להבין מ״ש בהגדה מצה זו שאנו אוכלים ע״ש…

The maamar opens with a question on the Haggadah. Holding up the matzah, we say that we eat it because the dough of our ancestors did not have time to rise before the King of the kings of kings revealed Himself and redeemed them, as the verse says they baked unleavened cakes “for they were driven out of Egypt” (Exodus 12:39).

The Haggadah’s reason seems to imply that without the haste they would have eaten leavened bread. Yet already in Egypt, in the commandments that begin “On the tenth of this month,” they were told to eat the Pesach offering with matzah, so matzah was commanded before any haste. The Tzemach Tzedek notes (Or HaTorah, Bo) that Abudarham, the fourteenth-century commentator on the prayers, asks a similar question in his order of the Haggadah and calls its answer forced.

There is also a command for all generations: seven days with no leaven in the house and matzah eaten everywhere (Exodus 12:19–20). The Torah presents these seven days as a remembrance of the Exodus, “for in haste you went out” (Deuteronomy 16:3), and the Alter Rebbe asks how that can be.

The difficulty is that the Gemara (Pesachim 96b) derives that for the Pesach of Egypt the prohibition of chametz lasted only one day, since “no chametz shall be eaten” is placed next to “Today you are going out.” If Egypt had only one day of that law, what do seven days commemorate?

The answer begins here: because the obligation in Egypt was for one day only, the matzah they ate on the following days was not commanded; it came about only because they were driven out in haste.

This is how the Mizrachi, Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi’s supercommentary on Rashi, explains Deuteronomy 16:3: the Haggadah’s reason speaks of the matzah of the remaining days, and G‑d, knowing in advance that they would leave in haste, commanded seven days for later generations to recall that hurried departure. With the plain question settled, the maamar turns to the inner meaning.

To explain what eating matzah does spiritually, the Alter Rebbe first explains what a festival is. The prayers call the festivals “appointed times for joy,” and joy is their very essence.

The Torah commands “And you shall rejoice in your festival” (Deuteronomy 16:14). In Kabbalistic terms, Yom Tov is the time when the intellect of Imma, Binah, “the mother,” is revealed; Hallel alludes to this with “He settles the barren woman of the house as a joyful mother of children” (Psalms 113:9). The Rebbe Maharash (Hemshech Vekachah 5637) adds that the revelation brings joy and joy in turn brings revelation, which is why Hallel is said on Yom Tov.

Shabbos stands higher than Yom Tov: on Shabbos the intellect of Abba, Chochmah, “the father,” is revealed, as in the Arizal’s Pri Etz Chaim, to which the Kehot note points. Yet Shabbos has no revealed joy like the joy of Yom Tov, which seems strange if it is higher. The Rebbe explains (Sichos, Shabbos Parshas Tavo 5748) that Shabbos does not lack joy; its joy is absorbed in its greater delight, “like a candle at noon.”

To resolve this, the Alter Rebbe first defines the intellect of Imma. He recalls a known principle: the Infinite Light is revealed in two different ways.

The first way is hishtalshelus, the ordered chain of levels, in which each level is drawn from the one above it as an effect from its cause. Each step is a dimmer radiance of the one before it.

As in a person, where intellect gives rise to feelings and feelings to thought, each stage grows out of the stage before it; so the whole chain is called “something from something.” The second way is above the chain: truly “something from nothing,” from an absolute ayin that bears no relation to what comes from it.

Within the chain of cause and effect, an effect can draw near to its cause, rising from below to above. When it does, it comes to comprehend the cause from which it came.

That comprehension brings great joy, like the joy of a prince freed from captivity who comes to see his father’s face. The Alter Rebbe uses the same image in Tanya, chapter 31, for the joy of the soul leaving its exile.

The effect’s joy comes from the contrast: it had descended through the chain, far from its source and hidden behind many levels, and now the light of its cause is “openly revealed” to it. The words behigalos niglos echo Michal’s phrase in II Samuel 6:20.

The joy depends on comprehension: the effect grasps how far it has come, “from darkness to great light, from mourning to festival, from bondage to redemption.” These are the words with which the Haggadah thanks G‑d for the Exodus.

On Yom Tov “the akeres of the house” becomes “a joyful mother of children.” The Alter Rebbe reads akeres in two ways: as akarah, a barren woman, and as one who lives in the ikarei, the hidden foundations, of the house, as in the Gemara (Pesachim 118b), where Knesses Yisrael says, “Your children have made me like a weasel that lives in the foundations of houses.”

The “barren woman” is Malchus, which all week is enclothed in the three lower worlds and even in kelipas nogah, the realm in which good and evil are mixed; there she is hidden and bears no children. He cites this from Shushan Sodos (folio 68a, according to the Kehot note), a Kabbalistic work by a disciple of the Ramban.

