The Rebbe’s maamarim related to Parshas Vayeira

The maamar opens with the verse ‘and he stood over them under the tree, and they ate’ (Bereishis 18:8), and with the Rebbe Rashab’s maamar on these words, said fifty years earlier, which asks how Avraham’s standing over the angels relates to their eating, since only when he stood over them did they eat. There are two readings of ‘they ate’: that they only appeared to eat (Rashi, and the Midrash: ‘when you enter a town, follow its custom’), or that they truly ate, as the Zohar on Parshas Toldos implies by comparing this to the angel who wrestled with Yaakov in a physical body. The connection has to be understood on both readings, and so does the great elevation the angels evidently gained through this eating. To explain it, the Rebbe brings the verse 'ואם האכל יאכל׳, which the Sages read as speaking of two eatings, the altar’s eating and the kohanim’s eating, and asks: how can the kohanim’s eating, a human eating, be compared to offering sacrifices on the altar? And how can it be greater, as in ‘the kohanim eat and the owners are atoned’, when of the sacrifices it is said that ‘the secret of the offering rises to the secret of Ein Sof’?

Offering a sacrifice lifts the physical animal through the ‘face of the ox’ in Yetzirah and through Beriah up to the ‘lion that consumes the offerings’, which is Malchus of Atzilus as the source of the lower worlds. That is why the altar stood in the outer courtyard, which corresponds to the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. This refining (birur) from below to above is needed because the refining from above to below at creation reaches only the inner aspect of the worlds. It is called the altar’s eating, not human eating, because ‘adam’ (man) is Zeir Anpin, and the sacrifices raise only Malchus, which receives from Zeir Anpin without adding vitality to it. The sacrifices do reach the lights of Tohu, which is why they atone for sin. But Tohu exists for the sake of Tikkun, so those lights still relate to the worlds and are not a new light. The kohanim’s eating, human eating, draws into Zeir Anpin, the last level of the worlds of Ein Sof, a new light entirely above the worlds. Today the same pair appears as weekday eating, which is birurim and so must be preceded by prayer, and Shabbos eating, a new light from Atika Kadisha. It also appears as the eating of beinonim (intermediate people), the ‘seed of animal’ whose lower knowledge leaves their self in place so they must refine, versus that of tzaddikim, the ‘seed of man’ whose higher knowledge puts them beyond birurim. Angels, as created beings, cannot by themselves receive light above them, but the service of tzaddikim’s souls brings it to them. By standing over the angels, Avraham caused them to have human eating. So too, the Rebbe suggests, beinonim who are bound to tzaddikim receive this infinite light, which adds vitality to their Torah and mitzvos.

The maamar opens with ‘I have come to My garden, My sister, My bride’ (Shir HaShirim 5:1) and with the Rebbe Rayatz’s maamar on this verse for the day of his passing. The Midrash reads ‘to My garden’ as ‘to My bridal chamber’, the place where the essence of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence) was at first: below. Through wrongdoings it withdrew up to the seventh heaven, and seven tzaddikim brought it back down, until Moshe, the seventh, brought it to the earth, mainly through the Mishkan: ‘make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them.’ The work that draws it down is iskafya and is’hapcha (subduing and transforming the sitra achra, the side opposed to holiness), which draws the essence of the Or Ein Sof (the infinite light), above all relation to worlds, into all worlds equally. Since light gains its advantage from darkness, this is higher than what Adam drew before the sin, and this power is given to every Jew. The Jews are therefore called Tzivos Hashem, G‑d’s army, sent out to conquer the world. To win, they are given the treasure above, and lavishly, the way a king spends all his treasures to win a war. Chapter 19 of the Rebbe Rayatz’s maamar, the chapter tied to that year, adds that with the middah (trait) of netzach, victory, one can reach the supernal treasure, ‘meaning, the revealing and drawing down of the supernal treasure is in the middah of netzach.’ The Rebbe asks: the treasure is by definition sealed and hidden, the Essence that is not light at all, so how can it be revealed and drawn into netzach? He rejects two easy answers. One is that only a glimmer is drawn from it, the way teshuvah reaches ‘Your face’ while only a revelation comes down from there. But the maamar says all the precious wealth is given to the soldiers, and lavish spending has no limit. The other is that netzach is merely a fitting ‘complete place’ for a gift from above. But the maamar’s ‘meaning’ ties the revelation to netzach’s own reaching of the treasure.

