מזמור שיר חנכת הבית לדוד

The maamar opens with the heading of Psalm 30, the psalm for the dedication (chanukah) of the House, and asks why the dedication of a house is marked with a feast and celebration. To answer, it first sets out three things a person needs, food, clothing and a home, which will later stand for three levels of divine light.

¶10 Hold this question about the feast: paragraph 10 answers it.

Food is the most inward of the three: it is digested and becomes the person’s own flesh and vitality, its finest part even nourishing the brain. It is the model of an inner light that enters and becomes one with what it enlivens.

Clothing does not become part of the person; it surrounds him and protects him from outside. Still, it lies directly on his body, so it is a close, touching kind of “encompassing” (makif).

A house also surrounds a person, but at a distance: it does not touch him at all. So we have three degrees: inner (food), close encompassing (clothing) and distant encompassing (a house).

An observation from ordinary life: food is the cheapest of the three, clothing costs more, and a house most of all.

One would expect the reverse: food becomes one with the person and keeps him alive, so by rights it should be the most precious, and clothing, which only surrounds him, should cost less.

¶4 Hold this puzzle about prices: paragraph 4 answers it from the roots above.

The same question applies to clothing versus houses. The parenthesis then gives the everyday explanation: food is used up quickly, since one is hungry again soon after digesting.

The deeper reason: the higher a thing’s spiritual root, the lower it descends. Houses have the highest root and clothing a higher root than food, which is why they are dearer and longer-lasting.

The three levels are said to appear in all three dimensions of existence that Sefer Yetzirah names, World (space), Year (time) and Soul (the person), and also in Torah and mitzvos.

Memalei kol almin, the light that fills all worlds, works like a craftsman’s power that is inside what he makes. Malchus, the last Sefirah of Atzilus, enters the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah and becomes their inner life.

The analogy is the soul in the body: one soul gives each organ its own specific power, sight to the eye, hearing to the ear and so on, each according to its place.

So too Malchus of Atzilus gives life to every detail of the lower worlds from within, adapting itself to each one. This inner, particularized life corresponds to food.

The verse speaks of “Your kingdom” (Malchus) together with “Your might” and “His mighty acts” (gevurosav). The maamar reads gevuros, plainly “mighty acts,” as the restraints and contractions through which the one divine life is divided into countless separate creations.

Because Malchus enlivens each creature from inside, like the soul in the body, it is called the light that “fills” all worlds: the power of the maker present within what he makes.

The other kind of divine light, the one that “encompasses” all worlds, never enters them as their inner life but surrounds them. Sefer Shel Beinonim is the Tanya, which explains (chapter 48) that this “surrounding” is not a matter of place: light that acts on the worlds while hidden from them is said to “encompass” them. The main life of the worlds comes from this light above the ten Sefiros of Atzilus, called Keser Elyon, the Supreme Crown, while the Sefiros themselves are drawn down level by level into their counterparts below (Chesed of Atzilus into Chesed of Beriah).

Keser has two sides because it stands between the Emanator (G‑d Himself) and the emanated Sefiros, and a true intermediary must share in both: its upper side is the lowest level of the Emanator, its lower side the first of what is emanated. In Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai (46c), the Alter Rebbe brings this ruling of the Arizal in full: the lowest level of the Infinite within Keser is Atik Yomin, which emanates Keser’s second aspect, Arich Anpin, the hidden root of the ten Sefiros. The Etz Chaim reference, Sha’ar (Gate) 41, chapter 3 in the Shklov 1800 printing, is Sha’ar (Gate) 42, chapter 1 in current editions, as the Kehot note says.

The lower side of Keser is Arich Anpin (the “Long Countenance”), the source from which the ten Sefiros of Atzilus, the “ten tikkunim,” unfold in order, as the Tikkunei Zohar describes them: “one long, one short and one in between.” Yet Arich Anpin in itself surrounds everything equally, like a garment around the whole body.

