והיה מדי חדש בחדשו ומדי שבת בשבתו יבא…

The maamar opens with the next-to-last verse of Isaiah, where G‑d promises that in the end of days “all flesh,” all mankind, will come to bow before Him. Plainly “every New Moon on its New Moon” means “from one New Moon to the next”; in section 4 the maamar will read the doubled words as “the New Moon of the New Moon” and “the Shabbos of Shabbos,” levels higher than the ordinary New Moon and Shabbos.

¶10 “Its New Moon” and “its Shabbos” are explained in paragraph 10.

A second verse sets the framework: “Everyone that is called by My Name… I have created him, I have formed him, indeed I have made him.” In Chassidus the three verbs are the three lower worlds, Beriah (creation), Yetzirah (formation) and Asiyah (action, “made”); among the places listed, Yoma 38a learns from it that all G‑d created He created for His glory, and Bava Basra 75b that in the future the righteous will be called by His Name, a point the maamar returns to in paragraph 11.

This is what the verse means: so that what is “called by My Name,” man made “in our image,” could exist, it had to descend step by step through Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah until it had the level of action as well, “indeed I have made him.” The rest of the maamar explains why that descent into action is needed.

Now the maamar raises its question. Work is permitted on Rosh Chodesh, the New Moon, yet Scripture does not call it “the day of work.”

¶8 Hold this question about Rosh Chodesh: paragraph 8 answers it.

Before Rosh Chodesh, Yehonasan tells David, who is hiding from Shaul, “Tomorrow is the New Moon,” and that he should then wait at the place where he hid “on the day of work (yom hamaaseh).” Plainly this may mean “the day of the deed,” and Radak first explains it as the day of Shaul’s oath about David; but Targum Yonasan renders it “the weekday,” and Rashi explains it as a day on which work is done. Radak adds that it seems they did not work on Rosh Chodesh, as women still refrain from work on it, so Rosh Chodesh is not counted as a working day.

To answer, the Alter Rebbe first explains the six weekdays. They are called “the six days of Bereishis” (“In the beginning”) because they flow from reishis, “beginning,” which is Chochmah: the Targum Yerushalmi renders Bereishis as “with wisdom,” and the Psalm says, “You made them all with wisdom.”

The prayers say the same: in Baruch She’amar G‑d “makes Bereishis,” and in the Yotzer blessing He “renews each day, continually, the work of Bereishis.” Creation was not finished once; it is renewed from Chochmah every day.

Why does divine wisdom descend into the week and into the thirty-nine labors (plowing, sowing and the rest, the Mishnah’s categories of work forbidden on Shabbos)? So that the world of action can rise with it. Every labor serves a person’s life and sustenance. (The printing’s בשתת is an evident misprint for בששת, “into the six.”)

When that person gives his soul over to G‑d in the Shema (“And you shall love…”) and in the Shemoneh Esreh (“Blessed are You…”), all the life-energy he drew from that labor rises with him and is included in G‑d’s oneness. It was that very energy that gave him the strength to pray, so the week’s work is lifted up through his prayer. (The printing’s הככח is an evident misprint for הכח, “the strength.”)

A parenthesis: this lifting works through Chochmah, whose nature is self-nullification (bittul), the sense of being nothing before G‑d. Drawn into the emotive attributes of the week, Chochmah brings the nullification of the yesh, a creature’s sense of being a separate, self-standing thing; that is the deeper reason the weekdays are named for Chochmah.

The Zohar says that “those six days go forth from Bereishis,” as cedars come forth from Lebanon, and the Mikdash Melech (Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo’s commentary on the Zohar) explains there why Chochmah is called reishis. The Gemara’s “wine preserved in its grapes since the six days of Bereishis,” the hidden reward of the righteous, is the subject of another discourse the text points to.

Summing up: the six days are a movement from above to below, the Infinite Light descending through the chain of worlds until it is clothed in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah and becomes the power behind physical action.

Shabbos is the opposite movement: an ascent from below to above, in the mode of delight (oneg). Isaiah promises the one who honors Shabbos, “Then you shall delight in Havayah,” and the Shabbos prayer says those who keep it “delight in Your goodness.”

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a seventeenth-century Kabbalist who wrote glosses on the Zohar) is cited on the words “therefore Shabbos is called ‘It is good to give thanks,’” the opening of the Psalm for the Shabbos day. “When is He called great? When He is in the city of our G‑d” is the Zohar’s reading of Psalm 48: the Holy One is called “great” when Knesses Yisrael is with Him.

