ענין שבעת ימי המילואים הנה לכאורה אינו מובן…

This maamar continues the one before it in Likkutei Torah, on “And the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun” (Isaiah 30:26), which identified the “light of the sun” with the supernal “lad” of Atzilus: Yosef, whom the Torah calls a na’ar. Its own subject is the seven days of the Miluim, when Moshe inaugurated the Mishkan and the priests (Leviticus 8), but it opens by returning to a difficulty in that identification.

The earlier maamar placed the “lad” below the “groom.” Yet Psalms 19:5–6 says of the sun (shemesh) that it is “like a groom coming out of his canopy,” and the Zohar opens Parshas Beha’aloscha (3:148b) with this verse. So it is hard to see how the sun can be the lower “lad.”

The answer begins with a distinction. Shemesh is Z’eir Anpin itself, the six emotive Sefiros of Atzilus; the Ramaz, a commentator on the Zohar, adds that it is Z’eir Anpin’s light as it comes from Abba, Chochmah, since “light” signifies Chochmah. As such it is the “groom,” and the light that “breaks forth like the dawn” (Isaiah 58:8).

But Z’eir Anpin also extends down into the World of Yetzirah, the world of the angels; in the Kabbalists’ phrase, it “nests” there. In that lower state it is called a “lad.” The Gemara (Chagigah 13b) explains keruv, “cherub,” as “like a child” and speaks of “large faces and small faces”; the cherubim, Z’eir Anpin and Nukva as they appear below, are the “small faces.”

Since the sun and moon of this verse are lower, “lad”-like levels, they can be identified with the two “lads” of the previous maamar: Yosef, the supernal lad, and Yehoshua, the second, of whom the Sages said that his face was like the face of the moon.

The Arizal, in his Likkutei Torah on Isaiah, reads the verse as speaking of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva as they are enclothed in the lower worlds of Yetzirah and Asiyah, not in their own place. The reason is found in the Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, in its dictionary of Kabbalistic terms: Scripture has two words for the sun, shemesh and chamah, and they are not the same.

The Pardes explains that from the right side, Chesed, the sun is called shemesh, as in “a sun of righteousness with healing in its wings” (Malachi 3:20); from the left side, Gevurah, it is called chamah, from the word for heat, the burning of Gevurah’s fire. Isaiah’s verse uses the word chamah.

Gevurah is the attribute of contraction. When light is to shine into the lower worlds it must first be contracted, as the Sages say that G‑d “contracted His Shechinah between the poles of the Ark.” So chamah, the sun of the left side, is the light as it is contracted to reach Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

The same distinction is drawn elsewhere more simply. Shemesh is the luminary itself, the source from which radiance spreads out to light the earth.

Chamah is related to chamimus, “warmth”: it is not the sun itself but what the sun warms, its effect at a distance. In the divine order this is the radiance of Z’eir Anpin that reaches down into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, as distinct from Z’eir Anpin itself.

This settles the difficulty raised at the start: the radiance that extends downward, chamah, is the “lad,” while shemesh, the very essence of Z’eir Anpin in Atzilus, is the one compared to “a groom.”

The distinction also clarifies the promise that the sun’s light will be “sevenfold, like the light of the seven days.” To show how great that ascent is, the Alter Rebbe first sets out what the two “lads” do.

The “lads” are the links: in them and through them the Infinite Light enclothed in Atzilus is bound to the created beings, as the sun and moon give light “to the earth and to those who dwell upon it,” in the words of the morning prayer.

This is the problem they solve. Atzilus is G‑dly and infinite, while created beings are bounded and finite, and there is no ratio between them. The question is how any light or life-force can pass from Atzilus to the lower worlds at all.

The answer is a series of contractions. First the light within Z’eir Anpin, the shemesh, is contracted so that it shines in a reduced, measured form.

This contracted light is the chamah, the first “lad,” like Yosef, of whom it says “he was a lad with the sons of Bilhah” (Genesis 37:2). From there the light passes into Malchus, “the face of the moon,” recalling the Sages’ saying that Yehoshua’s face was like the face of the moon (Bava Basra 75a).

Malchus of Atzilus is the source, within Atzilus, of the three lower worlds, and it is the second “lad.” These two “lads” are also the two cherubim with their childlike faces. In the discourse “Six days you shall eat matzos,” later in this parsha (Likkutei Torah, Tzav 7:34–35), the Alter Rebbe explains that Malchus of Atzilus is called both “sea,” as it stays hidden within Atzilus, and “land,” as its light spreads into the created worlds.