The upper side of Keser is Atik. The word usually means “ancient,” but the maamar derives it from ma’tik, “removes,” as in Job’s words about G‑d who “removes mountains”: a level removed from, and beyond, the Sefiros. It is so far beyond them that even “surrounding” is too close a word, since whatever surrounds something still relates to it; so it is called a “makif of a makif,” an encompassing of the encompassing.

Here the analogy returns: a garment touches the body and is like Arich Anpin; a house surrounds the person from a distance.

So a house is like Atik, the encompassing of the encompassing. In Torah Ohr (Bereishis, 1c), on “What house could you build for Me?”, the Alter Rebbe explains “house” as the level of “with all your might,” an encompassing light like a house that surrounds a person with its roof and walls, drawn down through the bowings of prayer; the second reference, to Likkutei Torah, Pinchas, is on why the offerings apply only when the Temple stands.

So the three levels above (the inner light, Arich Anpin and Atik) come down as food, clothing and houses. By the principle already stated, the higher the source, the lower and more physical its expression.

Food comes from the inner, filling light, which is divided and particular. That is why food comes in so many tastes and kinds, bitter, sweet and so on.

The many kinds of food reflect how every Sefirah contains all the others (kindness within kindness, restraint within restraint, and so on). And because this light is held in “vessels” that limit it, food is finite and gets used up.

This is why food becomes one with the person: its root is the inner light that enters and enlivens from within.

Food is cheaper because fine food is not essential: one can manage with dry bread. Likkutei Sichos (vol. 9, p. 139), quoted in the Kehot note, explains that “not so necessary” refers only to the many kinds of food, not to food as such: for staying alive, food is needed more than clothing, and clothing more than a house.

¶2 This answers the question from paragraph 2.

One can live on bread and salt, as the Mishnah in Avos describes the life of Torah study, or eat delicacies. This range reflects the root of food in the limited, divided power that works within things, so food too is divided and limited.

Clothing, by contrast, comes from Keser in its role as “head of the emanated,” that is, Arich Anpin, an encompassing light.

So clothing surrounds the body and is in a sense more necessary: one cannot go without it in winter, nor in summer. The printed text reads "בקיף", which apparently should read "בקיץ" (summer); the Kehot note quotes the line as "וכן בקיץ".

Clothing costs more and lasts longer than food because its root, the encompassing light, is not confined in vessels.

Because it is not confined, clothing does not wear out so fast. The bracket adds that the same contrast holds between taste (inner, like food) and smell (more surrounding, like clothing), as explained on “I have come into My garden.”

Hence Yitzchak smelled “the smell of his garments,” and in the Zohar (Balak, 186a) a young boy tells two sages he knew they had been busy with a mitzvah “by the fragrance of your garments.” In Likkutei Torah, Masei (89b), the Alter Rebbe explains that these garments are the mitzvos, encompassing lights from the supreme will, above Chochmah and comprehension. Houses, furthest from the body, come from the lowest level of the Emanator, Atik, the encompassing of the encompassing.

Because the house is rooted in the highest level, Atik, it is made from the lowest kind of matter, stone and earth, the inanimate. Clothing, from a lower root, belongs to the vegetative level.

A house stands apart from the body, yet a person cannot live without one even for a moment; it costs most and lasts longest, all because its root is the highest, the encompassing of the encompassing. The Kehot note points to Tosafos on Yevamos 63a, which explains the Sages’ “a man who has no land” as land on which to build a house to live in, and to Vayikra Rabbah 22:1.

The second section applies the three levels to Torah and mitzvos. Torah study is “food” for the soul, because the soul absorbs and unites with what it understands; the mitzvos are its “garments,” surrounding it rather than entering it. The text refers to other discourses where this is developed.

The same paradox as with food and clothing: mitzvos are physical deeds and so seem lower than study, yet by the rule already given, what descends lower has the higher root.

Evidence that the mitzvos are higher: all of Torah, both the revealed law and the Kabbalah of the Zohar, serves to explain the mitzvos. The Sages praise study because it leads to action, and state that action, not study, is the main thing.

