לבאר הדברים ענין אדם כי יקריב מכם וענין…

Following the previous discourse in Likkutei Torah on the same verse, this one sets out to explain two of its phrases (Leviticus 1:2): “A man, when he brings near of you” and “from the animal… you shall bring near your offering.” It builds on the Chanukah discourse in Torah Ohr, Vayeshev, “On the twenty-fifth of Kislev,” which explains that prayer takes the place of the offerings and finds two kinds of self-sacrifice in the Shema.

In the recital of the Shema there are two moments of self-sacrifice: one in the word “One” (echad) and one, taken up in paragraph 4, in “with all your soul.” The first belongs to the G‑dly soul, which by its nature is nullified within the Infinite Light itself.

The verse is now read in that light. “Man” is the supernal Man, Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus: the emotive Sefiros of the World of Emanation, which Kabbalah pictures in the form of a man. “Of you” is the G‑dly soul’s own self-giving, and that is “an offering to Havayah.”

It is “to Havayah” because the soul’s self-sacrifice in the Shema is at the level of “Havayah is One,” and Havayah here means the Infinite Light as it is clothed within Z’eir Anpin. The souls are included in Z’eir Anpin the way food is absorbed into the body of the one who eats it: “being absorbed into the body of the King,” a phrase of the Zohar.

The Alter Rebbe brings the Zohar on Parshas Pinchas, where Rabbi Chiya reads Psalms 104:14, “He causes grass to grow for the animal, and herb for the service of man,” as a picture of the supernal worlds: the “herb” is the souls of the righteous, which the supernal “Man” eats and takes into himself. The identifications of that Man as Z’eir Anpin and of the “animal” he rides and rules as Malchus are the Alter Rebbe’s own glosses inside the quotation.

Here the pieces come together: “man” is the ten Sefiros of Z’eir Anpin, and Havayah is the Infinite Light clothed in them. When the souls are absorbed into Z’eir Anpin, they are thereby united with the kav, the line of infinite light that runs within it, and this is how the soul becomes “an offering to Havayah.”

A further support comes from the Sifra DeTzniusa, a brief and cryptic section of the Zohar, which says that Z’eir Anpin is both “revealed and not revealed.” The commentary Zohar HaRakia explains the hidden side: the inner core of Z’eir Anpin is Atika, the “Ancient One,” the innermost level of Keser, above the Sefiros that are revealed.

The Ramaz, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a major commentator on the Zohar, says the same: within Z’eir Anpin is the inner dimension of Atik. In the plain sense, “one cherub from the end on this side” tells how the two cherubim stood at the two ends of the Ark’s cover; explained elsewhere, the “end” is the last edge of the Infinite Light, which is found within Z’eir Anpin.

The Ramaz gives the reason: Atik is the lowest point, the “end,” of the realm of the Infinite itself, and so the very edge of the Infinite lies hidden within Z’eir Anpin. The Idra Rabba (the Zohar’s “Greater Assembly”), explaining “for He is not a man” (I Samuel 15:29), teaches that where no full face is revealed the level is not called “man”; “man” is the revealed level.

So the verse holds both levels: “man” (adam) is the revealed aspect of Z’eir Anpin, while “an offering to Havayah” reaches its hidden inner core, Atika. When the G‑dly soul gives itself over in the word “One” of the Shema, it is offered up to that inner level.

The Zohar in Beha’aloscha describes four layers above, like a person’s garment, body, soul and soul of the soul. The “soul” is Tiferes Yisrael, which the Zohar there calls the Torah itself, and the “soul of the soul” is Atika Kadisha, the hidden Holy Ancient One; and all are bound together as one. Likkutei Torah, Re’eh (on “When you listen to the voice”) quotes the same Zohar and adds that Tiferes is called “voice,” and what is clothed within the voice is this “soul of the soul.”

This gives the verse a parallel reading: “man” is Tiferes, the central Sefirah of Z’eir Anpin, as Isaiah speaks of “the beauty (tiferes) of a man.” The “offering to Havayah” is then the radiance of Atika Kadisha clothed within Tiferes, since the Zohar calls Atika “the soul of the soul.”