On Yom Tov Malchus rises into Atzilus, to Binah, “the mother of children.” Binah is comprehension, here the comprehension of the Infinite Light as it is revealed on the festival.

On the festival the Infinite Light comes down through the chain of levels so that it opens “a path and an entry” for the mind: one can grasp what is revealed and see how very great the revelation is. Grasping this turns sorrow into joy, in the words of Esther 9:22, and those who walked in darkness “have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1).

This is the Infinite Light revealed as yesh, as something that exists for the mind and can be comprehended, so that one has some grasp of “the light of the King’s face” (Proverbs 16:15).

An analogy: the soul in the World to Come. After leaving the physical body it rises to its source, the higher Gan Eden, and there it “enjoys the radiance of the Shechinah,” as the Talmud (Berachos 17a) describes the World to Come.

The soul’s wondrous pleasure is the meaning of “to cause those who love me to inherit yesh” (Proverbs 8:21), Wisdom’s promise to those who love her: the Infinite Light is revealed as yesh, something the soul can comprehend and therefore enjoy. Its delight comes from understanding how far it has come, from darkness to great light.

Psalms 66:6 recalls Israel crossing the sea and the river on foot (beregel); the maamar reads beregel as “on the festival,” the regel, one of the three pilgrimage festivals. The river that “goes out from Eden” (Genesis 2:10) is Binah, and on each festival there is an ascent to it, the source of joy; so “there we shall rejoice in Him.”

A parenthesis refers to another discourse, on Psalms 118:7, for more on this. Binah, the World to Come and the higher Gan Eden are all one level, the intellect of Imma, where the souls take delight according to what they can comprehend.

The intellect of Abba is different. Job’s words, plainly a question, “where can wisdom be found?”, are read as “Chochmah is found from ayin” (Job 28:12): Chochmah comes from ayin, “nothing,” the term for what cannot be grasped at all, far above Binah and comprehension. In Likkutei Torah, Pekudei, the Alter Rebbe explains that such a level is known only by negation: one knows only that it cannot be grasped.

Through Abba the Infinite Light is revealed as it is “beyond the grasp of any thought” (Tikkunei Zohar). Since there is nothing there to comprehend, there is nothing to “enjoy” in the way the souls enjoy Binah.

What Shabbos reveals is not comprehension but bittul: comprehension itself is set aside, and the souls are nullified in their very existence within the Infinite Light that no thought can grasp.

This explains the saying that Torah study on Shabbos was permitted only “with difficulty”; the Kehot note traces it to the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbos 15:3), where one view holds that Shabbos was given for eating and drinking and Torah study was only “permitted” on it. The Torah “comes forth from Chochmah” (Zohar), and nafkas, “comes forth,” means goes outside, as in the Aramaic nafkas levar; so the Torah is only a radiance that has emerged from Chochmah.

The essence of Chochmah is far above the Torah, which is only its outer radiance. The parenthesis refers to Iggeres HaKodesh 19 in Tanya, which brings the Arizal on the saying that the Torah is the “fallen fruit” (novlos) of supernal Chochmah, and to an explanation on a verse that begins “My dove” in the Song of Songs.

Joy and delight are felt only where there is comprehension, where one grasps the contrast between the darkness one came from and the great light above. Without comprehension there is no felt ascent, and so nothing to rejoice over in this way.

The joy is greatest when one first understands how low one had fallen and then rises from the lowest place to the highest; the greater the distance, the greater the joy.

This kind of joy belongs only to the intellect of Imma, where the Infinite Light is revealed as yesh and comprehension, so that one can grasp how high it is.

In the intellect of Abba, which reveals what is above comprehension, “above” and “below” do not apply; they are equal. In the words of Psalms 139:12, “even darkness does not darken for You … as darkness, so light,” and so there is no ascent to rejoice over.

Psalms 139:12 says kachashechah ka’orah, with the comparative letter kaf on both words: “as darkness, so light.” Had it meant only that darkness is like light, it would have said chashechah ka’orah, with one kaf, and that would teach only that even darkness does not darken before G‑d.

The double kaf makes the comparison run both ways: not only does darkness not darken, so that it equals the light, but the light too equals the darkness.

The proof is from the Tikkunei Zohar (135b): all lights are darkened before the Cause of causes, and even supernal Keser, a clear and brilliant light, is “black” before Him. Before the Infinite, the highest light counts no more than darkness.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse on “I am black, yet comely” (Song of Songs 1:5) and its reading of Achashverosh, “who reigned from Hodu to Kush” (Esther 1:1): there (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 6b) Hodu is read as hod, splendor, and Kush as darkness, and the Gemara’s view that the two lay side by side as the supernal darkness in which the light is hidden. The Alter Rebbe then suggests that the two kafs stand for two levels: the kaf of ka’orah, “as light,” is supernal Keser, as in the discourse on “My dove, in the clefts of the rock” (Song of Songs 2:14), where kaf stands for the soul’s highest encompassing level.