A further proof from the Talmud: a court would compel a person who refused to perform a positive commandment, such as making a sukkah, even by beating without limit. Such force shows how essential the deed is.

An objection: those whose Torah study is their whole occupation, like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his colleagues, do not stop their study for prayer (Shabbos 11a), and in the Jerusalem Talmud Rabbi Shimon says that such people do not stop even for the Shema. (The print’s שפי׳ is read as שאפי׳, “that even,” the Jerusalem Talmud’s own word.)

But that is only for the Shema, which is itself Torah recitation: “this is study and that is study,” and one study is not set aside for another. For a mitzvah of action, such as making a sukkah or taking a lulav, even they must stop, as the Jerusalem Talmud says, quoted by the Baal HaMaor (Rabbi Zerachyah HaLevi, the twelfth-century author of HaMaor on the Rif). Likkutei Sichos (vol. 15, p. 261), quoted in the Kehot note, explains that sukkah and lulav are the examples because both are bound up with Daas: of the sukkah it says “so that your generations will know.”

All this shows that the mitzvos, though lower in their outward form, as physical deeds and “garments,” are higher in their root.

For Torah, the soul’s “food,” comes from Chochmah (wisdom), the inner dimension of the Sefiros, as the Zohar says, “The Torah comes forth from Chochmah.”

So, like food, Torah study has no fixed measure: the Talmud (Menachos 99b) rules that even one chapter morning and evening fulfills the duty of study, yet G‑d told Yehoshua to meditate in it “day and night.” The range, from a minimum to without limit, matches food.

Just as one can live on dry bread or enjoy many delicacies, Torah study can be minimal or vast, because its root is the inner, filling light (memalei), which is divided into many particulars.

The mitzvos come from Keser, the encompassing light above Chochmah. That is why they are garments for the soul: they surround it with G‑d’s will, which is above intellect. The text’s “one, etc.” is left unfinished.

Keser has two levels, the encompassing (Arich Anpin) and the encompassing of the encompassing (Atik). Likewise there are two kinds of mitzvos. The first kind, most mitzvos, such as sukkah and lulav, are done by a person’s own will and decision.

The second kind cannot be done by choice at all, only when they happen without one’s knowledge. The classic case is shikchah: a sheaf forgotten in the field must be left for the poor, and one can fulfill this only by genuinely forgetting. Rabbi Chaim Vital’s Sha’arei Kedushah, cited in the Kehot note, counts such mitzvos as a class of their own, which a person cannot seek out unless G‑d brings them his way.

The Tosefta tells of a pious man who forgot a sheaf in his field and, on discovering it, told his son to offer two bulls for him, one as a burnt-offering and one as a peace-offering.

His son asks why this mitzvah deserved more celebration than any other. The father answers that every other mitzvah is given to our conscious choice; this one can only come about without our knowledge, so it is a mitzvah we could never have arranged for ourselves.

The Torah attaches a blessing to it (“so that Havayah your G‑d may bless you”). The Alter Rebbe explains the father’s meaning: such a mitzvah is a gift from above, and that is why he offered a bull in thanks.

Mitzvos done by conscious choice come from Arich Anpin, the lower side of Keser. Arich Anpin is the supreme will, the source from which the Sefiros emerge, as the Tikkunei Zohar says, “You are He who brought forth [the ten Sefiros].”

Because they come from G‑d’s will, such mitzvos are done with a person’s will, and doing them draws that will down upon him like a surrounding garment. This is why the blessing says “Who has sanctified us with His commandments,” and why they can be done with great joy.

The mitzvos that happen without one’s will are different: a mitzvah like the forgotten sheaf comes from Atik, the lowest level of the Emanator, which is above will altogether, the “encompassing of the encompassing,” the house of the analogy.

The Alter Rebbe suggests, tentatively (“possibly”), that this is “the Will of all wills,” the source of will itself. Because its root is above will, such a mitzvah can come only when it bypasses a person’s knowledge and will.