Malchus is the intermediary between Atzilus and the lower worlds, and every intermediary must contain both sides: it is the lowest level of Atzilus and also the root and source of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Those two sides are what that discourse calls “sea” and “land.” The two levels of “lads” are to be understood in the same way, as the two aspects of the one link between Atzilus and the worlds below.

The same principle applies one stage higher. Atzilus is far above the lower worlds, but the Infinite One is even further above Atzilus, beyond all comparison.

So the light of the Infinite that comes from Adam Kadmon, the primordial level above Atzilus, can enter Atzilus only through contractions. The Alter Rebbe cites his Tanya (“Sefer shel Beinonim”), Part II, chapter 9, where a gloss speaks of the contractions in the Infinite Light and of Adam Kadmon that let the light be enclothed in the vessels of the Ten Sefiros.

This light is what Isaiah calls “the light of the seven days,” because it is Malchus of Adam Kadmon, which becomes Atik, the inner dimension of Keser, for Atzilus, just as Malchus of Atzilus becomes Atik for Beriah. Atik’s seven lower Sefiros, enclothed in Arich Anpin, the outer dimension of Keser, are “the seven days”; its first three Sefiros, which give them life, are “the light of the seven days.”

Atik, which comes from Malchus of Adam Kadmon, is itself an intermediary of the kind described above, with two aspects: the lowest level of the world above and the source of the world below.

Yet the distance between the levels is vast. The light of the sun and moon is only the radiance that Atzilus sends down to the lower worlds; “the light of the seven days” is the radiance of the Emanator, the Infinite One Himself, shining in Arich Anpin and through all the Sefiros of Atzilus.

That is why sun and moon are called “lads”: they stand for contraction and smallness. Keser of Atzilus, by contrast, is “the Ancient of Days,” whose hair is “like pure wool” in Daniel’s vision (Daniel 7:9), the image of an elder.

In the Time to Come all the worlds will rise. Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah will reach the level of Atzilus as it is now, and beyond it, as Isaiah promises, “He will make her wilderness like Eden” (Isaiah 51:3).

Then the sun and moon, the G‑dly light that shines in the lower worlds, will surpass even the present “light of the seven days,” the revelation of the Infinite in Atzilus.

In detail: the light of the sun is Yesod of Atzilus, Yosef, the “lad.” It will rise to the level of Yesod of Adam Kadmon, which is what gives to Malchus of Adam Kadmon, the Atik of Atzilus that is “the light of the seven days.” The sun will then stand above that light, as its giver.

The parenthesis adds that this level is also the inner dimension of Atik. The Ramaz, on the Zohar (2:188b), explains “the light of the seven days” in this way, and the Midrash supports him by calling it the light G‑d created at the beginning and hid away. That hidden light is the “face” that “shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:23), the inner dimension of Abba, which is the inner dimension of Atik.

Elsewhere this level is identified with Hadar, the eighth of the kings of Edom (Genesis 36:39). In the Arizal’s teaching the first seven kings, who “reigned and died,” are the World of Tohu, whose vessels shattered; Hadar, whose death the Torah does not record, stands above both the shattering and the rectification and is the power that rectifies Tohu.

The reader is referred to a later discourse on “For the conductor, on the Sheminis” (“the eighth”), a heading in Psalms. The moon too will become like the sun. The paragraph ends with a reference to the Arizal’s Etz Chaim, in the gate on Arich Anpin, chapter 2.

The Mishnah (Sotah 49b) lists “lads will whiten the faces of elders,” that is, shame them, among the signs of the generation before the Mashiach; the Alter Rebbe reads it as a promise: in the future the “lads,” the sun and moon of the lower worlds, will rise above the present “elders.” He then offers a second reading, from the discourse “I am black, yet comely” in Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim: the divine “hair” is described sometimes as white, “like pure wool” (Daniel 7:9), and sometimes as black, “black as a raven” (Song of Songs 5:11).

The “hairs” stand for the detailed laws (halachos) of the Torah. In Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim the Alter Rebbe explains that the laws of the positive commandments, which come from Chesed, are drawn from the white “supernal beard,” “like pure wool,” and the laws of the prohibitions from the locks “black as a raven.” In the same way an elder is white-haired, while the young are black-haired.

In human terms, youth is the time when the blood boils and the evil inclination entices most strongly, so it takes extra strength to “turn from evil,” to subdue the sitra achra, and to “sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you” (Yevamos 20a). The black-haired “lads” thus belong with the prohibitions, the service of restraint.

Hence the second meaning: the restraint of youth, keeping the prohibitions, draws down in the future a revelation higher than the white “hair … like pure wool.” That is “I am black, yet comely … like the curtains of Shlomo” (Song of Songs 1:5): the black itself becomes comely. In Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim the Alter Rebbe calls this level “the source of whiteness” (lavnunis), above even the white, and finds it in “the Lebanon” that Moshe longed to see (Deuteronomy 3:25), reading Levanon as a doubled form of lavan, “white.”