What was just described, the drawing of the hidden light of Atika into the “man” so that the soul can be offered to it, is called a drawing down and an arousal from above. It comes through engagement in Torah and mitzvos, because the Torah is itself this level of “man”: the Zohar just quoted calls Tiferes Yisrael “the Torah itself.”

The Sages read oz, “strength,” as the Torah (Vayikra Rabbah 31:5; Zevachim 116a). The Alter Rebbe gives the reason: the Torah gives the G‑dly soul the strength to prevail over the coarseness of the body and over the animal soul. In Torah Ohr, Yisro, on “In the third month” (Exodus 19:1, the giving of the Torah), he describes the body and the animal soul as a “narrow place” (meitzar, as in Mitzrayim) that confines the G‑dly soul, so that its contemplation of G‑d cannot by itself bring the body to submission.

The second self-sacrifice in the Shema is in “and with all your soul”: here even the animal soul is to be subdued (iskafya) and then transformed (is’hapcha) toward holiness. This kind is tied not to the word “One” but to the line “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom,” which speaks of G‑d’s kingship, Malchus.

This is the offering “from the animal”: “your offering” is the animal soul itself, brought near and raised up through its transformation. It is drawn from “the animal” (behemah) because Malchus as it is clothed in the World of Beriah is the Name Ban, the Name Havayah with its letters spelled out in full using the letter hei, whose letters then total 52, the same numerical value as behemah.

The offering up of the animal soul flows specifically from the level of “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever,” that is, from G‑d’s kingship, Malchus.

Even after the animal soul has been refined and rises, it rises only to the level of the Name Ban, Malchus. The Zohar in Pinchas reads “He causes grass to grow for the animal” as the angels, called “grass” because they are cut down each day and grow again, eaten by the “animal,” Malchus; the refined animal soul is included in Malchus as they are.

By contrast, “herb for the service of man” is the G‑dly soul included in Z’eir Anpin, the supernal Man, as paragraph 1 explained. The Torah Ohr discourse on “walkers among those who stand” (Vayeshev) draws the same line: angels, and souls before they descend, are “standing,” while souls clothed in a body and an animal soul are “walkers.”

The Alter Rebbe now explains the two offerings through two kinds of contemplation. The first contemplates G‑d’s very essence, which has no relation to worlds at all: it is above not only the light that fills each world from within but also the light that encompasses them from beyond.

G‑d says, “I, Havayah, have not changed” (Malachi 3:6): bringing the worlds into being made no change in Him, and they bear no comparison to Him, not even that of a drop to the ocean, since a drop still has some proportion to the ocean. From this contemplation comes the G‑dly soul’s self-sacrifice in the word “One.”

This parenthesis sends the reader to the Purim discourse in Torah Ohr (Megillas Esther), “A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim.” There the Alter Rebbe explains that through their self-sacrifice the Jews of that time reached G‑d’s very essence, beyond the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them, so that the joy of Purim is beyond knowledge; that self-sacrifice reaches higher than G‑d as the “Life of life,” the source of life for the worlds.

The G‑dly soul can reach so high because of its root, in the inner dimension of the worlds, the inner dimension of the vessels. The morning blessing “My G‑d, the soul You placed within me is pure” (tehorah) hints at that root, the tehiru ila’ah, the “supernal purity.”

Therefore, when the G‑dly soul understands and contemplates how exalted the essence of the Infinite Light is, it becomes nullified and included in it. This is its self-sacrifice in “One,” the offering of “a man… of you.”

The first kind of contemplation is now called “the inner keys,” an image from the Talmud (Shabbos 31a–b), where Torah without the fear of Heaven is like a treasurer handed the inner keys but not the outer ones. It is also “the gate of the inner courtyard that faces east” (Ezekiel 46:1), where kadim, “east,” hints at Kadmono, “the Primordial One”: it stirs the soul toward the Infinite Light itself, which is beyond both the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them.

This inner contemplation is what paragraph 1 called “A man, when he brings near of you… an offering to Havayah”: the G‑dly soul’s self-sacrifice, which comes from contemplating G‑d’s exalted essence, a radiance of which is clothed in Z’eir Anpin.