The Rebbe answers from the Alter Rebbe’s Torah Ohr: the tzimtzum (contraction) was only in the light, not in the Ma’or (its source). The Ma’or cannot be contracted at all; on the contrary, it is revealed below as above (and, the Rebbe adds, mainly below), which is why even small children know there is a G‑d. Yet this revelation does not act on the place, since every effect comes through light and revelation. It acts on the world when G‑d’s name is mentioned about worldly matters. The Baal Shem Tov worked hard to get men, women and children to say ‘Baruch Hashem’ for their health and livelihood, saying that the praises of Israel are G‑d’s ‘sustenance’. Just as food joins soul and body, these praises draw G‑d’s Essence into those very blessings. Avodah (divine service) cannot cause that drawing down itself, but it must match the place where it comes. In the same way, for the treasure to work inside a person’s netzach and give him the strength to defeat his opponents, he needs the avodah of netzach. The treasure is spent lavishly for victory, not for conquest. A king spends to expand his borders only after weighing the cost, and in the same way the treasures spent to make the world G‑d’s dwelling still involve a calculation. Torah study is like a king’s wedding, when he shows only some of his treasures. Victory over the opponent is the most beloved service of all: ‘pleasantness at Your right hand, netzach.’ The stronger the opponent, the greater the victory, so the chapter ends with iskafya specifically: forcing oneself while the sitra achra is still strong. That belongs to every Jew, even the aravah (willow), which has no taste and no smell. Drawing on the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe explains that refining darkness draws a deeper hidden light than the G‑dly soul’s own service, the way fire is drawn out of flint by striking, while fire hidden in a coal comes out by blowing; iskafya while the sitra achra is strong takes even greater toil, so the hidden light it draws is higher still. The main advantage of iskafya, though, is the victory, which reveals the treasure from above and draws it inward. In the middle of the war one feels only the result of the treasure, the power to win. At the final victory, with Moshiach, the treasure itself will be felt.

The maamar opens with G‑d’s words about Avraham: “For I have known him (ki yedativ), so that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of G‑d, to do tzedakah and justice” (Bereishis 18:19). The Rebbe Rashab, whose birthday is this day, cites in his series of maamarim (hemshech) of Rosh Hashanah 5666, which fell on Shabbos as it did this year, the Targum’s rendering of ki yedativ as “it is revealed before Me,” and explains it as G‑d’s will (ratzon) that is openly revealed. Rashi, by contrast, reads ki yedativ as an expression of affection (chibah). The Rebbe asks: according to Rashi the word lemaan (“so that”) fits, since it gives the reason for the affection; but according to the Targum, where ki yedativ refers to will, lemaan seems to have no meaning at all. He then links the verse to the Rebbe Maharash’s maamar of Shabbos Vayeira 5636, a hundred years earlier, on “Many waters (mayim rabim) cannot quench the love” (Song of Songs 8:7), and its questions. Love is a feeling in the heart, which water cannot put out; the question is really about water in its spiritual sense, wisdom and intellect (as Torah Ohr, Parshas Toldos, explains the many waters as lofty levels of holiness): how could intellect quench a hidden love (ahavah mesuteres) that is above intellect? And Avraham, whose trait was love, is described in the prayer for rain as “drawn after You like water”; if water is akin to love, it should strengthen love, not quench it.