A second example: a sage who fled to avoid being made Nasi (head of the Sanhedrin), and was made Nasi for that very reason. In the Jerusalem Talmud (Chagigah 2:2) the one who fled to Alexandria, in Egypt, is Yehudah ben Tabbai, and the Alter Rebbe’s Siddur tells it of him; the Rebbe’s notes quoted by Kehot remark that Likkutei Torah has Shimon ben Shetach and leave it for further study, and the note suggests the text follows the view, also recorded there, that Shimon ben Shetach was the Nasi.

His flight is exactly what made him Nasi: had he wanted the office, he would not have been given it, for, as the Talmud says (Eruvin 13b), greatness flees from one who chases it and pursues one who flees from it.

Accepting leadership in this way is a mitzvah that comes against one’s will, and so it too is rooted in the encompassing of the encompassing. Likkutei Sichos (vol. 33, p. 46), quoted in the Kehot note, adds that all leadership is bound up with self-nullification, since “Through Me kings reign.”

Back to the main thread: Malchus is called a “house,” as in “a faithful house” said of David. David earned this because he said “My heart was not haughty... I stilled my soul”; the word for “stilled” (domamti) shares its root with domem, the inanimate, the stone of which a house is built.

Just as a house, made of inanimate stone and earth, is rooted in the encompassing of the encompassing, so Malchus, the last and lowest Sefirah, is rooted very high, in that same level. David’s self-effacement, like the silence of stone, is what connects Malchus to it.

Now the opening question is answered. At the dedication of the Temple, the light drawn down is from Atik, the “encompassing of the encompassing,” which is above will, the highest level of Keser, so joy has no place there by itself.

Joy belongs naturally to what a person does by choice: the mitzvos are done willingly and so with joy, as the Torah rebukes those who “did not serve with joy” and as the blessing “Who has sanctified us with His commandments” expresses, because their root is the supreme will.

A house, though, made of stone walls, the inanimate, comes from a level above will, so joy does not arise there by itself. (The word "חומה,” a wall, apparently refers to the stone walls of the House.)

So joy had to be deliberately brought into the dedication. The parallel is the water libation on Sukkos, explained in Likkutei Torah, Sukkos (79d): the wine libation is stated in the Written Torah and wine by nature gladdens, while the water libation, a law given to Moshe at Sinai, comes from a higher level, so the drawing of the water had to be done “with joy.”

That is why the psalm of the dedication of the House is called “a song”: song brings joy into the dedication. And this is why people make a feast and celebrate when they dedicate a house, the question with which the maamar opened. (The printed "הית" apparently reads "הבית", the House.)

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

The blessing to Boaz, “may your house be like the house of Peretz,” uses “house” for having children. The Sages (Moed Katan 28a) say that children do not depend on merit but on mazal.

“Merit” belongs to the inner light of the Sefiros, the realm of reason and judgment, where one weighs whether a person deserves something.

Children come from mazal, which here means not “fortune” but the source that makes flow (the root nazal, “to flow”: mazil, yizal, nozlim), an encompassing light above reason. The verses about flowing water illustrate the word.

So offspring are called a “house,” since both come from the supreme encompassing light. The wedding blessing over the creation of man, “and prepared for him, from him, an everlasting edifice,” likewise calls the wife formed from Adam, and the family that comes from her, a “building.”

A cross-reference: in Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Oral Torah is called a “house,” based on the Sages’ reading of “your children” (banayich) as “your builders” (bonayich).

The third section applies the same principle to the Sanctuaries. Moshe tells Israel they have not yet come “to the rest and to the inheritance,” and the Sages (Zevachim 119a, in Rabbi Yehudah’s view) read “the rest” as the Sanctuary at Shiloh.

The question: Shiloh was built to the same dimensions and plan as the Mishkan in the desert. Why then is only Shiloh called “rest”?