The same idea explains a verse about a “lad,” Proverbs 22:6: “Educate a lad according to his way; even when he grows old he will not depart from it.”

In Chinuch Katan, the opening of Part II of the Tanya, the Alter Rebbe asks: “according to his way” implies a way that is not the ultimate truth, so the promise that he will not depart from it even in old age seems to be no virtue.

The answer from this maamar: the days of youth are indeed a state of “small” intellect (mochin dekatnus) compared with old age, when understanding has matured. Yet the self-mastery (iskafya) of a young person, at the height of his strength and when his blood is hottest, has a special virtue: it draws down from a very high level.

That illumination, drawn down by the struggles of youth, stays with him for life, “even when he grows old.” The reader is referred to another discourse, on “Then the maiden shall rejoice in the dance, and young men and elders together” (Jeremiah 31:13).

Section 2 offers a second interpretation of Isaiah’s verse, based on Psalms 84:12, “For a sun and a shield is Havayah Elokim.” The Name Havayah, which brings all things into being, is the “sun,” and the Name Elokim, which conceals and limits it, is the “shield” that screens the sun.

Elokim is also the “moon,” which shines only with received light. Of the future it is said, “And Havayah will be to me as Elokim” (Genesis 28:21, from Yaakov’s vow); this will come about when the very essence of the Infinite Light, far above the Name Havayah, is revealed.

Relative to that revelation, Havayah itself will be as concealing and limited as Elokim is now relative to Havayah. The whole scale shifts upward by one degree.

That is the meaning of “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun”: in the future Elokim, the moon, will stand where Havayah, the sun, stands now, because Havayah will have become the “Elokim” of a higher revelation.

Elokim is the “lower unity” (yichuda tata’ah), the source of the lower worlds, in which the world is felt to exist and G‑d is present within it, hidden; it is called “the attribute of night,” and so it is the moon.

In the future Elokim will become like the sun, the attribute of day, the “higher unity” (yichuda ila’ah), in which the world is nothing before G‑d. And the sun of that time, the higher unity itself, will become “sevenfold, like the light of the seven days,” the level of Atik described earlier.

The Midrash on the night of the Exodus (Shemos Rabbah 18:11), on “It is a night of watching unto Havayah” (Exodus 12:42), contrasts this world and the future: the miracle in Egypt happened at night because it was a passing miracle.

In the future the night itself will become day, and the Midrash proves it from Isaiah’s verse about the light of the moon and the sun.

The Midrash ends with the hidden light of creation, reserved in Gan Eden. In the terms of this maamar, “night becomes day” means that Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, the realm of “night,” will become like Atzilus. At the end of the discourse on “And the number of the children of Israel shall be” (Hosea 2:1), the Alter Rebbe reads “for great is the day” to mean that in the future everything will become “day,” with no more alternation of light and darkness.

The same pair explains the two wedding blessings (Kesubos 8a): one ends “Who gladdens the groom and bride,” the last “Who gladdens the groom with the bride.” The sun is the “groom” of Psalms 19, and the moon, which receives its light from the sun, is the “bride.” In the discourse “To My mare” in Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim, the Alter Rebbe likens the Written Torah to the sun, the “groom,” and the Oral Torah, which receives from it as the moon from the sun, to the “bride.”

At creation “G‑d made the two great luminaries” (Genesis 1:16), equal in size, and afterwards the moon was diminished, as the Gemara relates (Chullin 60b). Its monthly waning and renewal resemble the monthly cycle of a married woman, apart from her husband in her time of niddah and afterwards becoming pure.

The time of reunion, when sun and moon unite, corresponds to the unity expressed in “Havayah is Elokim,” the joining of the two Names. This is the present blessing, “Who gladdens the groom and bride”: two who are joined but not equal.

In the future the moon will be restored to its original size, the “two great luminaries” equal in stature. This is the blessing “Who gladdens the groom with the bride,” in which they stand in one equal measure.

A parenthesis lists sources: the Zohar on the two great luminaries (1:20a), which calls them “a complete Name together, Havayah Elokim,” and the Midrash on “This month shall be for you” (Shemos Rabbah 15:21), which counts among the things G‑d will renew in the future that the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun. The end of the Midrash on Vayakhel is also listed.

The list continues with further places in the Midrash Rabbah, among them the end of Koheles Rabbah on “And the light is sweet” (Ecclesiastes 11:7), which speaks of the light of the World to Come, and with passages in all three volumes of the Zohar.

