לסוסתי ברכבי פרעה דמיתיך רעיתי

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 1:9, in which G‑d likens His beloved, the people of Israel, to a mare in Pharaoh’s chariots. The Alter Rebbe reads the likeness through the Zohar on Beshalach: when Pharaoh pursued Israel he first harnessed the mares in front, with the stallions pressing after them, and when he came close to Israel he reversed the order, putting the stallions in front to do battle.

The Zohar, and the Alter Rebbe after it, sets beside this a change of order in G‑d’s own leading of Israel. At the Exodus “Havayah went before them by day” in a pillar of cloud; at the Sea the angel of G‑d who had been going before the camp moved and went behind them.

With these two reversals before him, the Alter Rebbe asks what the comparison of the Jewish people to Pharaoh’s horses really means: what is the analogy, and what does it stand for?

The answer begins with an analogy: letters, the building blocks of speech, are called “horses.” A rider steers his horse wherever he wants, yet the horse carries him far beyond where he could ever go on foot. Hanachos HaRap, a collection of transcripts of the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim cited in the Kehot note, brings this teaching in the name of the Maggid of Mezritch, his teacher.

So it is with intellect and speech: the mind directs the words, and a person speaks according to what he understands. Yet the words can lift a person higher than his understanding could ever reach on its own.

The horses that carry a person beyond his intellect are the letters of the words of prayer. Even so, prayer also needs contemplation (hisbonenus) of G‑d’s greatness.

Only someone unable to contemplate at all must put all his depth into the words themselves. G‑d told Noach, “Come into the teivah,” the ark, and teivah also means “word”: the verse is read as a call to enter wholly into the words of prayer, through which such a person can rise, as the Alter Rebbe promises to explain further on. Another transcript of this maamar, quoted in the Kehot note, says it outright: “into the ark,” that is, through the letters of prayer, which are called horses.

Yet the letters are not the goal. The psalm says that G‑d “does not desire the strength of the horse, nor want the legs of a man; Havayah desires those who fear Him”: the letters are only “legs,” the means of travel, while G‑d’s will rests on the awe of Him that they serve.

The Alter Rebbe now distinguishes two kinds of letters. “Female letters” are the movement from below upward: the words of prayer, a person’s own initiative, an arousal from below.

That arousal calls forth an arousal from above, by the Zohar’s principle “a spirit brings a spirit and draws forth a spirit”; the parenthetical remark adds the Talmud’s image that it is the way of a man to seek a woman. What comes down in response is from sovev, the light that surrounds all worlds rather than entering them, infinite and beyond the grasp of any thought.

That light is revealed below through the “male horses,” the letters of the Torah, so that G‑d’s words “The heavens and the earth I fill” become true in actual fact.

Here is the difficulty: Isaiah’s verse says that “the whole earth is full of His glory,” which is only a radiance of G‑d and not His essence, while in Jeremiah G‑d says “I fill the heavens and the earth,” speaking of His very self. Which is it?

Both are true: G‑d’s very self does fill the world. The real question is how His essence can be clothed in a physical, lowly world full of kelipos, the forces that conceal holiness.

The answer is through His “glory,” and the Mishnah teaches that “there is no glory but Torah.” The word kavod (כבוד, glory) has the numerical value thirty-two (20+2+6+4), matching the thirty-two paths of wisdom, which are the wisdom of the Torah, for, as the Zohar says, the Torah comes forth from Chochmah. Earlier in Torah Ohr (Vayeshev, 30b) the Alter Rebbe likewise explains “His glory” as G‑d’s being clothed in Chochmah through these thirty-two paths.

Because G‑d is clothed in the letters of the Torah, the “male letters” that bring light down from above, His very self can fill heaven and earth.

The teaching of Tanna Devei Eliyahu (an early Midrash) that when a person studies Torah, G‑d studies opposite him, shows this drawing down. G‑d is so far above the world that even Chochmah is to Him like physical action, as the verse says, “You made them all with wisdom”; yet He is revealed below through the letters of the Torah.

Habakkuk’s image of G‑d riding upon His horses is applied to the Giving of the Torah. These are the “male horses,” the letters of the Torah that carry G‑d’s light down into the world.