The Zohar’s parable: a king sitting on his throne, wearing his crown, is called “a supreme king”; when he goes down to a servant’s house, he is called “a small king.” In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, the Alter Rebbe applies the same parable to the rising of Malchus and refers back to this maamar: on Shabbos speech rises to the supernal delight.

So it is with G‑d: on the weekdays, when His light is clothed in the lower worlds, He is “a small king.”

On Shabbos His delight is revealed, a foretaste of the World to Come, where, the Gemara says, the righteous “enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah,” the time of receiving reward. The weekdays are for “doing them,” as the Sages say: “Today to do them, and tomorrow to receive their reward.”

Isaiah tells Israel to honor Shabbos by refraining “from attending to your affairs and speaking words,” and the Gemara derives from it that one’s speech on Shabbos should not be like weekday speech. The reason: dibbur, “speech,” is also a term of leading, as in “He leads (yadber) nations under us”; in Torah Ohr, Va’eira, the Alter Rebbe explains that through the Torah, “And Havayah spoke to Moshe,” speech draws G‑d’s own oneness down below.

That downward flow is the character of the weekdays, when G‑d’s light descends even into the physical world of Asiyah. (The printing’s התשלשלות and למלטה are evident misprints for השתלשלות and למטה.)

The Psalm says His “kingship is a kingship of all worlds,” reaching even Asiyah, and Isaiah’s “indeed I have made him” is the same descent into action. On Shabbos divine speech goes back up to its source, so weekday speech is set aside; the discourse “Return, O Israel” (Likkutei Torah, Shabbos Shuvah) is mentioned as a further discussion.

The “Summary” (kitzur) paragraphs restate each section briefly. The six weekdays are the six supernal emotive attributes (Chesed through Yesod), which descend and are clothed in the lower worlds, down to “I have made him”; that descent is for the sake of ascent and of the nullification of the yesh.

They are called “days of Bereishis” because they come from Chochmah, and Chochmah is what sorts out and refines (birur) the world, separating the holy from the unholy. Shabbos is the ascent from action up to delight, and that is why weekday affairs and weekday speech are set aside on Shabbos.

Section 2 begins with a principle: what has gone down cannot lift itself back up on its own; it needs strength and might given to it from above.

That is why the Friday-night welcome of Shabbos, the hymn “Come, my Beloved” (Lecha Dodi), was instituted: a light comes from above “to greet the bride,” Knesses Yisrael, the collective soul of Israel, so that she can “receive the face of Shabbos.”

The same idea is in “Draw me, we will run after you”: through the week Israel is only “after” G‑d, following at a distance, and must first be drawn before she can run; the whole Song of Songs, the love song between G‑d and Israel, is about this strength given from above. Yet “one who toiled on the eve of Shabbos will eat on Shabbos”: in Likkutei Torah, Balak, the Alter Rebbe explains that one reaches the level of Yisrael, which is Shabbos, only through the weekday toil of Yaakov.

Something of Shabbos’s ascent must also happen every day, in the morning prayer. From “And David blessed” (near the end of Pesukei deZimra) until the Shemoneh Esreh, the prayers speak of rising from below to above; and in Yotzer, the first blessing before the Shema, we tell how the angels sanctify G‑d and how the Ofanim rise “with a great noise.”

The Ofanim’s “noise” is their longing to dissolve into G‑d, a love so intense that the soul “expires” (kelos hanefesh). The Seraphim, a higher order of angels, “stand,” as in Yeshayahu’s vision, because that inclusion in G‑d is part of their very being; they do not have to strain toward it.

The Ofanim are lower: all they grasp is that such inclusion is far from them, because G‑d is “holy,” utterly set apart. He is not within the category of worlds at all, neither the light that fills them nor even the light that encompasses them.

So all their desire is for something beyond their capacity: that their soul expire toward Him.

That distance is why their noise is so great. In the same way the whole order of morning prayer, from “And David blessed” through the Shema, where one gives over one’s soul in the word “One” and then loves G‑d “with all your soul,” is a movement upward.

The Shemoneh Esreh reverses direction: its “Blessed are You” is a drawing down from above, so that the Name Havayah is revealed. Plainly, “Blessed is Havayah… from the world and to the world (min haolam ve’ad haolam)” means “from everlasting to everlasting”; the maamar reads olam as “world”: from the hidden world to the revealed world.

What is drawn into revelation is the hidden level beyond all worlds, which “no thought can grasp”: the unchanging G‑d of “I, Havayah, have not changed,” the same “before the world was created” as after. In Torah Ohr, Beshalach (“Then Moshe sang”), the Alter Rebbe reads “from the world to the world” the same way, and explains baruch as drawing down from concealment into revelation, so that He is “You,” present before us.