The Rebbe Maharash explains (following Torah Ohr, Parshas Noach) that the many waters are the worries of earning a living in exile. This does not mean the king and the taxes, which existed in Temple times too, but the anxious preoccupation itself: using the intellect G‑d gave, which belongs to Torah (“water means only Torah”), to churn over doubts about livelihood, until a person even endangers himself for luxuries beyond his station. The Rebbe then explains that physical things are not the problem in themselves, since wealth is “fitting for the righteous,” when they are used with the feeling that their whole existence is only for the sake of the Jewish people, and one’s involvement in them is for the sake of Torah and mitzvos, as when the Baal Shem Tov defended Jewish tavern-keepers who earned so that their daughters could marry Torah scholars and their sons could have teachers. Then the many waters not only fail to quench the love but bring the hidden love into the open, up to the love of bechol meodecha, as the Alter Rebbe was heard saying in his deveikus, “I want nothing but You alone.” (The 5636 maamar speaks only of reaching bechol levavcha (with all your heart), since it discusses improper involvement in physical things; Torah Ohr brings bechol meodecha as well.) When a person conducts himself by the Torah and the ways of the Avos, who were wealthy in the plain physical sense, earning a living for Torah and mitzvos is itself bechol meodecha, “with all your money,” wealth beyond the bounds of nature. To the objection that physical things, rooted in the world of Tohu with its abundant lights, are mightier than man, who stands in the world of Tikkun, and that the soul is in a body, in “a deep pit,” in exile, the answer is that the soul in the body is above both Tohu and Tikkun: these are revelations, while the soul is Eisan, its essence. With this power it refines and transforms physicality through Torah and mitzvos and through “knowing Him in all your ways,” refining Tohu and drawing its abundant lights into Tikkun. This explains the verse: ki yedativ, per the Targum, is G‑d’s essential will, up to the will in His very Essence, revealed when a mitzvah is done, and it gives the power to refine physicality; yetzaveh also means connection (tzavta), a connection with pleasure. Yet this is not “bread of shame,” because the power is given and the person chooses freely; that is why the verse says lemaan asher yetzaveh and not yedativ asher yetzaveh, for knowledge does not compel choice. The essential pleasure stays hidden until the future but is already drawn down through doing mitzvos; this is Rashi’s “affection,” with lemaan meaning “for the sake of.” The person’s service is then complete and his own, and it reaches into the physical, as the Alter Rebbe said that G‑d gives Jews physicality and they make it spiritual. This is “they will keep the way of G‑d”: he goes securely, without doubts and worries, bringing rest below and above. (This summary stops where our scan of the maamar ends; the full text is at Lahak.)

The maamar opens with Bereishis 18:17-19: ‘And G‑d said, Shall I conceal (hamechaseh) from Avraham... For I have known him (yedativ), so that he will command his children... and they will keep the way of G‑d (derech Hashem), to do tzedakah and mishpat.’ It starts from the question the Rebbe Rashab (whose birthday, 20 Marcheshvan, is the day of this maamar) asked in his maamar of the same opening from 5667: ‘the way of G‑d’ already means Torah and mitzvos, so what do the words ‘to do tzedakah’, which refer to mitzvos, add? He answered that the way of G‑d is a drawing down from above to below (hamshachah), while tzedakah and mishpat are avodah from below to above, the avodah of or chozer (returning light). The Rebbe then points out that the Rebbe Rashab’s 5667 maamar, the second Shabbos Vayeira maamar of the same series (Hemshech 5666), differs from the first, which opened with ‘For I have known him’. The first explains yedativ in two ways: as knowledge (Targum), which it ties to G‑d’s essential will (ratzon ha’atzmi), and as affection (Rashi), tied to His essential delight (taanug ha’atzmi); the second reads it only as affection. The first treats ‘to do tzedakah and mishpat’ as the meaning, or a detail, of ‘the way of G‑d’; the second treats it as an additional matter. The Rebbe sets out to explain the inner content of these differences, and why the second maamar opens with ‘Shall I conceal’.

Based on the Rebbe Rashab’s discourse Zachor (5678) and the Mitteler Rebbe’s Biurei HaZohar, the Rebbe explains that a road connects places that are far apart, like the king’s highway and its branches reaching from the capital to the most remote corner, which is distant even in stature. So the kav (line of light) from Ein Sof is called a road, and Torah and mitzvos are called ‘the way of G‑d’ because through them the revelation of G‑d’s great Name, Havaya, is drawn into the world, fulfilling the purpose of a dwelling place for G‑d below (dirah betachtonim). The Rebbe Rashab explains that this dwelling is like a man living in his friend’s house with his whole self, and the Rebbe suggests that the point is that the lower realm stays lower, yet the Essence dwells in it fully. A road is also used for returning: Torah study draws G‑dliness into a person’s mind, while mitzvos, all called tzedakah, raise the lower realm to become a vessel; they must be done with mishpat (self-judgment) and, as ‘laasos’ (doing) adds, with iskafya (overpowering one’s nature). This raising has two advantages: it completes the drawing down, since light becomes one with a place only when the place is a vessel for it; and, especially through iskafya, it reaches the Essence, the he’elem ha’atzmi (essential hiddenness) above all revelations, which is why deed is called great (maaseh gadol). The first maamar stresses the first advantage, so it reads tzedakah as part of the way of G‑d. The second, said the following year, stresses the worth of the deed in itself, as it will be revealed in the future, so it reads tzedakah as a further, higher stage, opens with ‘Shall I conceal’ (the he’elem ha’atzmi, revealed to Avraham because of his avodah from below upward and his command to his children to do tzedakah and mishpat), and reads yedativ as affection on the level of taanug ha’atzmi. The Rebbe ties this to the Rebbe Rashab’s chapters of Tehillim: ‘I will walk before G‑d in the lands of the living’ (two lands, Torah drawing down and mitzvos raising up), and ‘Praise G‑d, all nations... for His kindness has overpowered us’, where the powerful drawing down is given as the reason for the nations’ praise, because its purpose is the raising of the lower realm, to be fully revealed with Moshiach.