The Song of Songs describes the beloved “leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills”: a leap skips the places in between. So at Sinai, light from sovev, beyond the ordered descent of the worlds, came straight down: “Havayah descended upon Mount Sinai,” and the people “saw the voices,” seeing what is ordinarily only heard.

Ecclesiastes says that G‑d made one thing opposite the other: whatever exists in holiness has a counterpart on the opposing side. Holiness has two kinds of horses, the female letters that rise from below and the male letters that come down from above.

The kelipos, the forces that conceal G‑dliness, have both kinds as well. Their “female letters” are a person’s own words spent on the world’s vanities, idle talk and all the more so evil speech; like the horse in the analogy, these letters carry him far, but away from holiness.

The words of vanity carry a person into the depth of the kelipos, to their makif, their encompassing level. In the teaching of the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the master of Kabbalah) this level is called Pharaoh, for the letters of Paroh (פרעה) spell ha-oref (הערף), “the nape,” the back of the neck; from there a flow comes down upon the person, surrounding and clothing him.

What surrounds him is “vanity and chasing after wind,” and it becomes soiled garments upon him. This is the kelipah’s version of the “male horses,” a flow from above brought on by the person’s own “female letters,” for the rule “a spirit brings a spirit” works on the opposite side as well.

Pharaoh’s pursuit of Israel after the Exodus is read as an attempt to drag the souls of Israel down into the depth of kelipah.

That is why he put the mares first: to set off an arousal from below on his side that would draw down a flow from the depth of kelipah, just as “it is the way of a man” to seek a woman.

G‑d turned Pharaoh’s design around: He made both kinds of “horses,” the female and the male letters, work in holiness, so that G‑dliness would be drawn down into the world.

This reversal is seen in the verses: at the Exodus G‑d went before Israel, and at the Sea the order was reversed and the angel moved and went behind them. The change of order in G‑d’s leading mirrors the change Pharaoh made in his horses.

The Alter Rebbe moves from the Torah’s account to the inner service of every Jew: each day must have its own Exodus from Egypt and its own splitting of the Sea. The Torah commands remembering the day of the Exodus “all the days of your life.”

The Sages teach that a person should see himself every day as if he left Egypt that very day. The Shema, said every day, ends with G‑d’s words, “I am Havayah your G‑d, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

The blessing after the morning Shema, Emes Veyatziv (“True and certain”), also recalls the splitting of the Sea. So both, the Exodus and the Sea, belong to every day’s prayer.

Why every day? Mitzrayim, Egypt, is read as meitzarim, straits and limits, and every created world is bounded. The Talmud measures even the distance from the earth to the firmament as a journey of five hundred years, vast but finite, and the world’s time is bounded too: it exists for six thousand years.

The inner exile in Egypt is a person’s attachment to this limited physical world, and “the king of Egypt” is the intellect that is occupied with its vanities. In the parallel text of Or HaTorah, which the Kehot note quotes, this “king of Egypt” is called the wisdom of kelipah.

The Alter Rebbe describes a further stage of the inner Egypt: a person’s bond to the world can grow so strong that it no longer follows any reasoning at all. This is called “the king of Egypt died”: the worldly intellect, the “king,” no longer rules, and the attachment has no reason behind it. Likkutei Torah, Re’eh (25a), cites this very passage: because G‑d made the one opposite the other, the other side too has a will above reason, so a person can want worldly things with a force beyond all reason.

In the verse, after the king of Egypt died, the children of Israel sighed from their labor and cried out. In a person’s service this is the cry of the heart in the Shema, at the level of “with all your might” (bechol me’odecha), a love that knows no limit.

Such a love breaks out of the darkness and limits of “Mitzrayim” and cries out only to G‑d’s very being and essence; this is the daily Exodus from Egypt. A person reaches it through contemplation in Pesukei Dezimra, the psalms of praise said from Baruch She’amar on, before the Shema.

The main contemplation comes in the two blessings before the Shema. The first, which tells of the angels’ praise, calls G‑d “Creator of holy beings” and says “may Your Name be praised forever (la’ad)”; the Alter Rebbe reads “forever” as “without limit.”

The physical earth is bounded, but spiritual beings, angels and souls, are beyond number, as Job says: “Is there any number to His legions?”