The second kind of contemplation, “the outer keys,” looks at how G‑d fills and gives life to all the worlds: He made the heavens and all their hosts (Nehemiah 9:6), and He forms the angels who serve Him, as the blessing Yotzer before the morning Shema says.

Isaiah’s call, “Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?” is the model of this contemplation: looking at creation and recognizing its Creator. The parenthesis points to two discourses in Likkutei Torah that develop it: one on Parshas Re’eh, and one on counting the Omer (Bamidbar), where barley, revealed at Pesach, is the soul’s grasp of how G‑d fills and encompasses all worlds, each person according to his capacity, and wheat, at Shavuos, a higher revelation.

This outer contemplation belongs to Malchus, G‑d’s kingship, which is called His “Name”: like a name, it is only a splendor and radiance of G‑d, not His essence. Indeed, both the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them are, compared with His essence, only His “Name.”

The Sages’ teaching in the Talmud (Berakhot 7b), “do not read shamos (desolations) but shemos (names),” is explained elsewhere in this sense. The parenthesis refers to the Purim discourse in Torah Ohr, “And when she came before the king.”

From this second contemplation, of G‑d as He gives life to the worlds, comes the transformation of the animal soul.

The animal soul has come down into lower levels, where “screens” separate it from G‑dliness, so the contemplation of G‑d’s essence does not take hold in it. What does reach it is the contemplation of how every created “something,” which feels separate and self-standing, is nullified before the divine splendor that gives it life; because this contemplation begins from the created world itself, it can move even the animal soul.

A related teaching on “When you go out to war against (al) your enemies” reads al as “above”: to defeat the cravings of the animal soul, one must fight from a position above them.

Rising “above your enemies” means contemplating the animal soul’s own root on high, in the supernal Chariot of holiness (the four Chayos of Ezekiel’s vision, which bear the Throne); seeing where it comes from allows the animal soul to be raised. This too is “from the animal… you shall bring near.”

The parenthesis points to the end of the Torah Ohr discourse on “And all the people saw” (Exodus 20:15). There the people who “stood far off” are the mixed multitude, who were moved only by the vastness of the created heavens and not by the Infinite itself, and in “they bless You, may Your Name be blessed” Israel draw down G‑d Himself while other beings bless only His Name: the same two contemplations as here.

This is why the outer contemplation is called “from the animal.” Koheles speaks of “the spirit of the animal that goes downward”; the Alter Rebbe applies it to the divine radiance that spreads down to give life to the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and calls it “the spirit of the animal,” the Name Ban.

The reason is that what is created bears no comparison at all to its Creator: a created thing is finite and came into being, while the Creator is infinite, without beginning or end. The light that gives life to such beings has stepped down to their level, and so it is called by the lowly name “animal.”

Bringing finite beings into existence from the infinite is the greatest possible descent of divine light and life-force; there is no descent like it.

Even for the loftiest creations, souls and angels, it is a great descent: for the divine “splendor” to become a separate radiance, so that they can “delight in the splendor” (Berachos 17a), it must come down from being included in its source, the luminary. Before that it was wholly included in its source, as the blessing Yotzer before the morning Shema says, “the King Who alone is exalted.”

That is why Malchus, as it descends to give life to Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, is called “the spirit of the animal that goes downward,” the Name Ban. It stands to the light above it as an animal stands to a human being, the “speaker”: there is no comparison between them.

The Alter Rebbe refers to a discourse on the waving of the omer, probably, as the Kehot note suggests, the one in Likkutei Torah, Emor, which explains the omer of barley, animal fodder, through the angels who are refined and included in Malchus each day. He also cites the Zohar’s parable of a king on his throne, called “the supernal king,” who “when he goes down” to his servant’s house is called “a small king”: so too G‑d’s kingship, as it descends to the worlds, is called by a lower name.

Therefore the arousal of the soul that comes from this level is “from the animal… you shall bring near.” It arises from contemplating “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever” and the two blessings recited before the Shema in the morning.

Those blessings describe the angels and the holy Chayos, the creatures of the Chariot, praising G‑d with tremendous feeling. Contemplating their awe brings about “with all your soul”: the subjugation and then the transformation of the animal soul.