The kaf of kachashechah, “as darkness,” is the opposite pole: in the Zohar (1:3a), when the letter kaf asked to be the letter of creation, G‑d refused, because with it is “destruction decreed” (kalah venecheratzah), and kaf also begins kares, “cutting off,” as listed in the Kabbalistic lexicon Me’orei Or. Before the Infinite Light both kafs, the Crown and destruction, are equal: “as darkness, so light.”

This is why the level is called “He made darkness His hiding place” (Psalms 18:12). It is “darkness” not because it lacks light but because nothing there is revealed to comprehension; there is only the nullification of comprehension.

Therefore the revelation of this level brings no joy or delight: there is nothing to grasp, and no felt ascent from low to high, only arrival at a level where above and below are the same.

Another parenthesis applies this to the Israelites’ question in the desert, “Is Havayah in our midst, or not?” (Exodus 17:7), where hayesh is “is there” and ayin is “not.” Read in this light, they asked whether the revelation was from within the chain of levels, the yesh of “to cause those who love me to inherit yesh” (Proverbs 8:21), or from above the chain, from ayin.

The Zohar (3:158b) reads the question this way, asking whether the land’s fruit was like that of other lands or drawn from Atika Kadisha, “the Holy Ancient One,” the innermost level of Keser. Proverbs 4:5 says kneh, “acquire,” twice, for Chochmah and for Binah, and twice kneh (155) equals 310, the numerical value of yesh; an earlier discourse of this parsha (Likkutei Torah, Tzav 10a) adds that yesh is the lower half of Keser’s 620 lights, the root of Chochmah and Binah.

Yet ayin is not wholly outside Chochmah: it is the highest point within Chochmah, which cleaves to its source, as in “Chochmah is found from ayin.” The references point to the Zohar on “like the good oil” (Psalms 133:2), oil that flows from Atika Kadisha, and to a discourse that contrasts oil, which “makes the face shine” (Psalms 104:15), with wine.

In the discourse on the Song of Songs, “your love is better than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2) is explained this way: wine “gladdens Elokim” (Judges 9:13), the joy of Binah, while dodecha, “your love,” is above joy, like the level of Shabbos described above. In the discourse on “There are sixty queens” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 39a) the Alter Rebbe explains that supernal Chochmah is called a “spring,” still hidden, as against the river of Binah, and that in the future the spring itself will go out “from the house of Havayah” (Joel 4:18). The last reference is to the discourse on “You shall draw water with joy” (Isaiah 12:3).

This paragraph summarizes the first section. It recalls the question about “In the evening you shall eat matzos” (Exodus 12:18), commanded before the Exodus, against the Haggadah’s reason that the dough did not have time, and the definition of Yom Tov as “appointed times for joy.”

It recalls the verses used for Yom Tov, “He settles the barren woman of the house” and “Through the river they shall pass on foot,” and the definition of Shabbos as the revelation of “Chochmah is found from ayin,” which no thought can grasp.

The principle behind them: the chain of cause and effect is rooted in Binah, “the river that goes out from Eden,” and there comprehension brings joy. Above the chain is Eden itself, of which it is said “No eye has seen” (Isaiah 64:3): the Gemara (Berachos 34b) says this is Eden, which no creature’s eye has seen, and proves from “a river went out of Eden to water the garden” that Eden is above the garden.

Isaiah 58:13 calls Shabbos oneg, “delight,” and the letters of ענג are the initials of Eden, Nahar (river) and Gan (garden), a teaching the Kehot note traces to the Tikkunei Zohar. Shabbos is drawn from Eden, which is above the river, Binah; so Shabbos is delight rather than joy.

Section 2 begins. “You shall keep the Shabbos, for it is holy” (Exodus 31:14) is read to mean that Shabbos in itself is kodesh, the supernal holiness of Chochmah, the intellect of Abba revealed on Shabbos.

Yom Tov is called mikra kodesh, read here as “a calling of holiness”: it receives only a glimmer of that supernal holiness, the lowest Sefiros of Abba (Netzach, Hod and Yesod) enclothed within the intellect of Imma. Even the joy of Yom Tov, which is the joy of Binah, needs something of Abba drawn into it. The Rebbe notes (Likkutei Sichos, vol. 27) that Leviticus 23:3 calls Shabbos too mikra kodesh, yet the Zohar (3:95a) says that Shabbos “is called kodesh and not mikra kodesh.”