Yet the main daily revelation of the hidden comes through doing the mitzvos and studying Torah, which the Mishnah says “is equal to them all”: each of them draws the hidden into revelation.

Now he distinguishes the weekday ascent of prayer from the ascent of Shabbos, with the Gemara’s image: Yechezkel and Yeshayahu saw the same vision of the King, but Yechezkel described it at length, like a villager who saw the king once, and Yeshayahu briefly, like a city-dweller used to the king.

The Ofanim’s “great noise” is the villager’s response: they are overwhelmed by G‑d’s holiness because it is new to them and beyond their grasp, and their self-nullification comes from that astonishment.

That is the weekday. On Shabbos the supernal delight is revealed (“they shall delight in Your goodness”), and one is like the city-dweller: the king’s greatness is no novelty to him, so instead of being overwhelmed he enjoys the radiance of the king’s glory.

On this the Gemara says, “The sun on Shabbos is charity for the poor”: plainly, sunshine on Shabbos is a kindness to the poor. Rabbi Yitzchak learns it there from Malachi’s “sun of tzedakah,” and the maamar now explains it.

In Malachi’s “a sun of tzedakah with healing in its wings,” tzedakah means righteousness; in the Sages’ saying it means charity. The “sun” is G‑d’s own light (“Havayah is a sun and a shield”), and it is itself the healing, as the Shemoneh Esreh praises Him as “Healer of the sick”; so it is charity for the poor, who have nothing of their own.

Now he explains the healing. Throughout the week Knesses Yisrael is “sick with love,” like the bride in the Song of Songs who asks to be sustained because she is faint with love.

She is like “a poor man, who has nothing of his own,” as the Zohar says of the moon, which has no light of its own and only reflects the sun; the Kehot note adds that this is why King David, a “chariot” for Malchus, called himself “poor and needy.” Her soul “longs and even expires” (Psalm 84) to rise to her Beloved and be included in the Infinite One, beyond both the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them.

Since what she longs for is beyond anything the worlds can hold, her longing is never fulfilled in this life; that is the “hope deferred” which, Proverbs says, “makes the heart sick.”

This is why the Gemara calls the Sages “ailing”: Torah scholars receive from Chochmah, and “the wise man is one who sees what is born,” read here as one who sees how things are born from nothing (ayin) into something (yesh). They see that the whole created yesh is the opposite of G‑d’s ayin.

So their soul expires with lovesick longing and pours itself out.

The same love must be aroused in prayer. Malachi’s “entreat (chalu) the face of G‑d” shares its root with choleh, “sick,” and the Gemara says of “Moshe entreated (vayechal)” that he prayed until he became ill; this is the longing “great noise” of the Ofanim.

On Shabbos, G‑d is the “Healer of the sick”: the “sun of tzedakah with healing” shines, because “they shall delight in Your goodness” and “you shall delight in Havayah.” The longing is answered with delight.

So “the sun on Shabbos is charity for the poor”: for those who have nothing of their own and whose soul longs, the sun heals. In Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah (“Blow the shofar on the New Moon”), the Alter Rebbe explains the Sages’ “in the future the Holy One will take the sun out of its sheath” as Havayah, the sun itself, revealed without Elokim, the shield that now screens it.

This “sun” is “Havayah is a sun and a shield”: the Infinite Light as supernal Chochmah.

Through the week its light descends and is clothed in the lower worlds, and on Shabbos it returns and rises to its source: “keep the Shabbos, for it is holy,” holy meaning set apart and above. The discourse “A Shabbos of complete rest” is mentioned for more on this.

Summary of section 2: Shabbos is received with help from above, and it rests on the week’s effort (“one who toiled on the eve of Shabbos”). Each day’s prayer holds a smaller version of this: an ascent through Pesukei deZimra and the Shema, and then, in the Shemoneh Esreh, a drawing down in “Blessed are You, Havayah.”

The weekday ascent is like a villager overwhelmed at seeing the king; Shabbos is like the city-dweller who calmly enjoys the king’s glory. And Shabbos is the “sun of tzedakah with healing” for the lovesick soul.

Section 3 returns to the opening question. Everything so far contrasted Shabbos with the weekdays; Rosh Chodesh is a third kind of day, since work is permitted on it, yet it is not counted as one of the six working days.

In Yechezkel’s vision of the future Temple, G‑d commands that the east gate of the inner court be shut on the six working days and opened on Shabbos and on Rosh Chodesh. Since it opens on Rosh Chodesh, Rosh Chodesh is not one of “the days of work.”