The Shelah (Shnei Luchos HaBris, by Rabbi Yeshayah Horowitz), in its introduction Beis David, is also cited. The Mishnah’s rule that “a maiden is married on the fourth day” (Kesubos 2a) is tied to creation: on the fourth day the luminaries were hung as two great equal lights, and on that same day the moon was diminished.

But the moon’s fall carries its rise, “though I fell, I have risen” (Micah 7:8): now there is union, “groom and bride,” and in the future, when the last blessing’s prayer “speedily may there be heard” is fulfilled, there will be full equality. So the wedding is on the fourth day; the reader is referred to the discourse on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov, and numbered the fourth part of Israel” (Numbers 23:10), where rova, “the fourth part,” is also read as “four”: will, thought, speech and action.

Section 3 turns to the main subject, the seven days of the Miluim, which these ideas make “a little” understandable. The sources: the Midrash at the beginning of Shemini (Vayikra Rabbah 11:4), which reads the “seven pillars” of wisdom’s house as the seven days of the Miluim; Koheles Rabbah on “Give a portion to seven, and also to eight” (Ecclesiastes 11:2); and the Zohar on Shemini (3:37a).

“To fill the hands” is the Torah’s idiom for installing a priest. The Zohar asks why Leviticus 8:33 says shivas yamim, literally “the seven of days,” and not “in seven days”; the Ramaz explains the difficulty: if the meaning were that G‑d would fill the priests’ hands during these seven days, the verse should have said “in the seven” or “seven days shall He fill.”

The Zohar answers that the priests are anointed with the holy anointing oil, which includes and nourishes all seven supernal days; that is why the verse says “seven days shall He fill.” The next paragraphs explain who or what does the “filling.”

A similar passage of the Zohar, on Parshas Emor (3:89a), speaks of “that supernal oil,” the holy anointing oil, “which completes all seven days,” and connects it with “for seven days shall He fill your hands.”

The Alter Rebbe draws the conclusion: the subject of “shall He fill” is the supernal oil with which the priests were anointed. The oil fills and completes the seven supernal days, and from them come the “filling,” the completion and the inauguration of the priests below.

The key is a passage of the Zohar (1:34a) on Isaiah 30:26. The first view there says that “the seven days” of the verse are the seven days of creation.

Rabbi Yehudah says they are the seven days of the Miluim, truly “fillings”: at that time the world returned to its completeness and the moon was not blemished. The Zohar adds that the moon was then not blemished “by the evil serpent.”

So the seven days of the Miluim belong to “the light of the seven days” of Isaiah’s verse, and they also correspond to the seven days of creation, as the first section explained.

Why are the Miluim like the days of creation? Before Adam’s sin the worlds stood far higher than they do now: Gan Eden was Adam’s “this world,” the place where he lived.

For us Gan Eden and the World to Come are the place of reward, so precious that Rabbi Meir said of his teacher Elisha ben Avuyah, “Better that he be judged and come to the World to Come” (Chagigah 15b). For Adam before the sin, that realm was the place of his service.

All the worlds stood correspondingly higher. The Arizal describes this in his Likkutei Torah (in the passage beginning “Let us explain the greatness of Adam before the sin,” according to the Kehot note) and in Pri Etz Chaim, in the gate on Shabbos: before the sin the World of Beriah stood in the place of Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus and then of Binah of Atzilus, and Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus in the place of Arich Anpin. A Kehot note reads the Pri Etz Chaim chapter as 22 rather than 23, and points also to chapter 20 there.

Hence the Arizal’s teaching that the seven days of creation are the seven lower Sefiros of Atik: in those days the light of Atik shone openly and the worlds were highly refined, and only after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge did they descend and the Shechinah withdraw from the earth.

The Mishkan repaired this: it made a dwelling for G‑d among the lower beings and revealed again “the light of the seven days.” The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 19:7) says that the Shechinah’s essential place was below, but when Adam sinned it withdrew to the first firmament, and later sins drove it higher, up to the seventh; corresponding to them, seven righteous men, from Avraham onward, brought it down step by step, until Moshe brought it down to earth.

That is why the inauguration days are called Miluim, a word for filling and completeness: they filled the lack left when the Shechinah withdrew.

In the future completeness, “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun”: the moon’s blemish will be filled and it will lack nothing. This is the ascent of Malchus, the moon, until sun and moon “use one crown,” the phrase of the moon’s complaint at creation, that two kings cannot use one crown (Chullin 60b).

In Kabbalistic terms, the Name Ban (52), associated with Malchus, will rise to its root in the Name Sag (63), associated with Binah, once all 288 sparks that fell in the shattering of the World of Tohu have been refined. Something of this already happened when the Mishkan was erected, which brought about ascents of Malchus.