The reason is that the intellect of Imma, though it is yesh, comprehension, is not a separate entity; it is yesh that comes from ayin and remains joined to it.

Chochmah and Binah, ayin and yesh, are “two companions that never part” (Zohar 3:4a), so the bittul of Abba flows constantly into Imma, where it is revealed as delight. In the discourse on “See, I set before you” (Likkutei Torah, Re’eh 18c) the Alter Rebbe describes the light of Chochmah, Yesod of Abba, shining within the depths of the heart, Yesod of Imma, as these “two companions.”

The delight revealed in Imma is itself a drawing-down of the Infinite Light that no thought can grasp.

It is not, G‑d forbid, the pleasure of grasping some separate thing; one can enjoy it only because the light has descended through the chain of levels until it can be grasped, so that one comprehends how great a light it is.

All that is far below is “as nothing before Him” (Zohar 1:11b); grasping this, the soul rejoices when the light is openly revealed to it. This is the joy of Imma.

Even this joy must have Abba drawn into it, so that it is joy in the Infinite Light that no thought can grasp, and not only in what is grasped. The parenthesis refers to Torah Ohr on “binding to the vine” (Genesis 49:11), where osri is read as oser yud, binding the yud, Chochmah, to the vine, the wine of joy.

That is why Yom Tov is called mikra kodesh, a “calling” of holiness, as one person calls another.

One calls another person by name, and a name is only a radiance of the person, not his essence. So Yom Tov receives only a “name” of Abba, a radiance of it, through Abba’s Netzach, Hod and Yesod. The text compares “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom” (Pesachim 56a, per the Kehot note) and “David made a name” (II Samuel 8:13), where “name” is likewise linked with Netzach, Hod and Yesod.

The radiance of Abba on Yom Tov is drawn down through prayer and Hallel, but these are rabbinic. By Torah law it is drawn down on Pesach through eating matzah, which is Abba in a state of “smallness” (katnus), not yet fully developed.

Matzah is linked to Abba through the Talmud’s saying (Berachos 40a) that a child cannot call “Abba,” father, until he tastes grain. The child’s recognition of his father does not come from developed understanding; it comes from above daas.

The child does not understand who or what his father is, since his mind is still too small for that. Yet he knows his father, with a knowing that runs deeper than comprehension.

Ta’am means both “taste” and “reason”: like the child’s knowing, which comes without reasoned understanding, matzah too has no ta’am, none of the rising of leavened dough, which in Chassidus stands for self-importance.

What is above daas, above understanding, is the level of Abba; in matzah it comes down in “smallness,” in a form a child can receive, which is why the Zohar calls matzah “the food of faith”: faith, like the child’s knowing, is above understanding. In the discourse on counting the Omer (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar 10c), to which the parenthesis refers, the Alter Rebbe explains that the knowing that grain brings the child is a hidden daas far above understood daas, and that Shavuos, the festival of “wheat,” reveals it.

Abba is drawn down through matzah only on the first night. The verse “Matzos shall be eaten the seven days” (Exodus 13:7) seems to extend this to all seven days.

The Alter Rebbe reads yei’achel, “shall be eaten,” as ya’achil, “shall feed”: the seven days themselves must be fed and nourished from Abba. The days correspond to the seven middos, and in the counting of the Omer the first week is “the seven mochin of Abba,” Chochmah drawn into each of the seven.

Even so, in Egypt chametz was forbidden for only one day, because Moshe and Aharon were present, both rooted in Abba, and “the pillar of cloud did not depart” from before the people (Exodus 13:22).

The Zohar calls that cloud “the cloud of Aharon,” and it is the encompassing light of Abba. The Midrash relates that the cloud killed snakes and scorpions in the desert: the encompassing light “blinds” the forces of kelipah so that they draw no nurture from holiness, and so a longer ban on chametz was not needed.

In Egypt, the drawing-down of Abba on the first night was enough. For later generations the Torah commands seven days of matzah, but beyond the first night this command only serves to keep away chametz, so that the external forces receive no nurture.

The essential matzah, Abba, is that of the first night, which the verse “In the evening you shall eat matzos” (Exodus 12:18) makes an obligation, as the Gemara derives (Pesachim 28b). The first night is Chesed: “By day Havayah commands His kindness” (Psalms 42:9), and Chesed is called “the day that goes with all the days.”

Chesed is also “the cloud of Aharon,” of which it is written that “the pillar of cloud did not depart by day”; the first “day,” Chesed, includes all the days. The parenthesis refers to the Zohar on Parshas Emor (3:103b), which calls the cloud of Aharon “by day” after “By day Havayah commands His kindness,” one cloud that takes the other five with it, and to the discussion of it elsewhere, in the Alter Rebbe’s Siddur.