The maamar opens with “And G‑d remembered (pakad) Sarah as He had said, and G‑d did for Sarah as He had spoken” (Bereishis 21:1). The Rebbe Rashab, whose birthday is this day, brings in his well-known maamar on this verse (just now printed) the Gemara’s teaching that the word pekidah is used both of a woman (“And G‑d remembered Sarah”) and of rain (“You remembered the land and watered it”), and so too the word for birth. Just as the earth, through rains of blessing, brings forth its produce, a woman first has pekidah and then birth: “G‑d remembered Sarah” refers to conception and “G‑d did for Sarah” to the birth, as Rashi explains. The maamar explains the link between woman and earth through the saying “children, life and sustenance depend not on merit but on mazal”: children are the pekidah of the woman, and sustenance, the bread that comes from the earth, is the pekidah of the land. On this the Rebbe Rashab brings the question of Tosafos: elsewhere the Sages say “ein mazal le-Yisrael,” Israel has no mazal at all, so how can these things depend on mazal?

The Rebbe Rashab answers that Israel’s mazal is “Ayin” (nothing), a level above the order of the worlds (seder hishtalshelus), called so because the lower being cannot grasp or understand it; from there all the blessings of children, life and sustenance flow. With this the Rebbe explains the Rebbe Maharash’s statement (this year marks a hundred years since his passing) that livelihood in the era before Moshiach is like the manna, bread from heaven: G‑d wanted it to come clothed in human effort, but it truly depends on mazal, above hishtalshelus, which is why it can come in abundance. Since the Rebbe Rashab’s maamar shows that matters dependent on mazal are also drawn down by a person’s service, the Rebbe suggests that this service is bechol meodecha. Loving G‑d with all one’s heart and soul, even with every power of the soul interincluded, is still measured; bechol meodecha is beyond measure. That is why the Sages say that in the first paragraph of Shema, which contains bechol meodecha, Israel “do the will of the Omnipresent (Makom)”: they bring about a new will from above hishtalshelus. Just as bechol meodecha draws out the soul’s own mazal, its essence, which then affects the body, so too it draws this new will down into the world, as hinted in the name “Makom” (place), which refers to this level as it is enclothed in the bounds of place, until it reaches actual place and brings blessing: children, life and ample sustenance. Bechol meodecha, coming from the essence of the soul, also unites the soul’s powers, and this unity draws from a level entirely above division, simple unity, and even from the unity that is above both unity and division. The Rebbe connects this (as a possibility) with the first of the Rebbe Rashab’s printed maamarim of 5643, on the power of unity: even on the side opposed to holiness, when “the whole earth was of one language” and they were “one people,” they could draw from very high, and all the more so Israel in holiness. The source of unity is G‑d’s Name Havayah, in which even the vessel is Havayah, and which is “was, is and will be” as one. In avodah this means ahavas Yisrael, loving people and bringing them close to Torah (Tanya ch. 32), and achdus Yisrael (in the Rebbe Rashab’s maamar Hechaltzu, Midian, the enemy of Havayah, stands for strife); then “bless us, our Father, all of us as one” brings every blessing. More than that, it fulfills the plea for redemption in the psalm “To You I lift my eyes, You Who dwells in the heavens”: love undoes baseless hatred, the cause of the exile, and love of one’s fellow is bound up with love of G‑d and with G‑d’s love for us, so it brings the true and complete Redemption.