The one difference: the Mishkan’s walls were gold-plated boards of wood, while Shiloh’s were of stone. The Mishnah (Zevachim 14:6) describes Shiloh as a house of stone below with curtains spread above it, so the text’s “the curtains were of stones” apparently means that what were wooden boards in the Mishkan were stone there. The text calls the boards “cedar,” and the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 23a) counts shittah, the acacia, among the kinds of cedar.

Cedar overlaid with gold is far costlier than stone, so why is the stone Shiloh called “rest”?

The answer follows the principle already given: stone, the inanimate and lowest, has the highest root, the encompassing of the encompassing (Atik).

Wood, the vegetative, is rooted only in the ordinary encompassing light (Arich Anpin).

Therefore “rest” means Shiloh: built of stone with no protruding wood, it was where the highest level, the encompassing of the encompassing, rested. “Rest” (menuchah) is where that level settles.

This is why the Rambam and Sefer HaChinuch (mitzvah 492) count, under “Do not plant for yourself an asherah, any tree, beside the altar,” a ban on protruding wooden structures in the Temple; the Chinuch adds from the Sages that all the projections from the Temple’s walls were of stone. An asherah was a tree planted for idol worship.

Wood set flush into the stone, such as ceiling beams, is allowed. The building had to be of stone, whose root is highest.

For the difference between protruding and sunken, the text refers to its discourse on “Set me as a seal” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, 46b), where a “sunken” seal is light clothed in vessels and a “protruding” seal a level beyond them. The Sages (Rosh Hashanah 3b–4a) say that Cyrus, who began well, later “turned sour”: his decree for the Second Temple called for three rows of stone and one of wood, so that he could burn it if the Jews rebelled.

Protruding wood stands out like an encompassing light; wood sunk into the wall is inward. The Temple had to be of stone only, with no protruding wood. (The printed "מיקף" apparently reads "מקיף", encompassing.)

The Mishkan’s boards are “acacia wood, standing,” and the seraphim too are “standing” above Him. The morning prayer says the ofanim and holy chayos (kinds of angels) rise “with a great noise.”

These are applied to the order of prayer: the Pesukei Dezimra (the psalms of praise) up to the Shema correspond to the “standing” wooden boards, the vegetative level. The holy chayos make a great noise because they still sense the world as a real existence (yesh).

When they grasp that all is nullified before G‑d, “Holy, holy, holy,” they are shaken with a great noise. The seraphim do not sense existence as the ofanim do.

So the seraphim stand “above Him,” above the Shechinah. This is the level of prayer until the Shema. The 248 words of the Shema, however, are called “248 stones,” the inanimate level, which is higher still.

Yaakov at Beis El “took of the stones of the place”: these stones are the 248 words of the Shema, the level of Malchus, the lowest Sefirah.

He put them mera’ashosav, which plainly means “at his head,” for his head as he slept; the text reads it not as “under his head” but as above it: the stones’ root is higher than the head, that is, above the intellect.

Then he set the stone up as a pillar and poured oil on it. Malchus begins as a mere “point” beneath Yesod, the Sefirah above it; Yaakov raised it into a standing pillar and anointed it with oil, drawing into it the supernal intellect, the level of supernal Chochmah, symbolized by the holy anointing oil.

The psalm’s “stone the builders rejected” is read as Malchus. Malchus is called “stone” because it is the level of speech, the letters, which Sefer Yetzirah calls “stones” (“two stones build two houses”): like stone, it is the inanimate level.

Malchus is the lowest of the Sefiros, as the inanimate is lower than all the four elements (fire, air, water, earth); yet it becomes “the cornerstone,” because its root is the highest, above all the Sefiros, in Keser Elyon. The text refers to its Explanation on “This is the statute of the Torah” for more on this.

Who are “the builders” who rejected it? Sarah and Rachel each gave their maidservant to their husband, saying “perhaps I will be built up through her,” that is, have children through her. The Hebrew ibaneh (“I will be built up”) holds the letters of even (“stone”) and recalls ben (“son”) and bonim (“builders”).

