitzvos, which are refined, is “like a servant before the king.” It then quotes the Midrash: when the sea fled, Moshe asked it why, and it answered, in the words of Psalm 114:7, “Before the G‑d of Yaakov,” out of awe of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is the servant’s response, like Israel at Sinai, who saw, trembled and stood at a distance.

The parenthesis goes on to list other places that discuss the verse: the Midrash Rabbah on Bamidbar, where the sea fled before the King but the wilderness welcomed Him; the Midrash on Eikev, where the sea saw the Name engraved on the staff, or G‑d’s hand; Bereishis Rabbah, end of section 87, where the sea split in the merit of Yosef, who “fled” from sin; and two passages of the Zohar that say the sea saw Yosef’s coffin and fled.

To explain the verses more deeply, the Alter Rebbe first explains the seventh day of Pesach, the day the sea split. Pri Etz Chaim, from the teachings of the Arizal, says that this day is also the “birth” of the souls; in Iggeres HaKodesh 20 (in the Tanya) the Alter Rebbe likewise writes that the creation of the souls as separate beings is called “birth,” like the splitting of the Sea of Reeds.

The verse about Israel walking “on dry land in the midst of the sea” alludes to this birth: as the maamar will explain, the souls come out of the concealing “sea” into revealed existence, “dry land.” Before that, the souls “arose in thought,” as the Sages say that Israel was first in G‑d’s thought, and in that state they are called “brothers and friends” of the Holy One, blessed be He.

In Kabbalah, “the Holy One, blessed be He” (Kudsha Brich Hu) names the Infinite Light as it is enclothed in the middos of Atzilus. The souls, rooted in the thought of these attributes, are therefore their “brothers.”

The Infinite One in Himself, as Eliyahu’s prayer in the introduction to the Tikkunei Zohar (Patach Eliyahu) says, is not any of the attributes, and no name can be given to His Essence. Names belong only to His revelation, so the Name Havayah describes Him as revealed through the Sefiros: the yud is Chochmah, the hei is Binah, and so on.

At their root the souls of Israel are six hundred thousand, and they are drawn from six hundred thousand “letters” of the supernal thought; that is why they are “brothers” of the Holy One, blessed be He, the middos. The analogy is a person thinking an idea: the letters of his thought are one with the idea itself, not a garment apart from it, and likewise the thought of an emotion is one with the emotion.

So in Atzilus the souls are G‑dliness itself, as the Tikkunei Zohar says that there “He, His life-forces and His vessels are one.”

This parenthesis lists discourses on the souls’ oneness with G‑d. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (“Remember the Shabbos day”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the angels come from G‑d’s “speech,” a garment that goes out from its source, whereas Israel “arose in thought,” the inner garment that stays one with the soul; and in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (“I am black”), the “daughters of Jerusalem” are the souls before their descent, still included in their Source. The discourse on “I sleep” is cited for rayasi, “my companion,” a word from the same root as re’im, “friends”; as the Kehot note suggests, it is the one in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, that reads rayasi as “my sustainer,” for Israel, as it were, sustain their Father in heaven.

For a soul to exist as a created, separate being, brought into existence from actual nothingness, something must happen to it, since in Atzilus it is G‑dliness itself. Even calling it “letters of thought” is only a way of speaking that the ear can take in, for, as Isaiah says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts”: G‑d’s “thought” is not like ours.

What makes the soul a separate being is Malchus, G‑d’s attribute of sovereignty. In Iggeres HaKodesh, in the letter that opens “He and His life-forces are one,” the Alter Rebbe explains that separate existence comes from Malchus of Atzilus, for “there is no king without a people.”

Malchus is called a “garment” because it hides G‑dliness, and only under that cover can anything appear to exist in its own right. Psalm 93 pictures the reigning King robed in majesty; the maamar reads the robe as the concealment that kingship itself brings: because “Havayah reigns,” “He has garbed Himself.”

A king needs subjects who are distinct from him, over whom he is exalted and who stand in dread of him; a father of a hundred sons is still not a king. So kingship by its very nature requires separate beings, and its “garment” is what produces them.

This concealing role is why Malchus is called “sea” (the Kehot note points to the Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, in its Gate of Appellations, under that entry). The parenthesis refers to the verse “and the sea was upon them, above,” said of the great basin in the Temple that Shlomo built, which stood on twelve oxen; in Likkutei Torah, Balak (“Who has counted the dust of Yaakov”), the Alter Rebbe explains that because the sea stood high above them the oxen were twelve, divided and separate, just as G‑d’s exalted Malchus brings separate beings into existence.

The Talmud says that everything on dry land also exists in the sea, only hidden under the water. Earlier in Likkutei Torah, Tzav (“Six days you shall eat matzos”), the Alter Rebbe explains sea and dry land above as the hidden world and the revealed world: Malchus of Atzilus is called “sea” as it covers what it holds, and “land” as its light spreads out to give the worlds life.

So too above: the letters of the utterances of creation, such as “Let there be light” and “Let there be a firmament,” which give life to all the worlds, are themselves in Atzilus. Malchus, the “sea,” covers them, so that the creatures that come into being from them do not see them.

Were those letters revealed, the creatures would dissolve into their source, the physical into the spiritual, just as the sun’s rays are swallowed up and unseen within the sun itself and appear as something only away from it.

In the same way, a soul or an angel could not exist as a separate being, even one that loves G‑d, if G‑dliness were openly seen. Their very existence depends on G‑dliness not being visible.

This concealment is the work of Malchus: the Alter Rebbe calls it a great principle that Malchus is what brings a “something” into being, as he said above.