The maamar opens with the verse ‘He planted an eshel in Be’er Sheva, and called there in the name of Hashem, Kel Olam’ (Bereishis 21:33), and with the maamar on this verse from 5650 by the Rebbe Rashab, whose birthday it is, newly printed before this Shabbos. In a parenthesis the Rebbe explains why our generation has merited the printing of many works of Chassidus. The wellsprings must now be spread to the farthest ‘outside’, and this needs empowerment from above through the revealing of a new light, like the king who gives out, through his officers to his soldiers, the treasures he stored and never used. The maamar poses no formal question. It sets out to explain what the eshel and Be’er Sheva are, what the different readings of ‘eshel’ mean, and how they connect to the verse’s ending, ‘Kel Olam’.

The Zohar speaks of ‘ten plantings’ that G‑d attached to the place called ‘the eve of the seventh year’. These are the ten sefiros of Atzilus drawn into Malchus. Shemitah is like Shabbos, so just as Shabbos is Malchus, so is the seventh year. On Shabbos, though, all the worlds ascend, so all labor ceases, while in Shemitah the ascent reaches only Malchus, so only work of the land, the essence of Malchus, ceases. On the plain meaning the eshel is a tree: Zeir Anpin of Atzilus, the ‘growing’ level, which includes all ten sefiros. Be’er Sheva is Malchus, so planting the eshel in Be’er Sheva means drawing the ten sefiros into Malchus. The Sages give two more readings. An orchard is also the ten plantings. An inn is explained through the acronym ‘eating, drinking, escorting’. Eating and drinking are inner: the avodah of Torah and mitzvos. Escorting is an encompassing (makif) protection that goes with a person even when he goes out. The Rebbe adds that reading the last letter as ‘lodging’ gives the makif of a house, while ‘escorting’ is a makif of a makif, ‘Hashem is your shade’, needed for the work outside. Finally, the Rebbe Rashab’s maamar ends with the Midrash’s ‘under the eshel ba-Ramah’, and ‘Ramah’ refers to Atik Yomin, as in ‘ramah karni’. The Gemara applies ‘ramah karni’ to David’s kingship, eternal because he was anointed with a horn (keren), and ‘Kel Olam’ can mean eternity. So the verse’s ending points to the eternal kingship of David, and through all these forms of avodah we come very soon to the true and complete redemption through Moshiach.

The maamar opens with ‘And he planted an eshel in Be’er Sheva, and he called there in the name of Havaya, Kel olam’ (Bereishis 21:33). Following the Rebbe Rayatz’s maamar on this verse from Shabbos Vayeira 5698, fifty years earlier, it first asks how planting the eshel is connected to calling G‑d’s name, and answers with the Sages: do not read ‘vayikra’ (he called) but ‘vayakri’ (he caused others to call). The eshel was an inn, whose letters stand for eating, drinking and escorting; when guests rose to bless Avraham, he told them they had eaten from the G‑d of the world, and they blessed ‘the One who spoke and the world came to be’. But then, as that maamar asks, since Avraham taught them about creation, which is tied to the name Elokim (‘In the beginning Elokim created’), why does the verse say he called in the name Havaya and not Elokim? The question is sharper because ‘Sheva’ (seven) alludes to the seven middos, the seven days of building in which the world was created.

The answer, drawn from the continuation of that maamar, is that the Havaya here is the ‘lower Havaya’ (Havaya d’lesata), which is enclothed in the name Elokim to create the world. Avraham’s innovation was ‘Kel olam’ and not ‘Kel ha’olam’ (the G‑d of the world): the world and G‑dliness are not two separate things, and he united this lower Havaya with the world. Since ‘the deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children’, with Avraham this was only a sign, at the level of the lower Havaya, while the full building comes through the children’s deeds and service, which accomplish more: calling G‑d’s name in the higher Havaya (Havaya d’le’eila). This is bound up with the future redemption, when G‑dliness will be openly revealed in the world, ‘and all flesh together will see’, the flesh itself seeing G‑d’s glory, up to the revelation of ‘there is nothing else besides Him’. That revelation will be beyond measure and limit: G‑d will expand the borders of the land, and in Torah there will be a revelation higher than ‘longer than the earth and wider than the sea’, since ‘they will all know Me’, revealed in Torah as ‘it is Me that you take’. The Rebbe ends with the wish that speaking about all this bring its actual fulfillment, citing from that maamar ‘He tells His words to Yaakov’, meaning what G‑d does He tells Israel to do, and that it happen immediately.