The answer comes through a human analogy, following Job’s “from my flesh I behold G‑d”: what we see in ourselves teaches us about G‑d. A person’s speech can come from two places: from emotion (we speak up for what we love, or speak out of anger), or from intellect (we say what we understand).

The same is true, so to speak, above. G‑d’s thoughts are not like ours, yet Scripture speaks of divine “speech” and “the word of Havayah”: this is “the revealed world” (alma d’isgalya), the level of Malchus, the source of Knesses Yisrael. (The printing’s מקו is evidently מקור, “source.”)

Sometimes Knesses Yisrael receives this speech by way of the emotive attributes.

That is the “hidden love,” the natural love for G‑d latent in every Jewish heart, which through the six weekdays, after prayer, moves a person to “turn from evil and do good, seek peace.”

“Seek peace” is read as making peace between two opposites: whatever is higher is closer to ayin (“nothing,” self-nullification), and whatever is lower is more yesh (“something,” self-assertion); peace joins them. (The printed text reads הפרים; the Kehot note’s lemma reads הפכים, “opposites,” which is apparently the correct reading.)

On Rosh Chodesh, however, Knesses Yisrael receives from intellect and understanding: it is an opportune time above (the text’s שעת הושר apparently reads שעת הכושר) for insight into how creation is renewed from nothing to something to be drawn down.

The resulting love is not emotional excitement but bittul, self-nullification. Then speech is truly G‑d’s own, as Isaiah says, “My words which I have put in your mouth”: “My words,” literally. Two parallel discussions are mentioned.

This is Yechezkel’s “gate that faces east (kadim)”: the word kadim is read as mikedem, “from before,” meaning from before the work of creation. For “the work of Bereishis” means Chochmah as already clothed in the emotive attributes, as explained in paragraph 1.

On Rosh Chodesh speech receives from Chochmah itself, not from Chochmah hidden inside the emotions. Chochmah hidden within the attributes cannot compare with Chochmah revealed in its own right, far above them; this is discussed in the discourse “I have come into My garden.”

Further parallels: in the discourse “And G‑d spoke to Moshe,” this is the level of which G‑d says, “but by My Name Havayah I did not make Myself known to them” (the Patriarchs). In Torah Ohr, Vayakhel (“And Moshe assembled”), the Alter Rebbe explains “that faces east (kadim)” as kedem, the level above Chochmah, above reishis itself, revealed on Shabbos as the supernal will and delight; and the Zohar on Noach expounds the same gate.

This is the meaning of G‑d as “He who renews the months,” in the blessing over the new moon: He is the source of renewal itself. Knesses Yisrael rises into that source, and so the gate “shall be opened on the day of the New Moon” as on Shabbos.

But Rosh Chodesh is still the level of speech, “the revealed world,” and that very level (Malchus, like the moon) is what is renewed, so work is permitted. Yet it is not counted among the days of work, because on it speech rises to the source and beginning of those days. (The printing’s ברא חודש is evidently בראש חודש.)

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

Summary of section 3: on Shabbos divine speech returns to its source, so work stops. Rosh Chodesh is still speech, so work is permitted; but its speech draws from “before the work of creation,” from Chochmah itself, so it is not called a working day.

Section 4 finally explains the opening verse. Everything so far concerned the ordinary Shabbos and New Moon, which come after weekdays. The verse’s doubled phrases point higher: “its New Moon” of the New Moon and “its Shabbos” of Shabbos, a Shabbos above Shabbos and a renewal above renewal, and only then will “all flesh come.”

¶1 This explains “its New Moon” and “its Shabbos” from paragraph 1.

First, the ordinary Shabbos: it follows the six days of work because on it G‑d “rested from all His work.”

The analogy is a person writing: while he writes, his intellect is lowered into the mechanics of forming letters; when he finishes, his mind returns to its own source. (The printing’s שלו is evidently שכלו, “his intellect.”)

So too with creation: in the six days G‑d’s wisdom descended step by step even into the physical world, as “You made them all with wisdom.”

On Shabbos that wisdom returns to rest in its source. But “the Shabbos of Shabbos” is a level so high that, compared to it, even Shabbos is like a weekday.

It is the level beyond the whole chain of descent (hishtalshelus). From it, only a glow and reflection is drawn to give the worlds life, since if more than that were revealed the worlds would dissolve and be as if they never existed.

