יביאו לבוש מלכות אשר לבש בו המלך וסוס…

The maamar opens with the verse in the Book of Esther in which Haman proposes how to honor “the man whom the king desires to honor”: royal clothing the king himself has worn, the king’s own horse, and a royal crown. The Alter Rebbe will read these three honors as three levels of G‑d’s sovereignty, revealed at the Giving of the Torah and again on Purim.

The first honor, the royal garment, is linked to the verse “Havayah reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty.” A garment is put on over the body; the image suggests that G‑d takes on majesty as a garment in order to relate to the world as its King, as the maamar will explain at length later.

The second honor, the king’s horse, is linked to a verse in the prayer of Habakkuk, “When You ride upon Your horses, Your chariots are salvation,” which the maamar takes as said of the Giving of the Torah. What G‑d’s “riding” on “horses” means is explained toward the end of the maamar (paragraphs 28–33).

The third honor, the royal crown, is linked to the verse in the Song of Songs about “the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding,” which the Mishnah interprets: “the day of his wedding” is the Giving of the Torah. So the horse and the crown both point to Sinai.

Here the maamar states its thesis: whatever was revealed at the Giving of the Torah was revealed again on Purim. The proof is the verse “And the Jews accepted that which they had begun to do,” which speaks of accepting something that had already been begun.

At Sinai the people declared “We will do and we will hear,” but that was only the beginning of their acceptance of the Torah; in Mordechai’s time the acceptance was completed. The maamar will later show (paragraph 34) that it was the self-sacrifice of the Jews in those days that completed it. In a later maamar of Megillas Esther (98a) the Alter Rebbe adds that the verse says ve-kibel, “accepted,” in the singular, because through their self-sacrifice the Jews became as one man, and the Infinite Light is revealed only where there is unity.

To explain this, the maamar first takes up a teaching of the Sages: “The goal of wisdom is teshuvah and good deeds.” The proof verse speaks of “a good understanding to all who do them,” and the Alter Rebbe stresses that it does not say “to those who learn them”: learning reaches its purpose in doing.

A related saying is sharper still: for one who learns without intending to do, it would have been better never to have been born alive, which is what the image of the afterbirth turned over his face describes. Deed is primary, but the Alter Rebbe limits this at once to a mitzvah that no one else can do in one’s place.

For a mitzvah that others can do, the Talmud applies the verse “And all desirable things cannot compare to her,” said of wisdom: not even “the desires of Heaven,” the mitzvos, compare to the study of Torah. In such a case one does not interrupt Torah study to do the mitzvah. The Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 1:1) says the same: all the mitzvos of the Torah do not equal one word of Torah.

So each has an advantage over the other: in one respect words of Torah surpass all the mitzvos, and in another the actual doing of the mitzvos surpasses Torah study. The maamar now sets out to explain the advantage of the deed.

Having shown that each has an advantage, the maamar now explains the advantage that doing the mitzvos has over words of Torah. This is the point of “The goal of wisdom is teshuvah and good deeds” and of the warning against learning without doing.

The explanation starts from the chain of descent: hishtalshelus comes from shalsheles, “chain,” and Chochmah is its first link, from which the emotive attributes hang as each link hangs from the one above; so Chochmah, however high, belongs to the same ordered series as what follows it. In Etz Chaim (Sha’ar Derushei ABYA, ch. 1), to which Kehot’s note points, the Arizal counts the emanated levels as the four letters of Havayah, beginning with Chochmah, which is therefore called “beginning,” while Keser stands above them like a crown above the king’s head.

Each level is clothed in the one below it: Chochmah within the emotive attributes, these within thought, and thought within speech and action, much as a person’s insight shapes feelings that then find expression in thought, word and deed.

The verse “Chochmah is found from ayin” (Job 28:12) is read to say that Chochmah emerges from ayin, a level of “nothingness” beyond all grasp, and it is the root of the whole chain. Even so, it is called “the beginning of revelation,” and a beginning is the first of a series: being first means being counted with a second and a third, so Chochmah remains part of the ordered series rather than above it.

The letters of the name Avraham (אברהם) are read as eiver mah (אבר מה), “a limb of mah,” and the letters of Chochmah (חכמה) as koach mah (כח מה), “the power of mah”; mah, “what?”, is the word of self-effacement. Avraham, the embodiment of Chesed, is a limb or vessel in which Chochmah is clothed, and since Chochmah is clothed in the attributes, the verse says it is found “from ayin,” not that it is itself true ayin. In Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah (56b), the Alter Rebbe cites this passage and adds that Chesed, a branch of Chochmah, is nullified before it as an effect before its cause.

Moshe, who said of himself and Aharon “and what are we” (Exodus 16), embodied complete self-nullification, the level of true ayin. His protest at the burning bush that he was “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” is read, following the Zohar, as a statement about his soul: “mouth” is the Oral Torah, literally “the Torah of the mouth,” and “tongue” the Written Torah, and both were “heavy” for him because his soul stood above the level of the Torah. In Torah Ohr, Beshalach (66b), the Alter Rebbe explains that Moshe’s root was in the inner dimension of Chochmah as it is in itself, above the intellect that is drawn down into the Torah’s laws of fit and unfit.

The Zohar’s saying “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah” places the Torah at the level of Chochmah, which is called “beginning.” The Infinite Light clothed in Chochmah is the light that fills all worlds: light that enters each world in a measure suited to it, step by step down the chain, and so the Torah carries the Infinite Light in this graded, inward way.

The light drawn into the physical deeds of the mitzvos, such as separating terumah (the portion given to a Kohen) and tithes from produce, is of another kind: the light that encompasses all worlds. It does not come down rung by rung through the chain but reaches the physical directly, leaping over the levels in between.