All these limitless beings draw their life only from G‑d’s “Name,” an expression of Him, and not from His essence. It is not like a craftsman whose power goes into his work and is changed by it: G‑d is not changed at all by creating. Further on in Torah Ohr (Megillas Esther, 96c) the Alter Rebbe explains that such a “power of the maker in the thing made” belongs only to G‑d’s Names, while of His essence it is said, “He commanded and they were created.”

Malachi’s “I, Havayah, have not changed” says this, and so do the words of the morning prayers, “He Who alone was exalted from of old … Who is elevated from days of old”: as He was alone before creation, so He is now.

The worlds live only because His Name is “called upon them” as their King; Jeremiah calls Him “the living G‑d and eternal King,” Who gives life as King. Yet His Name, too, is without limit, so the beings it sustains are beyond number.

This is the meaning of the blessing: the limitless “holy beings” praise only His Name, while His own being and essence is high and exalted above it all.

Having contemplated that all of creation, however vast, is only His Name, a person is stirred in the Shema to “You shall love … with all your might,” a love beyond limit that seeks to leave the darkness of limitation. His heart cries out to G‑d’s essence alone: this is the arousal from below.

This love from below is the “female letters,” and it draws an arousal from above: love from G‑d’s side.

The second paragraph of the Shema expresses this love from above in the words “to love Havayah your G‑d.” The verse could have said le’ehov, “to love”; it says le’ahavah, built on the noun ahavah, “love,” which the Alter Rebbe reads as making love come into being above, so that G‑dliness comes down and Havayah, the Name beyond the world, becomes truly “your G‑d.”

G‑d in Himself is “not of these attributes at all”: love and the other attributes do not apply to Him. Love above comes about only in response to our love below, by the principle “a spirit brings a spirit.”

Ezekiel saw the chayos, the holy creatures, “running and returning.” Their running up is the female letters; their returning down is the male letters, the drawing from above, so that Havayah becomes truly “your G‑d.”

This is why, in the second paragraph of the Shema, a person can say G‑d’s own words, “I will give rain … I will give grass.” How can a person speak in G‑d’s first person? Only because G‑dliness has been drawn down from above.

The drawing down comes through the letters of the Torah, the male letters, in which G‑d “sits and studies opposite” the one who learns. Then Isaiah’s words “I have put My words in your mouth” are literally true: G‑d’s own words are in the person’s mouth.

The Shema says vedibarta bam, “you shall speak in them,” and not “speak them”: the speaker is inside the words, and they are G‑d’s. In the same vein come the Talmud’s phrases “our Mishnah is a queen” and “Who are kings? The Sages.”

Like a king whose word is law in his country, the Sages rule what is valid or invalid, impure or pure. Their rulings carry G‑d’s will because His words are in their mouths.

The Shema says “these words which I (anochi) command you,” and the Alter Rebbe adds “Who I am”: the One commanding is G‑d’s very self. This is why we can afterward say, in His name, “I will give rain.” At the opening of Torah Ohr (Bereishis, 1a) the Alter Rebbe reads these same words as the drawing down of G‑d’s revelation through which the Torah comes into being.

The Shema closes with “I am Havayah your G‑d, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt”: going out of meitzarim, straits and limits, so that Havayah alone is “your G‑d.”

All this is an arousal from above, the male letters, which comes in answer to the arousal from below, the female letters, as “it is the way of a man” to seek a woman.

There is a further arousal from above that no arousal from below calls forth at all: “male letters” with no “female letters” before them. Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim (11d), citing this passage, explains that such drawings come from Atika, the “Ancient One,” the innermost level of Keser, and that from there comes the strength for the ascent of the “horse” of the arousal from below itself.

This is the splitting of the Sea. The Talmud teaches that whatever exists on dry land exists in the sea: the same kinds of creatures live in both, but in the sea they are covered by water and hidden, while on land they are in plain view.

Above, too, there is a “sea” and a “dry land,” the concealed world and the revealed world, and a person, “a small world,” has the same structure in his intellect, emotions, thought, speech and action.

Intellect is the concealed world, at work within the mind, and the emotions are the revealed world, showing outwardly what the intellect holds within.

Within a person, thought is more revealed than intellect, and speech is more revealed still. The same holds above: there is a divine “thought.”