The Miluim, then, fill the moon’s lack and blemish. Their filling comes from “the completion of them all,” the light of the seven days, but not in the full form promised for the future, which is the level of Atik itself.

In the Miluim, by contrast, the Zohar indicates that the filling came from Binah, not from Atik itself.

This is no contradiction, because Binah, relative to Z’eir Anpin, is itself like Atik and Keser. In the Arizal’s scheme the Keser of Z’eir Anpin is formed from Tiferes of Imma (Binah), so Binah is the “crown” above Z’eir Anpin; the Zohar sometimes calls Binah “Atika,” the Ancient One; and Atik reveals itself in Binah.

In Torah Ohr, at the beginning of Lech Lecha, the Alter Rebbe explains that Atik, the source of delight, is revealed in Binah and not in Chochmah, which remains a mere point until Binah unfolds it. At the end of the explanation on “Go forth and see” in Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim, he reads “Lift up your hands in holiness and bless” (Psalms 134:2) as a mother blessing her son: the “hand” of Arich Anpin is revealed in Imma, Binah, and through her the blessing reaches Z’eir Anpin.

This also explains the Zohar’s words about “that supernal oil … which completes all seven days.”

The oil is like “the light of the seven days”: a light above the seven days themselves, their life-force, which is the level of the first three Sefiros, as explained in the first section.

Here, in the Miluim, the seven days are in Binah, and the supernal oil is the light of Chochmah shining into Binah. Oil is a common image for Chochmah, so the oil is “the light of the seven days.”

That is why “shall He fill” is said of the oil. A parallel is the Zohar’s phrase (1:6a) “great and precious, and Ancient of Days”: the Eshel Avraham, a commentary on the Zohar, explains that “Ancient of Days” there means Yisrael Saba, a configuration of Abba, Chochmah.

For saba, “elder,” is a name of Atik Yomin, as in the phrase of the Idra Rabba, the Zohar’s “Great Assembly” (3:128b), “an elder whose mind is concealed.” So the light of Yisrael Saba enclothed in Binah is, from Z’eir Anpin’s perspective, an “Ancient of Days.”

The reason: Yisrael Saba, Tiferes of Abba, becomes the soul, the inner light, of the Keser of Z’eir Anpin, while that Keser itself is drawn from Tiferes of Imma, as the Arizal’s Etz Chaim explains.

This is why yemalei, “shall He fill,” is singular: its subject is the one light of the seven days, the oil.

Then comes the eighth day, the day the Mishkan was erected, of which the Sages say that it “took ten crowns” (Shabbos 87b). It resembles the future “sevenfold” light, which is Yesod of Adam Kadmon; in the seven days of the Miluim, by contrast, the days are in Binah, and their “light” is the radiance of Chochmah within Binah.

On the eighth day, however, the very essence of Abba, Chochmah itself, is revealed. The comparison is Shemini Atzeres, the “eighth day” after Sukkos, when the higher Chochmah is revealed close at hand.

As the discourse on Shemini Atzeres explains, Chochmah is ordinarily “far from me” (Ecclesiastes 7:23), shining from a distance, but on Shemini Atzeres it is drawn down openly.

One may say that the eighth day of the Miluim, like Shemini Atzeres, reveals the higher Chochmah itself. The Zohar (2:63b, 2:88a) speaks of “the seventh day” as the supernal day from which the six days are blessed, and Binah is that “seventh”; the eighth is then above Binah, that is, Chochmah.

This is “the depth of all” (amika dechula) of which the Zohar on Beshalach speaks: the deep source from which one who prays should draw blessing. The Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, explains it there in the name of the Arizal.

But the Zohar explains “the eighth day” as Malchus. The two readings fit together: the goal of all the blessing is to bring the seven supernal days down into Malchus, His sovereignty.

The reader is referred to the discourse “Return, O Israel” in Likkutei Torah (Shabbos Shuvah), on “For with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared” (Psalms 130:4): the purpose of creation is that there be a yesh, a being that feels itself to exist, and that this yesh be nullified before G‑d. That happens through Malchus, His sovereignty.

To reach that goal a still higher illumination is needed, from the level of “with You is forgiveness,” which is “with You is the source of life” (Psalms 36:10): as that discourse explains, forgiveness comes from above Chochmah, where no blemish reaches.

The eighth day of the Miluim is to be understood in the same way, as Chochmah reaching into Malchus; the Zohar on Tzav (3:34a) is cited. This is “With Chochmah He founded the earth” (Proverbs 3:19): the “earth” is Malchus, and the Zohar says “Abba founded the daughter,” Chochmah establishing Malchus.