That all-including “day” is the first day alone, Chesed; so the first night’s matzah is enough to include all seven days.

A summary of the second section: Shabbos is kodesh and Yom Tov is mikra kodesh; on Pesach the radiance of Abba is drawn down by Torah law through matzah, like the child who can call “Abba” only after tasting grain; and “Matzos shall be eaten the seven days” is read as feeding the seven days.

Section 3 begins. There are two kinds of matzah: the obligatory matzah of the first night, and the matzah eaten throughout Pesach.

The Haggadah’s reason, that the dough had no time to rise, refers to the second kind. Our ancestors in Egypt were not actually required to keep guarded matzah all the days of Pesach, as the first section explained.

Their matzah on those days came about by itself, because, as the Haggadah continues, “the King of the kings of kings revealed Himself to them.”

The Alter Rebbe now explains this title. In its plain sense, “the kings” are earthly rulers and “the kings of the kings” are the angelic ministers appointed over the nations, like “the minister of the kingdom of Persia” in Daniel 10:13; G‑d is King over them all.

The title also has a Kabbalistic meaning, in terms of the ten Sefiros through which G‑d rules the worlds. “The kings” are Netzach, Hod and Yesod.

“The kings of” are Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, and “the King of the kings of” is Chochmah, Binah and Daas. Each world is lit by a different group: Asiyah by Netzach, Hod and Yesod, Yetzirah by Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, Beriah by Binah, and Atzilus by Chochmah.

The Infinite Light rests in Chochmah, as Tanya explains (chapter 35, in a gloss), and that is “the King of the kings of kings.” The text adds references to two passages of the Zohar that speak of the supreme King.

When Chochmah is revealed, the light of Abba shines openly, and so, of itself, it did not let their dough rise. Leavened dough would have given nurture to the forces opposed to holiness.

Proverbs 24:21, “Fear Havayah, my son, and the king,” is brought to show how the revelation of the King keeps the inclination, the “chametz,” from rising. The Alter Rebbe first gives its plain sense, then the Sages’ reading.

In its plain sense the verse compares two kinds of fear: one fears G‑d although one does not see Him, and so keeps away from sin; in the same way one should fear the king of the land even when he is absent, picturing him before one’s eyes, and so escape a death sentence from the state. This plain reading is from Kad HaKemach, by Rabbeinu Bachya, under the entry “Fear.”

The Sages also read umelech, “and the king,” as umeloch, “and reign”: “reign over your inclination” (Devarim Rabbah 2:33), where Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar, offered wine of doubtful purity, says, “I am master of myself.” Both readings are true.

They are connected: true fear of G‑d, the King of the kings of kings, brings bittul, and with it the power to rule one’s inclination and not be drawn after physical desires.

The evil inclination is chametz: Psalms 71:4 speaks of “the wrongdoer and the chometz,” a word that means “oppressor” and is spelled like leaven. When the supreme King was revealed in Egypt, the evil inclination was subdued, and so the dough did not rise, of itself.

For later generations, who lack that revelation, the seven days of matzah became an obligation, and the seven days are the seven middos.

In the seven middos the evil inclination has its hold, because the shattering of the vessels, when the vessels of the lower Sefiros could not contain their light, took place in the seven lower Sefiros. Therefore the bittul of matzah must be drawn into each of them.

The first kind of matzah, that of the first night, is the subject of “Because of this, Havayah did for me” (Exodus 13:8), which the Haggadah reads as “only at the time when matzah and maror lie before you.” Because of the matzah, which draws down Abba, “Havayah did.”

Asah, “did,” is read as Asiyah, the lowest world: through matzah the Infinite Light is drawn down truly below, into the World of Asiyah.

“Havayah did for me” means that the Name Havayah, which transcends all limits, is revealed even in the physical world of Asiyah, and to me personally, while I am in Egypt. The question is how so great a light can reach so low.

It is possible only “because of this,” the matzah, which draws down Abba: Chochmah that comes from ayin, above the chain of levels. There “darkness is as light,” so even the lowest place is no barrier. In Likkutei Torah, Pekudei 5b, the Alter Rebbe explains that on the first night of Pesach even the union of Chochmah and Binah, from “He made darkness His hiding place,” was revealed to Israel, and that this is why they were commanded to eat matzah.

This completes the thought: in Abba, above and below are equal, as the High Holiday hymn says of G‑d, “He is equal and makes equal, small and great.” Therefore Havayah can be revealed “for me,” down in the physical world.

The Haggadah reads Exodus 12:12, “I will pass through the land of Egypt,” as “I, and not an angel … I, and not a seraph.” The angel, the seraph and the like correspond to the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

The same three levels exist within Atzilus itself: Malchus of Atzilus is its “Asiyah,” Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes its “Yetzirah,” and Binah its “Beriah.”