G‑d’s thoughts are not like ours, as Isaiah says, yet the comparison holds in this respect: as a person’s thought is hidden relative to his speech, so G‑d’s “thought” is a level of concealment relative to His “speech.”

The Zohar speaks of “how many thoughts there are,” thought above thought. Each level is hidden relative to the one below it and revealed relative to the one above it.

This is “higher above higher”: every lower level is the revelation of a higher one. It is called hishtalshelus, from shalsheles, a chain, because each level is linked to the next like the rings of a chain; Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan (12a), uses the same image of rings holding one another, from intellect to emotions to thought and speech.

The whole order of the worlds is built this way, as cause and effect, concealment and revelation.

But G‑d’s own essence, the Emanator, is far above this chain. Before Him the distinctions of above and below, hidden and revealed, do not apply at all, as the psalm says: “Even darkness is not dark for You, and night shines like day.”

At the splitting of the Sea, G‑d’s very essence, which is above the whole chain of worlds, was revealed. Before it the hidden (the sea) and the revealed (dry land) are the same, so the sea itself became dry land: the hidden became revealed.

The verses say this precisely: “He turned the sea into dry land,” and Israel passed “through the midst of the sea on dry land,” within the sea itself. The concealment itself became revelation, because for G‑d’s essence concealment and revelation are truly equal.

The same psalm goes on, “there we rejoiced in Him”: in Him, in G‑d’s very essence revealed at the Sea. This, says the Alter Rebbe, is the level of the joy of a mitzvah.

He brings the Torah’s rebuke for not serving G‑d “with joy … merov kol,” plainly “out of the abundance of everything,” when one had plenty. “The abundance of everything” is the chain of worlds, many and layered like an onion, each level higher than the one below it.

The Alter Rebbe reads merov kol as “more than all the abundance”: the joy of a mitzvah reaches G‑d’s very essence, beyond the whole abundance of the worlds. Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim (24b), in the explanation of the first maamar “Tze’enah ure’enah,” to which the Kehot note points, explains that joy reveals what is hidden, like a king who shows himself to all at his celebration, and that the joy of a mitzvah reveals the inner dimension of Keser, the mitzvos’ root.

The Torah commands, “you shall rejoice before Havayah your G‑d.” The joy of the Torah’s mitzvos is “before Havayah,” which here points to what is before, that is above, even the Name Havayah, G‑d’s essence; and through the mitzvos it is drawn down.

Before a mitzvah we bless G‑d “Who has sanctified us with His mitzvos.” The 248 mitzvos are called the 248 “limbs of the King.”

The Alter Rebbe explains this with a parable of the human body. No one can take hold of another person’s soul.

But take a person by the right hand or the left and pull him, and his soul comes along, though it cannot itself be held, because it is clothed in his limbs. So too, G‑d’s essence cannot be grasped, yet it is drawn along through the mitzvos, the “limbs” in which He is clothed.

Each mitzvah corresponds to a “limb.” In Kabbalistic imagery Chesed, kindness, is the right arm, so giving charity and kindness to a poor person draws G‑d’s essence down, so to speak, through His being clothed in Chesed.

Gevurah, restraint and might, is the left arm. The Mishnah calls mighty the one who conquers his inclination, and overcoming a craving likewise draws G‑d down, through Gevurah.

Tiferes, the middle pillar, corresponds to the body as a whole, and it is the Torah. Taking a person by his whole body brings all of him wherever one wishes; so through the Torah G‑d’s essence, so to speak, is drawn down below.

The joy of a mitzvah is the giving of its reward: the revelation of G‑d’s essence. That revelation took place at the splitting of the Sea.

So the verse “there we rejoiced in Him” refers to His very essence. This was an arousal from above, male letters with no female letters before them, for no arousal from below can call it forth. Earlier in Torah Ohr (Toldos, 20a), to which the Kehot note points, the Alter Rebbe explains that the practical mitzvos are very lofty in their inner root, so that the G‑dliness a mitzvah draws down comes from the mitzvah itself and not from the person’s own service.

At the Sea Havayah said to Moshe, “Why do you cry out to Me?” and the Zohar reads “to Me” precisely: “the matter depends on Atika,” the Ancient One, which the Alter Rebbe identifies as the Essence of the Emanator, beyond the reach of any prayer. That is why Israel were to be silent: “Havayah will fight for you, and you shall be silent.”