The Pardes, in its entry “Shemini” (eighth), is also cited. A parallel is a discourse on “On the eighth day he sent the people away, and they blessed the king” (I Kings 8:66), said at the dedication of Shlomo’s Temple.

There it is explained that G‑d’s sovereignty is drawn down upon us through Torah study, because the Torah “issues from the higher Chochmah.” This is “the eighth day,” and from it comes “and they blessed the king,” the drawing-down of His Kingship. In that discourse (Likkutei Torah, Shemini Atzeres) the Alter Rebbe adds that “there is no king without a people”: through our service, above all the study of the Oral Torah, we draw His kingship upon us.

Another reading: “the eighth” recalls Hadar, the eighth king, whom the Idra Rabba (Zohar 3:142a) calls “supernal Chesed.” At the end of the discourse “And you shall make holy garments” in Torah Ohr, the Alter Rebbe explains that the blessing comes from the level of Moshe, above the chain of worlds; therefore, when the Mishkan was erected, Moshe blessed the people with “May the pleasantness …” (Psalms 90:17).

The goal of that blessing is the revelation of G‑d’s sovereignty, and the day the Mishkan was erected was the eighth day of the Miluim.

Section 4 offers another meaning of Miluim, “fillings”: drawing the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev) into the light that fills them (memalei). This too is “the light of the seven days,” because Keser is the intermediary that links the Emanator, the Infinite One, with the emanated Sefiros.

Two verses seem to clash: “I fill the heavens and the earth” (Jeremiah 23:24), where “I” means His very essence, and “The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3), where “glory” is only a radiance, “the radiance of His splendor.”

The resolution: His essence does fill heaven and earth, yet He is holy and separate from the worlds, which cannot grasp Him at all; what is revealed in them is only His radiance. In Likkutei Torah, in the discourses “And Korach took” and “And this is the commandment,” the Alter Rebbe identifies the two verses with the two modes of divine light: “I fill” is the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev), present everywhere alike, and “His glory” is the light that fills the worlds (memalei), the life-force they grasp.

Torah and mitzvos, and above all the Mishkan and its offerings, aim to draw down sovev itself, the “I fill” of G‑d’s essence, into open revelation, as will happen in the future when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Havayah” (Isaiah 11:9). In the discourse “And you shall know this day” (Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan), the Alter Rebbe explains that this future knowledge will be actual perception, beyond the faith of the present.

That is the meaning of the name “days of Miluim,” of “filling”: drawing “I fill the heavens and the earth,” the essence, into “The whole earth is full of His glory,” the revealed radiance.

Further references on “filling”: a discourse on “But as I live, and the glory of Havayah shall fill all the earth” (Numbers 14:21); the Zohar at the beginning of Vayikra (3:2b), which reads “and the glory of Havayah filled the Mishkan” as “full,” complete above and below, with the Mikdash Melech’s comment; and the discourse on “And He called to Moshe” earlier in Likkutei Torah, which explains that “full” glory as memalei filled from its source, sovev revealed in memalei.

Also cited: the Idra Rabba (Zohar 3:141b) on “the full Name,” the two Names Havayah Elokim together, and 139b; and the end of the discourse on “None shall miscarry … the number of your days I will fill” (Exodus 23:26), which explains “the number of your days” as the light within the days: the days themselves, the “garments,” are man’s to make, and G‑d promises to fill them with light.

In a parenthesis: G‑d is called “Who is exalted above the days of the world,” words from the morning blessing before the Shema (there, “exalted from the days of old”), read here as the light that encompasses all worlds; the Miluim draw that exalted level into “the days of the world,” the emotive attributes of Atzilus. The Idra (Zohar 3:134b) distinguishes “days of old” from “days of the world.”

This also explains “For seven days shall He fill your hands,” said of the priests: the kohen embodies Chesed, “the right arm,” and “the right hand draws near”; he is “the groomsman of the Queen,” who brings Israel close to G‑d. Inaugurating him requires a drawing-down from a higher level.

That level is the supernal oil, the light and life-force of the seven lower Sefiros. The Zohar at the beginning of Yisro (2:67b), which speaks of the kohen of the right side who serves before the supernal King, and the Ramaz there, show that from this level the kohen, the man of Chesed, receives the power to elevate.

The reader is referred to a discourse for Shemini Atzeres on “Havayah is your shade at your right hand” (Psalms 121:5): “your right hand” is the soul’s own love, and “Havayah is your shade” is the love from above that rests on it, “His right hand embraces me” (Song of Songs 2:6). At the end of the discourse “And you shall eat in plenty” (Likkutei Torah, Tzav), the Alter Rebbe explains “on the day he is anointed”: the anointing oil comes from above Chochmah, and the verse says “on the day” so that the light of that day be drawn into every day after it.