This “building” through a maidservant is the “filling” (milui) of the letter hei, the extra letter added when hei is spelled out in full (ה״א). In the Name Havayah the first hei stands for Binah and the last hei for Malchus; the “filling” of the hei is the lowest part of Malchus, which descends into the lower worlds to become “a head to foxes” (a ruler among lesser beings; the Kehot note also points to the Zohar, II, 148b), and beside Malchus itself it is like a maidservant beside her mistress.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse “May He reveal to us its reasons” (Torah Ohr, Chayei Sarah, 15c), where the “filling” of the hei is called a second, “doubled” hei, as in the Cave of Machpelah, the “doubled” cave; and to the Zohar (I, 27b), which speaks of a “maidservant of the Shechinah” and of the spelled-out hei as “offspring” of the hei.

The text then cites Asarah Maamaros, a Kabbalistic work by Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano, which quotes an Aggadah about David’s birth: Yishai believed he was with his freed maidservant, but the maidservant had secretly given his wife the signs, just as Rachel gave Leah the signs (Megillah 13b); so David was born of Yishai’s wife.

Whatever the historical account, the meaning of the “maidservant” is the lowest level of Malchus, the inanimate, called “stone.”

The “builders” rejected this stone because it descends so low, to where “her feet go down,” into the lowest realms: the truly inanimate.

Only through David could this lowest level be “built” into holiness; for the reasons, the text refers to Sefer HaGilgulim (on the transmigration of souls, from the Arizal’s teachings) and to Asarah Maamaros.

When this is achieved, it raises not only the lowest Malchus but also Malchus of Atzilus, so that it becomes “the cornerstone.”

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, the seventeenth-century Kabbalist, in his commentary on the Zohar, Ki Sisa, 189b) explains why: all the sparks refined (beirurim) from below are raised by the lower Malchus to Malchus of Atzilus, which lifts them higher still and refines them at a higher level, and that power makes it the cornerstone. (The printed "החתתונה" apparently reads "התחתונה,” “the lower.”)

The sparks being refined come from the World of Tohu (chaos), which was higher than the World of Tikkun (rectification); the text refers to its Explanation on “I am black yet comely” for this.

The whole “building” of holiness is made by raising them, for, as Sefer Yetzirah says, “their beginning is wedged in their end”: the lowest is joined to the highest. The kinds of “stones” named, “moist” ones (the Talmud’s “moist stones sunk in the deep,” Chagigah 12a) and “perforated” ones, are not explained here; the Kehot note points to the Siddur and to the Mitteler Rebbe’s Biurei HaZohar (44c) for them.

This explains the Talmud’s teaching (Yevamos 62b), from Ezekiel’s words “to bring a blessing to rest upon your house,” that a man without a wife lives without blessing: his blessing comes on account of his wife.

Rabbi Yosei said he never called his wife “my wife” but “my house,” identifying wife and home. Yet the marriage contract (kesubah) has the husband write to his wife, “I will honor and sustain,” as though he provides for her.

That seems to contradict the saying that a man is sustained only on account of his wife. The Kehot note records that the Tzemach Tzedek, in Or HaTorah, also cites such a saying of the Sages and remarks that it was not found; the closest Talmudic statement is Rabbi Chelbo’s, that blessing is found in a man’s home only on account of his wife (Bava Metzia 59a).

Both are true. On the spiritual level, the drawing down of the supernal kindnesses comes from the “male” side (the giving Sefiros). But those kindnesses might remain only as a spiritual revelation of G‑dliness, never reaching physical livelihood.

For G‑d’s kindness to reach down as actual bread, “He gives bread to all flesh,” requires the “wife,” Nukva, Malchus of Atzilus, which gives life to the lower worlds. (The printed "מ בחי׳" apparently reads "מבחי׳.”)

Malchus is called “my house” because it draws down the supreme encompassing light (the house-level), which gives the power for divine blessing to reach the physical world. So the man provides the spiritual kindness, but the physical blessing comes through the wife. Two final cross-references close the maamar.

“Concluded”: the customary word marking the end of the maamar.