It is far beyond both the encompassing light (sovev) and the indwelling light (memalei). (Parallel discussions are listed: “A Shabbos of complete rest” and “Listen, O heavens.”)

The Mishnah in Eduyos reads “every Shabbos on its Shabbos” as the seven weeks from Pesach to Atzeres (Shavuos), shabbos meaning “week.” That fits: on Shavuos the “fiftieth gate” is revealed, which is the revelation of Keser, the level above intellect; and in Torah Ohr, Noach (“Many waters”), the Alter Rebbe speaks of a lower Shabbos and a higher Shabbos to come, “the day that is entirely Shabbos.” Likewise “the New Moon of the New Moon” is the very source of renewal.

These levels will be revealed in the days of Mashiach, of whom Isaiah says, “My servant shall prosper (yaskil); he shall be exalted and lifted up and be very high.” The Zohar on Vayeishev reads this verse of the moon, Malchus, whose light will then be renewed.

Then the Infinite Light, beyond the chain of descent, will shine openly, and that is when “all flesh shall come to bow down.”

Now he explains “all flesh”: flesh is the element of fire, since what is animate is fiery. So Yechezkel’s holy Chayos, “living creatures” with the faces of a lion and an ox, look “like coals of fire”: they are seraphim, “burning ones.” In Likkutei Torah, Nasso, the Alter Rebbe likewise says that flesh is the element of fire and stands for love.

This is why the Gemara, among its sayings about the unlearned, brings Rebbi’s teaching that an unlearned person (am haaretz) may not eat meat: from “This is the law (torah) of the animal and the bird” he learns that only one who engages in Torah may eat it. Basar means both “flesh” and “meat.” Food becomes blood and then flesh like the eater’s own, and so it can be raised with him to the level of a human being.

When the person then gives himself over to G‑d in prayer, the energy of the food, now part of him, rises with him.

Torah scholars are “weak and ailing,” lovesick with the fire and thirst of longing, because they receive from Chochmah and see how all things come from nothing; this makes the flames of their love burn higher (the Song of Songs’ “its flames are flames of fire”).

So they may eat meat: the meat, itself fiery, becomes part of their flesh and is lifted with them when they bind their soul to G‑d with that fiery love.

The unlearned person has only the “hidden love” latent in every Jew, with none of that burning excitement.

So the meat’s energy does not rise with him; it drags him down. In Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, the Alter Rebbe says the same, that the meat lowers him, unlike “the righteous, who eats to satisfy his soul”; and in Beha’aloscha he explains that the unlearned cannot lift the meat up. (The printing’s ובד״ בהעלותך is evidently ובד״ה.) “Vows are a fence for abstinence” is Rabbi Akiva’s saying in Avos 3:13: a person may vow to keep away from something the Torah permits, as a safeguard. The Mattos discourse is cited here because it treats the same idea: one who cannot lift a permitted pleasure up does better to hold back from it.

In the future “all flesh,” the fiery element, will reach bowing and self-nullification, when “its Shabbos” and “its New Moon” are revealed. The Alter Rebbe suggests that this is “everyone that is called by My Name”: the Gemara in Bava Basra says that in the future the righteous will be called by the name of the Holy One, and the Rashbam there explains that their name will be the Name Havayah itself.

For now, the fiery excitement of feeling comes from lovesickness, like the “great noise” of the Ofanim.

They make that noise because inclusion in the Infinite Light is beyond them; they are below it.

When the level above the chain of descent, “its Shabbos” and “its New Moon,” is revealed, they will be able to reach true bowing. (The printing’s ודשו is evidently וחדשו, “and its New Moon.”)

Why “bow” in particular? Bowing is bittul, but it is also a drawing down.

It draws into the world the bittul of the level beyond hishtalshelus. The Midrash says on Avraham’s “we will bow down and return to you” that he came back from Mount Moriah in peace only in the merit of bowing, and that Israel was redeemed and the Torah given in its merit.

So too the bowing in the Shemoneh Esreh, which comes at “Blessed are You”: baruch, “blessed,” is read as “drawn down,” into “You,” the second person, the level of revealed presence. (The printing’s סד״ השמים is evidently סד״ה, “at the end of the discourse beginning.”)

So “to bow down before Me” (lefanai, from panim, “face”) means that G‑d’s “face,” His revelation, be present, as the Gemara’s “his face beamed” uses “face” for open expression. This is the Priestly Blessing, “May Havayah make His face shine upon you,” and the Psalm’s “may He make His face shine with us.”

Finally, “says Havayah” (amar) at the end of the verse means “saying” in the sense of drawing down from above: this level will be drawn down and revealed.