Further references follow, mostly on the theme of hands: “that I lifted up My hand” (Exodus 6:8), which the Alter Rebbe reads in Torah Ohr as the arms of Arich Anpin raising Malchus above even Chochmah; “the free-will offering of your hand” (Deuteronomy 16:10), the gift of the hand rather than the heart, because on Shavuos a will above the heart is revealed; “Lift up your hands in holiness” (Psalms 134:2); and an explanation on “And under His feet was like the work of a sapphire brick” (Exodus 24:10).

More on the Miluim is in the Zohar on Tzav (3:34b), which says that corresponding to the high priest above, complete with the seven supernal days, the priest below has seven days of Miluim; and at the end of the first volume of the Zohar.

Another reading of “Miluim” follows the Zohar (1:67a) on “The earth and its fullness are Havayah’s” (Psalms 24:1): “its fullness” is the Shechinah, and the moon is “full,” filled from the sun and complete on every side. The list of Zohar references continues in its second and third volumes.

A further explanation of Miluim draws on the Sages (Megillah 6a, Pesachim 42b) on Tyre’s words against Jerusalem, “I shall be filled, she is laid waste” (Ezekiel 26:2): when one is full the other is desolate, and Tyre was filled only from Jerusalem’s destruction. In Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe applies the same rule to each person, whose good and evil rise and fall in turn, so that one should not despair at a fall.

The Arizal explains, at the end of chapter 2 of the gate on the diminution of the moon, that Malchus of Atzilus was emanated in its root as a single point, and its nine other Sefiros come to it as an addition, from the Malchus within each of the nine Sefiros above it.

When the Temple was destroyed, those nine Sefiros were enclothed in the kelipos, and Malchus was left a mere point. That is “Tyre was filled”: the kelipah was filled from the ruin of holiness, as the Arizal himself says there.

The same rule, that one side is filled at the other’s expense, is the key to the Midrash Rabbah on Lamentations 2:3, “He cut off in fierce anger every horn of Israel,” to which the reader is referred.

The Midrash on Lamentations 1:6 (Eichah Rabbah 1:33) says: just as Israel went into exile only before a “full” pursuer, so they will be redeemed only through a “full” redeemer. The pursuer’s fullness is Tyre’s “filling” from Jerusalem’s ruin.

In a person’s service of G‑d the same happens when he puts all ten powers of his soul, intellect and emotions, into the desires of his animal soul. Then the animal soul and the evil inclination are “filled,” built into a complete structure of ten Sefiros.

Meanwhile the G‑dly soul is left a single point, like Malchus in exile: the point of faith. Even in Egypt, at the lowest state, “the people believed” (Exodus 4:31).

Even a thief breaking in calls on G‑d for help, as the saying quoted in the Ein Yaakov version of tractate Berachos has it; so he believes in G‑d and yet transgresses His will. That is because his faith is only an “encompassing” light and a “crown” above him, not drawn inward into his mind and heart. At the beginning of Devarim in Likkutei Torah the Alter Rebbe uses the same saying: faith is an acknowledgment “from afar,” while the revelation drawn inward comes through Torah and mitzvos.

The cure is Daas, knowledge that draws faith inward, so that the nine Sefiros spread out from the point into the mind and the heart. Then the animal soul weakens of itself, as darkness gives way to light.

This is “I shall be filled, she is laid waste” in reverse. Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, read as yirah shalem, “complete awe” (as in “Fear Havayah, you His holy ones,” Psalms 34:10), is built up, and the emotions of the animal soul melt “as wax melts” before fire (Psalms 68:3).

So the Sages said (Arakhin 13b) that the harp of the Temple had seven strings, that of the days of Mashiach eight, and that of the World to Come ten, “upon a ten-stringed instrument.” The soul is “the lamp (ner) of Havayah” (Proverbs 20:27), and kinor, “harp,” is ner plus kaf-vav, 26, the numerical value of the Name Havayah revealed in the soul, as the Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkun 21) reads it.

This is like “Everyone who is called by My Name” (Isaiah 43:7) and “You who cleave to Havayah” (Deuteronomy 4:4): G‑d’s Name is in the soul. The ten-stringed harp means that all Ten Sefiros will shine openly and permanently in the soul, when “the earth shall be full of knowledge.”

It is also written, “Havayah will circumcise your heart” (Deuteronomy 30:6), removing what covers it. Correspondingly above, Knesses Yisrael, Malchus, will hold her Ten Sefiros permanently, “a tent that shall not be moved” (Isaiah 33:20), as the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on Zechariah explains.