So “not an angel” also excludes Malchus of Atzilus, which is also called “the angel.” “I” means the light of Abba, the source of Chochmah, the “Atzilus of Atzilus,” the very highest level.

A parenthesis refers to Torah Ohr, Bereishis 4b, the further explanation of “And Havayah Elokim formed man”: there the four kinds of creation, inanimate, vegetative, animal and speaking, are found within Atzilus too, Malchus as the inanimate and Z’eir Anpin as the vegetative, and later in that discourse Adam, the “speaking” level, is supernal Chochmah, the very beginning of Atzilus.

Egypt was a place of impurity, so only a light for which “even darkness does not darken” could reach it. That is the light of Abba, not that of Imma, which comes through the ordered chain of levels.

An angel is only G‑d’s messenger, “like clay in the hand of the potter” (Jeremiah 18:6), and everything it brings comes from G‑d. Even so, what comes through a messenger comes from the source of the chain of levels.

It descends as cause and effect, link by link, until it is clothed in an angel or a seraph.

A light from above the chain cannot be carried by any angel, for no created vessel can hold it; this is why G‑d says, “I, and not an angel.” The parenthesis refers to the discourse on “And He called to Moshe” (Likkutei Torah, Vayikra 1c), which explains the Midrash on that verse, “I am the One who calls and I am the One who speaks.”

A new question: the Haggadah has already excluded an angel, a seraph and a messenger, so who is the “other” excluded by “I am He, and not another”?

The answer begins with teshuvah. From Elul to Yom Kippur we recite the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, the attributes of G‑d’s compassion that He proclaimed to Moshe after the golden calf (Exodus 34:6–7), because they are supernal lights revealed to those who return to G‑d.

Sin causes a blemish that ordinary, measured light cannot repair; only lights so lofty that before them “darkness is as light” can reach it and repair it. That is why Moshe drew down the Thirteen Attributes after the sin of the golden calf.

After the Thirteen Attributes were revealed, “Moshe hastened and bowed to the ground” (Exodus 34:8). The Talmud explains what he saw: the attribute “slow to anger,” which G‑d extends even toward the wicked.

Because this light reaches even the wicked, the external forces might also draw from it. So Moshe asked, “that we be distinguished, I and Your people” (Exodus 33:16), which the Talmud (Berachos 7a) explains as a request that the Shechinah not rest on the other nations.

G‑d granted the request: “This thing too, that you have spoken, I will do” (Exodus 33:17). That implies that without the promise, the Shechinah would have rested on the nations as well.

Bilam is the example: though he was defiled, prophecy came to him, since G‑d is all-powerful and before Him “darkness is as light.” A light above every distinction can, in principle, reach anyone.

From that same high source Pharaoh drew his nurture, but only from its back, “the back of the nape,” a high place; Kabbalah reads Pharaoh’s name (פרעה) as ha’oref (הערף), “the nape.” That is why “we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 6:21): his power came from a very high level.

At the Exodus, the matzah, a mitzvah done below as “an arousal from below,” drew the light of Abba “to me,” inwardly into Israel, so that the external forces received nothing. This begins the answer: “and not another” excludes Pharaoh, who had drawn from that very light.

This answers who the “other” is. The Haggadah tells the wicked son, “for me, and not for him; had he been there, he would not have been redeemed”: at the Exodus the light reached Israel alone, unlike before, when Pharaoh drew nurture from the light of Abba “from the back” and enslaved us; Pharaoh is the “other” that is excluded.

Through the mitzvah of matzah the light was drawn inwardly to Israel, so it was the matzah that brought about the Exodus. The haste of the Exodus, “for in haste” (Deuteronomy 16:3), was itself the drawing-down of the light of Abba.

The seven days of matzah came after the Exodus and are a command for later generations. Our ancestors did not need them; their dough simply had no time to rise.

A long parenthesis explains “because of this” more deeply. The intellect of Abba, as explained above, comes from above the chain of levels, where “darkness is as light” and even Keser is “black.”

At that level, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” (Job 35:7): human deeds make no difference. But when that light shines into supernal Chochmah, called Abba, it becomes “the intellect of Abba,” and the souls of Israel are Abba’s “children,” drawn from it as a child is drawn from the father’s brain (Tanya, chapter 2). So this light goes only to the side of holiness, to the children, and not to the external forces.

The references continue: what is written below on the Haggadah’s “We were slaves … and Havayah our G‑d brought us out”; the Torah Ohr discourse “For with You is the source of life” (Miketz 34d), on “Look down from Your holy dwelling” (Deuteronomy 26:15), where the nations draw their life from G‑d’s exaltation while the looking down through the Torah brings blessing to Israel; and “Set me as a seal,” where “My strength and song is Yah” (Exodus 15:2) is Abba and Imma, through which comes “This is my G‑d.”