When the animal soul, too, is raised and included in the Infinite Light, something is gained that the G‑dly soul alone could not achieve, as the Sages say, “In the place where penitents stand…” The lower the starting point, the greater the ascent.

As is known in Kabbalah, the Name Ban (52), Malchus, once refined, rises above the Name Mah (45, Havayah spelled out with alef), whose numerical value equals adam, “man.” This is the meaning of “A woman of valor is the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4): the feminine Malchus becomes a crown above the masculine Z’eir Anpin.

This is why the verses speak differently of the two offerings. Of “a man… of you” it says only “an offering to Havayah,” but of the offering from the cattle it says “he shall bring it near… before Havayah” (Leviticus 1:3), and “before” is read as “prior to”: the source from which the Name Havayah itself comes into being.

The same applies to the blood of the daily offering, slaughtered “northward, before Havayah” (Leviticus 1:11). The Chanukah discourse cited at the start explains that the north is Gevurah, the “great tumult” with which the Chayos of the Chariot rise above the level of “man,” and that “before Havayah” is the source of Havayah; and the Zohar on Vayechi contrasts “an offering to Havayah,” the man who rises from below to above, with “your offering” from the animals, which descends from above to below.

The Alter Rebbe now raises a question about the offerings in general. Offerings are brought from animals because they derive from the vessels that shattered and fell from the World of Tohu (Chaos); when these are refined and raised, they become “a pleasing fragrance” to G‑d.

This fits the refinement of the animal soul as well, since its root too is in the World of Tohu.

The G‑dly soul, however, is rooted in the World of Tikkun (Rectification), in Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus, which never fell. Why, then, should its self-sacrifice be called an “offering,” as if it too needed to be raised?

The Alter Rebbe answers by referring to the Torah Ohr discourse on “The Patriarchs are the Chariot” (Yisro), which asks the same question: the Patriarchs are rooted in Atzilus, yet they are called a Chariot. There the answer is that Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes, is rooted higher than Chochmah and Binah, so the Patriarchs, the emotive Sefiros of Atzilus, are a Chariot that raises the higher “man,” Chochmah. He also refers to the discourse “I am asleep,” on the word “my companion” (rayasi).

Section 2 offers a second reading. The first, following the Zohar on Vayechi, took “from the animal” with “your offering,” the animal soul; the Sifra DeTzniusa instead connects the verse with “Man and animal You save, Havayah” (Psalms 36:7).

The Sifra DeTzniusa teaches that man and animal are each found within the other, and specifically that the animal is included within man. That is why the verse can say “a man… of you… from the animal”: the “animal” is part of the “man.”

The commentary Zohar HaRakia explains what difficulty the Sifra DeTzniusa comes to resolve: the wording of the verse seems inconsistent. “Of you” implies an offering from the person himself, yet the verse goes on to say “from the animal.”

The Alter Rebbe notes in passing that his first explanation, which read the two phrases as two different offerings, also resolves this difficulty.

The answer comes through gematria: behemah equals 52, the Name Ban, and adam equals 45, the Name Mah, which is Havayah spelled out with alef. The letters added in that spelling-out total 19, the value of Chavah, who is Malchus, the Name Ban; just as Chavah was taken from Adam’s rib, the “animal” comes from within the “man.”

The Alter Rebbe points to the Torah Ohr discourse on Bereishis, “To understand the matter of the blessings,” where Chavah equals 19, the letters added in spelling out Havayah, because spelling out reveals what is hidden, and chavah itself means “telling.” On this reading, “from the animal” is not a separate offering but part of “when he brings near of you,” the offering of the G‑dly soul itself.

Even the G‑dly soul, whose essence is “man,” the Name Mah, also contains the level of Ban, as the discourse on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov” in Parshas Balak explains. There this is why souls come down into this world: they too hold a mixture of good and evil, to be sorted out.

Jeremiah’s prophecy, “I will sow the House of Israel… with the seed of man and the seed of animal,” is read in this sense: the G‑dly soul itself has an “animal” aspect, the Name Ban.

Souls are born from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the masculine and feminine configurations, which are Mah and Ban, and so every soul contains both.