Hence the Sages’ conclusion (Eichah Rabbah 1:33): Israel will be redeemed only through a “full” redeemer. The days of the Miluim are understood in the same way, as a “filling,” so that “the glory of Havayah shall fill all the earth” (Numbers 14:21).

The aim is to draw the blessing into Malchus, so that it lacks nothing, like the land in which “you shall not lack anything (kol)” (Deuteronomy 8:9). The word kol, “everything,” is also in “from an abundance of everything (kol)” (Deuteronomy 28:47); the next paragraph reads kallah, “bride,” as the one who receives from kol.

Malchus is called kallah, “bride,” because she receives from the level called kol, “all.” This is the meaning of “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun.”

The moon’s diminution is the withdrawal of the nine Sefiros of Malchus, as Etz Chaim explains. In the future she will be “a tent that shall not be moved” (Isaiah 33:20), holding them permanently; this is “like the light of the sun,” whose light is constant, without waxing or waning.

The days of the Miluim gave a semblance of this permanent light.

After a reference to the Zohar on Pekudei (2:235a), the Alter Rebbe turns to the end of Isaiah’s verse: “on the day that Havayah binds up the breach of His people, and heals the wound of His blow.”

“The breach of His people” is Tyre’s filling from Jerusalem’s ruin, and it comes from what Jeremiah describes: “they have forsaken Me, the source of living waters, to hew themselves cisterns, broken cisterns” (Jeremiah 2:13).

The Midrash (Shemos Rabbah 42:8) links the “two evils” with the first two of the Ten Commandments, “I am” and “You shall have no other,” broken by the golden calf; Shir HaShirim Rabbah (1:6) explains that they did one evil as grievous as two.

“Broken cisterns” are the opposite of “a well of living waters” (Song of Songs 4:15). In the discourse on “Spring up, O well” (Numbers 21:17) in Likkutei Torah, Chukas, the Alter Rebbe explains that the soul, descending from above into the body, becomes a well whose waters spring up again from below. Broken cisterns are, rather, attachment to physical desires.

Broken cisterns are called “broken” because desires come from the shattering of the vessels of Tohu. References follow to the Zohar on Va’eschanan (3:266a), the Ramaz there, and Me’orei Or, a Kabbalistic dictionary.

So the “two evils” mean that by their deeds they caused Tyre to be filled from Jerusalem’s ruin, one evil as grievous as two. That is “the breach of My people,” which comes from hewing broken cisterns.

In the future G‑d will bind up the shever, the breach, and the shever itself will turn into sever, hope: the same letters, read with a sin.

So the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 91:1; the Kehot note corrects the chapter number to 91) reads “there was shever in Egypt” (Genesis 42:1) with “whose hope (sivro) is in Havayah his G‑d” (Psalms 146:5). The cause of the breach is the evil inclination, which the Sages (Sukkah 52a) find in “the northern one I will remove far from you” (Joel 2:20); it is what leads people to “hew cisterns.”

Then “He heals the wound of His blow.” The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 10:4) says that benos shuach, a kind of fig that takes three years to bear fruit (see Mishnah Shevi’is 5:1), bore fruit on the very day of creation, and that in the future G‑d will heal this “wound of the world.”

The Rash, Rabbi Shimshon of Sens, in his commentary on Mishnah Demai, explains that the tree Adam ate from was called benos shuach because it brought a shuchah upon the world.

Shuchah can mean a pit dug in the ground, as in “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit” (Proverbs 22:14), which recalls the “broken cisterns” that people hew for themselves.

It can also mean being bowed down and humbled, as in “Man (adam) is bowed down and man is brought low” (Isaiah 2:9), which the Alter Rebbe reads as Adam, whose stature was diminished by the sin. This too follows the pattern of “I shall be filled, she is laid waste”: what holiness lost, the other side gained.

So it says, “For our soul is bowed down to the dust” (Psalms 44:26). The Tree of Knowledge is called benos shuach for this reason, and it is the root of the animal soul, which brings the G‑dly soul low and draws it after its desires.

In the future the Tree of Knowledge will be rectified and joined to the Tree of Life, and the benos shuach will again bear fruit at once, as on the day of creation.

Then the revelation below will be like that above. As Isaiah says, “Your husband is your Maker … He shall be called the G‑d of all the earth” (Isaiah 54:5): G‑dliness will be revealed in this physical earth. And “He will answer us on the day we call” (Psalms 20:10): the answer will come at once.

This immediacy is what “bearing fruit at once” means. The reader is referred to a discourse on “If the firstborn son is of the hated one” (Deuteronomy 21:15). Then, at last, “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun.”