The light of supernal Chochmah is conveyed through Yesod of Abba, enclothed in Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, and this channel is the zeh, “this,” of “because of this.” The Zohar references discuss zeh in Yaakov’s words “And this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17).

Another reference leads to a further point: the Thirteen Attributes are boundless mercies, yet they are called middos, “measures,” because something in them limits the mercies so that they flow only where fitting.

As the Talmud says (Berachos 33a), “whoever has no knowledge, it is forbidden to have mercy on him.” The text refers to the discourse on the manna (Likkutei Torah, Eikev 14a), where the Alter Rebbe explains that the boundless “great mercies” can be enclothed in the worlds only through the Thirteen Attributes, which give them a measure; and it says this limiting, too, is meant by “because of this.”

The Midrash on “This (zeh) is the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1) reads zeh, whose letters equal 12, as the twelve tribes; with Levi there are thirteen, matching the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. Psalms 40:6, “Many are the things You have done … Your wonders and Your thoughts toward us,” expresses this.

Rabbos means great and mighty, as in the Zohar (Vayechi) to which the text refers, and the Midrash at the end of Megillas Esther describes G‑d’s good attributes as given “in abundance.”

So “Many (rabbos) You have done” refers to the supernal attributes beyond measure and limit, which are called “abundant,” as in “abundant in kindness” (Exodus 34:6) and “abundant goodness” (Isaiah 63:7).

Asisa, “You have done,” hints at Asiyah: these boundless attributes descended into the physical world, as Torah Ohr explains in the discourse on Miketz. Yet they are “Your thoughts toward us,” for “the thought of Israel preceded everything” (Bereishis Rabbah).

So the “abundant goodness” is “to the house of Israel” (Isaiah 63:7), “hidden away for those who fear You” (Psalms 31:20). The Midrash on Toldos applies “Many You have done” to Yitzchak’s dimmed eyes: they grew dim so that Yaakov could come and receive the blessings, and even this was among G‑d’s thoughts for Israel.

The Midrash on “This month shall be for you” (Exodus 12:2) likewise says “the righteousness is yours … the mercy is yours.” The last reference is to the discourse “And you shall eat, eating” (Joel 2:26), earlier in this parsha (Likkutei Torah, Tzav 7c), where “Who has dealt wondrously with you” refers to the Time to Come, when the souls of the present will be raised higher still.

This explains why the Haggadah ties “because of this” to matzah and maror together. Maror, the bitterness one feels over being far from G‑d, arouses the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, as teshuvah does. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 15a, the Alter Rebbe explains that one who contemplates how far he is from G‑d’s own essence is filled with bitterness, which arouses great mercies and leads to the bittul of matzah.

The idea is developed in the discourse on “The voice of my beloved! Behold, this one comes” (Song of Songs 2:8) in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim. The Midrash on Beshalach, at the end of section 23, discusses “And it shall be said on that day” (Isaiah 25:9), where zeh is said twice.

The Talmud (Menachos 53b) expounds: “Let this one (zeh), Moshe, come and receive this (zos), the Torah, from this One (zeh), the Holy One, blessed be He.” Moshe prophesied with the word zeh, “This is the thing” (Numbers 30:2), so zeh stands for the drawing-down of the Torah.

The Torah as we now have it is “the novlos of supernal Chochmah” (Bereishis Rabbah 17:5), its fallen fruit, its outer level. In the Time to Come the inner dimension of the Torah will be revealed, drawn from the inner dimension of supernal Chochmah.

The Midrash says that in the Time to Come zeh, “this,” will be said twice, as in Isaiah 25:9, “Behold, this is our G‑d … this is Havayah”: the double zeh means that the inner dimension of Abba will also be revealed. The Ramaz, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, comments on this verse in his notes on the Zohar, Toldos.

Yet that future revelation is drawn down by what is done now: “today, to do them” (Deuteronomy 7:11), which the Talmud reads as “today to do them, tomorrow to receive their reward” (Eruvin 22a). This is why “because of this” applies only when matzah and maror are actually before us. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 50b, the Alter Rebbe reads kivinu, “we hoped,” in that verse as kavin, the “lines” of drawing-down we make by our deeds now, which will be seen openly then.

Now, in this world, is the time of free choice, as the Torah says, “See, I have set before you life and good, and death and evil … and you shall choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19).

The Arizal’s Pri Etz Chaim notes that maror (מרור, 446) has the same value as maves (מות), “death.” The Alter Rebbe explains: physicality is “death” and “evil” because it perishes, while spirituality is “life” and “good,” as in the discourse on “Listen, O heavens”; so one must feel bitterness at having been drawn after the physical, and so fulfill “and you shall choose life.”