That is why Malchus is called “the lower mother” (Imma Tata’ah), “the Matron” and “mother of the children”: like a mother, it brings separate beings into existence, and Tanya, chapter 52, to which the maamar points, says that from it the souls of Atzilus are emanated and the souls of Beriah created. The parenthesis adds the explanation of “My dove” in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, where “my fair one” refers to the mitzvos, which make the “royal garment” of Malchus, and the discourse “So that you may fear” in Vaeschanan.

Since Malchus is the “mother,” the soul’s becoming a “something” is a gestation within her. On Shemini Atzeres, the festival that closes Sukkos, when we begin to say “He causes the rain to fall,” the souls are drawn into the “womb” of Nukva, that is, Malchus, and stay there seven months, until the seventh day of Pesach, their “birth.”

The physical analogy: a child forms from a drop only through months in the womb, nourished by what its mother eats and drinks. That nourishment gives it the life-force that makes it a formed being of its own.

So too the soul of Atzilus, which is “nothing,” pure G‑dliness, becomes a “something” through its months within Malchus. Its “eating and drinking” there means the supernal lights drawn down into Malchus during that time.

Birth itself, the soul’s coming out of concealment into revelation, needs more than the ordinary flow of light: a light from above the whole chain of descending worlds must shine into Malchus. That is what happens on the seventh day of Pesach.

The parenthesis points to explanations elsewhere of the Zohar on Pinchas on “As the deer longs,” which tells of the hind whose womb is closed when her time comes to give birth, until the Holy One, blessed be He, sends a serpent to open it. It also points to the verse of the Hebrew midwives, where “the one” (ha’achas) is read as hei achas, “one hei”: the first hei of the Name Havayah, which stands for Binah, through which the power of birth is drawn down.

This is clarified by what Torah Ohr explains at the beginning of Parshas Lech Lecha about the hei added to Avram’s name to make him Avraham. There the Alter Rebbe explains that the added hei is the “upper hei,” Binah, in which the light of Atik is revealed, for every spreading forth and descent of levels comes through a higher level.

Hence the verse that “Havayah drove back the sea with a strong east wind.” Within the ordinary chain, from intellect to emotion and from thought to speech, nothing can pass from “nothing” to “something”; that needs sovev, the light that surrounds all four worlds alike, since before it every level is equal.

The “east wind” is this revelation from above the order of the worlds, and it is what split the sea: the concealing sea exists only within the chain of descent, so when a light from above that chain shines, the sea turns into revealed dry land. Earlier in Likkutei Torah, Tzav (“Six days you shall eat matzos”), the Alter Rebbe reads ruach kadim, “east wind,” as a wind from Kadmono shel olam, “the Primordial One of the world”: kadim, “east,” shares its root with kadmon, “primordial.”

The Zohar reads G‑d’s words to Moshe at the sea, “Why do you cry out to Me?”, as saying that the matter “depends on Atika,” the Ancient One, the inner level of Keser above the order of the worlds; from there comes the power of birth.

The maamar now returns to the verse. “Mountains” are the upper emotive Sefiros of Atzilus, Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, and “hills,” the verse’s second image, are the same three in Beriah, or the lower three of Atzilus, Netzach, Hod and Yesod (the Kehot note points to the Pardes Rimonim and to Etz Chaim for this).

All of these stand above the “sea,” Malchus, the tzimtzum that conceals, so when sovev, the light that encompasses all worlds, was revealed, they could be absorbed into it, as a candle’s flame is lost in a torch. In the terms of the Kabbalah, the lights of the World of Tikkun (the ordered world in which the divine lights are held in vessels) left their vessels and were included in the encompassing light; that is the mountains’ “dancing.”

There are ascents of the worlds every Shabbos as well, but they are orderly: each world rises one step, Asiyah into Yetzirah, Yetzirah into Beriah. That orderly rising is called “walking.”

“Dancing” is a leap that ignores the steps altogether, possible only through sovev, which is above all order. Rams “have no knowledge,” and the dancing likewise comes from a root above Daas, above reason. The parenthesis points to Torah Ohr, Megillas Esther (“And Esther spoke again”), where the Alter Rebbe explains the Midrash in which G‑d asks, “What is the voice of the kid?”: Israel cried out in their distress without understanding, like a kid crying after its mother, and yet that cry is above daas.

The sea is Malchus, called in Aramaic “the end of all levels,” and its task is to conceal. It could not be absorbed into the light the way the mountains were, because concealing is what it is; so it “fled”: the concealment itself moved away and disappeared.

The analogy is a person whose faculties run in order from intellect down to speech: when a flood of light from above his intellect comes upon him, his speech stops and he falls silent.

This is why Moshe was “heavy of mouth,” and why prayer is said in silence: a light above intellect silences speech. The parenthesis points to Likkutei Torah on “These are the journeys” for the forty-two journeys and the forty-nine days of the Omer.

Psalm 114 answers its own question: the sea fled and the mountains danced “before the Master,” He who turns rock into a pool of water. The maamar reads this as the revelation of sovev, which turned the flint, a stone that strikes fire, into water.

Fire turned to water is Gevurah turned into Chesed, the two opposites nullified out of their separate existence, as in the known teaching that G‑d “makes peace” between Michael, the angel of water, and Gavriel, the angel of fire. This happened on Pesach, whose very name means “passing over”: a leap beyond order, given from above with no arousal from below, as G‑d came “leaping over the mountains.”

Afterward Israel had to act from below: counting the Omer for forty-nine days “from the morrow of the Shabbos” is the arousal from below. Through it the revelation came “face to face” at the Giving of the Torah on Shavuos.

The maamar closes by pointing to the discourse in Likkutei Torah on “In the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting,” which explains the Midrash on Bamidbar about the sea that fled. There the theme of “The sea saw and fled” is taken further.