The parenthesis cites the discourse on “When you go out” (Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei), on the captive woman “beautiful of form”: it finds two levels in the soul, “beautiful of form” and “a woman beautiful of form,” masculine and feminine, as in “in His image, in the image of G‑d… male and female He created them.” The Zohar on Naso reads Ezekiel’s “My flock, the flock of My pasture, you are man” as calling Israel both “animal” and “man.”

In practice the two levels mean two kinds of divine service. The Torah Ohr discourse “Sing and rejoice” (Miketz) explains that the angels’ song is “they shall sing of Your righteousness,” tzedek being Malchus: their grasp is only at the level of Malchus, and their service is only a yearning upward, while souls have an additional service, Torah and mitzvos, which draw G‑dliness down.

Angels are called “animals.” As the explanation of “And these are the ordinances” (Torah Ohr, Mishpatim) says, from the perspective of higher levels their understanding counts as no understanding at all, though from below it is great; the reason is that angels grasp G‑dliness only at the level of Malchus.

The souls of Israel also have this level, alluded to in Hosea’s “After Havayah they shall walk; like a lion he shall roar,” like the lion’s face of the Chariot.

But souls also have a higher level, that of “man,” which comes through the Torah.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the discourse “You are standing” and to the discourse “His eyes are red with wine,” which explains the Sages’ saying “In comes wine, out comes the secret” (Eruvin 65a): yayin (wine) and sod (secret) both equal seventy, and the “wine” of the Torah brings out the great love (ahavah rabbah) hidden in the soul. This is “of you, from the animal,” both levels within the soul, which the prayer “And unite our hearts” asks to join.

A discourse on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov” explains the prayer “And unite our hearts,” from the blessing before the morning Shema: the heart’s desire has two levels, an inner one and an outer one.

The inner level, the “point of the heart,” is the great love (ahavah rabbah), which is above reason and understanding; it is not produced by a person’s own effort but comes from above as a gift.

This inner love is from the Name Mah, alluded to in the Sages’ words, “Who is a fool? One who loses what (mah) is given to him”: one who loses the gift of Mah. The outer level of the heart is the love produced by understanding and contemplating G‑d’s kingship over all worlds.

This outer love is the Name Ban. Because it comes through Daas, it has a counterpart on the other side: Daas is the root of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, and in Kabbalah Bela, first of the seven kings of Tohu (Genesis 36:32), belongs to Daas, which fell in the shattering of the vessels. In Torah Ohr (Tetzaveh, supplements) the Alter Rebbe reads his name as bela, “swallowing”: he swallows the holy Daas into the Tree of Knowledge.

Chochmah, above Daas, did not fall: of those kings it says “they die, but not in wisdom.” Chochmah is the Tree of Life and, read as ko’ach mah, the potential of Mah, the source of the inner love.

“And unite our hearts” means that the outer desire of the heart, born of contemplation, is to be included in its inner desire, the love above reason: the refinement of Ban and its inclusion in Mah.

That is the meaning of the verse on this reading: “when he brings near of you” and “from the animal” are Mah and Ban, both within the G‑dly soul, offered together. The Alter Rebbe also refers to his explanation of “And you shall bring near a burnt offering, a fire offering.”

The discourse on “The Song of Songs” speaks of two levels of kallah, “bride”: the higher Shechinah and the lower Shechinah. These, too, are the two levels in the G‑dly soul.

The parenthesis adds the Torah Ohr discourse on “His left hand is under my head” (Ki Sisa). There only a spark of the soul spreads into the body and is clothed in it, the soul’s “foot,” while its essence, the “head,” remains above; the spark’s service, a love born of contemplating G‑d’s light in the worlds, is “with all your heart.”

By contrast, “with all your might” is the service of the soul’s essence, its “head”: a nullification of the soul’s very being before G‑d’s essence, beyond all worlds. The two must be joined, as in “And unite our hearts,” and the end of the Torah Ohr discourse “To understand the matter of the blessings” explains this as well.

Only after this does the verse say “from the cattle and from the flock”: the refinement of the animal soul, whose root is in the Chayos of the Chariot, called the “twelve oxen,” like the oxen that bore the great basin in Shlomo’s Temple.