Such bitterness belongs only to the present. In the Time to Come “He will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8), and physicality will no longer conceal G‑dliness.

The same verse continues, “Havayah will wipe away the tear”: dim’ah (דמעה, 119, counted with the word itself as 120) equals the 120 combinations of the five letters of Elokim, the source of concealment. Then “Havayah will be to me as Elokim” (Genesis 28:21), as in the Talmud’s image of G‑d taking the sun out of its sheath (Avodah Zarah 3b).

In the Time to Come maror will no longer apply: maror is bitterness over concealment, which is “death,” and then death will be swallowed up, both spiritually and physically.

Matzah, the guarding against chametz, will also not apply as it does now. One possibility is that, like the dough in Egypt, nothing will be able to “rise” into chametz, the sense of physical yesh, because of the overwhelming bittul.

The other possibility is that chametz itself will no longer give nurture to the external forces: it will no longer be the self-importance and coarseness of kelipah, but a holy pride, like Yehoshafat’s “his heart was lifted up in the ways of Havayah” (II Chronicles 17:6).

So the thanksgiving offering included loaves of chametz (Leviticus 7:13), for a reason the Alter Rebbe gives in his Siddur on “A psalm of thanksgiving” (Psalms 100).

The Midrash on Parshas Tzav says that in the Time to Come all offerings will cease except the thanksgiving offering.

All grain offerings are matzah except the chametz of the thanksgiving offering and the Two Loaves of Shavuos (Menachos 52b; Leviticus 23:17), the two loaves of new wheat that the Torah commands to be baked as chametz. Since the thanksgiving offering, with its chametz, will remain, the great revelation of the future must refine and elevate even chametz; the text refers to a discourse on the Ten Commandments for the Two Loaves.

So “because of this” belongs to the present, “today, to do them,” when matzah and maror are before us. Only through these present deeds is the level of zeh drawn down.

Zeh is the revelation of the light that encompasses all worlds, before which above and below are the same. Because it is equally present everywhere it can be called zeh, “this,” as in “The heavens and the earth I fill” (Jeremiah 23:24).

In the Time to Come teshuvah will not avail, for the Talmud (Shabbos 151b) reads “years of which you will say, ‘I have no desire in them’” as the days of Mashiach, in which “there is neither merit nor guilt.” The work of drawing down this light therefore belongs to now.

A reference to the discourse on “The voice of my beloved! Behold, this one comes, leaping” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 14c), which reads the verse as the Exodus, a redemption that came by a leap.

The Alter Rebbe offers another answer to the question with which the maamar began: the Haggadah says we eat matzah because the dough had no time to rise, yet already before the Exodus they were commanded, “In the evening you shall eat matzos” (Exodus 12:18).

The answer follows “Telling the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). The Midrash asks how Genesis 2:11 could describe the river as the one “that surrounds the whole land of Chavilah” when Chavilah did not yet exist, and answers that G‑d “tells the end from the beginning,” describing at the outset what will come later; the Kehot note gives the place as Bereishis Rabbah 16:2, though the text says section 15.

So too here, the essential reason for matzah is the haste of the Exodus, and the earlier command anticipated it.

The command before the Exodus anticipates the end. Yet the earlier explanation, that there are two kinds of matzah, also stands, and it too is a “beginning” and an “end.”

“Beginning,” from below upward, is “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Havayah” (Psalms 111:10): the lower fear, which precedes wisdom, of which the Mishnah (Avos 3:17) says, “If there is no fear, there is no wisdom.” This is the first matzah, the matzah of the first night.

From the first matzah comes the second, the “end” (acharis). Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s Pardes, in its lexicon of Kabbalistic terms, identifies acharis with the Jubilee (Yovel).

The Exodus came from the level of the Jubilee, the source of freedom, just as the Jubilee year sets slaves free. Me’orei Or notes that acharis (אחרית, 619), counting the word itself as one more, equals Keser (כתר, 620).

This is the revelation of “the King of the kings of kings.” Maggid, “telling,” is read as “drawing down,” as in the Aramaic of Daniel 7:10, “a river of fire flowing (nagid) and going forth.”

Through the “beginning,” the lower fear, they merited the “end,” the higher fear that comes after wisdom (“If there is no wisdom, there is no fear”), which the Haggadah calls “great awe … the revelation of the Shechinah” (on Deuteronomy 26:8). In Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar 16b, the Alter Rebbe explains that this higher fear is a great awe beyond the mind’s grasp, which comes through Torah study. As Sefer Yetzirah (1:7) says, “their beginning is wedged in their end”: the first matzah leads to the second, and the end is rooted in the beginning.