The maamar joins two verses of the Song of Songs, the beloved who knocks (5:2) and the beloved who comes “leaping over the mountains” (2:8), to illustrate this leap. This light is not clothed in the physical objects of the mitzvos the way Chochmah is clothed in the emotive attributes; it only shines upon them as a radiance from above.

Now the reason. If the Infinite Light reached the worlds only by extending and clothing itself step by step, as a cause produces its effect, nothing could ever come into being as a separate “something” out of nothing: everything would remain nullified within its source, an extension of its cause.

Even the higher Chochmah (Chochmah Ila’ah), the supernal wisdom at the head of the Sefiros, which is “wise, but not with a known wisdom” (words of Eliyahu’s prayer in the Tikkunei Zohar), is still called “Chochmah,” and so it is a definite “something” with a name of its own.

Such a defined “something” could not result from the Infinite Light by mere extension, because that light is, as its name says, without end: had Chochmah come about by simple unfolding, it would have stayed included in its source. The analogy is the human mind, in which the emotions are included in the intellect before they emerge.

The emotions are “born” from the intellect that gives rise to them, and they were certainly contained in it before they emerged as feelings in their own right.

As long as they remain within the intellect, they are not called emotions at all; only once they are born and revealed does each become an attribute in its own right. In the same way, a level that stays within its source has no name of its own.

The higher Chochmah becomes “Chochmah” only when it emerges from concealment into revelation, and that emergence is not a step in the chain. The verb “is found” (timatzei) is read with its noun, metziah, “a find”: Chochmah appears like a find, suddenly, out of true ayin, not by gradual unfolding.

This leap comes from the light that encompasses all worlds. If even Chochmah needs such a leap to exist as a distinct level, the physical world needs it all the more, since there is no common measure at all between the spiritual and the physical: matter cannot be the effect of a spiritual cause.

The Alter Rebbe heads off an objection: the souls of animals are said to come from the “face of an ox” and those of birds from the “face of an eagle” in Yechezkel’s vision of the Divine Chariot (the Merkavah). That speaks only of where their souls come from, as the next part makes clear.

The animal soul in a person likewise has a spiritual source; but all these sources account only for the soul, the spiritual life-force.

The physical bodies of people, beasts, wild animals and birds did not come into being from anything spiritual at all: physical matter comes into being from the Infinite One Himself, as sovev kol almin, for only He, the Omnipotent, can bring it about. Before Him “darkness is as light,” and the spiritual and the physical are equal, so the physical is no farther from Him than the spiritual.

From that level comes the power that makes a “something” (yesh) at every rung of the chain of worlds, down to the material substance of this world. The light that encompasses all worlds gives life to all of them equally, surrounding them from above rather than entering into them.

This is why creation is called “something from nothing.” The radiance that brings things into existence leaps over the chain of cause and effect and is not clothed within the worlds, so what it creates is a genuine “something” from true nothing, not an effect still bound up in its cause.

The maamar now returns to the saying “The goal of wisdom is teshuvah and good deeds” and explains it. Chochmah belongs to the graded chain and to the light that fills all worlds; it differs from what follows it only in being counted first, as the beginning and source of them all.

Yet a “beginning” is part of the count, so Chochmah belongs to a series that goes on to a second and a third. Teshuvah and good deeds, by contrast, draw down the Infinite Light as sovev kol almin, which is outside that series altogether; that is why they are the “goal” of wisdom.

The light drawn by good deeds does not enter the bounds of the worlds; it reaches them only as a radiance, at the level of true ayin, beyond any definition.

Even so, because it is a radiance of the very Infinite Light as sovev kol almin, it is of a higher order than the light that comes down through the chain of cause and effect as memalei kol almin. A glimmer from the higher source outranks a full measure from the lower one.

Not every physical deed carries this light, only “good deeds,” meaning the things through which mitzvos are done, which embody G‑d’s will, such as the wool of tzitzis and the parchment of tefillin. In them the light that encompasses all worlds shines openly, with nothing hiding it.

Other activities, not done for G‑d’s sake, are different. It is true that the Infinite Light as sovev kol almin surrounds all the worlds equally, with no distinction among them, and creates every “something,” down to the lowest world, Asiyah, out of nothing.

Yet in ordinary things that light is covered by a “garment,” a “concealment of the Face” (hester panim, the hiding of G‑d’s revealed presence), that hides G‑d’s light and holiness, so that they appear to be separate, independent entities.

The objects of the mitzvos are G‑d’s will itself, so they are nullified before His light: the Infinite Light is revealed in them without any covering, even though they are ordinary physical things.

Since the objects of the mitzvos reveal the light that encompasses all worlds, which surrounds every level equally, the maamar can now compare the levels by how much of that light they reveal.

The lower a level is, the more it reveals of the sovev light, because sovev is the source from which the “something” is made. Physical Asiyah, the lowest level of all, reveals the most, which is why the physical deed of a mitzvah draws a light higher than the light of Torah study.

The radiance from sovev kol almin is now identified with the verse “Havayah reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty.” G‑d’s kingship over the world is this radiance: a “garment” He puts on, not His essence.

The phrase “Unique One, Life of the worlds, King,” from the Baruch She’amar prayer, is the key. G‑d is “unique,” alone just as before creation; His relation to the worlds as their “Life” comes only through the level of “King.”

The verse “You are Havayah, You alone,” from the Levites’ prayer in Nehemiah, says that G‑d is alone. The maamar distinguishes two words for His oneness: echad, “one,” and yachid, “unique.”

Echad, “one,” is G‑d’s unity as it is drawn into the world, extended through all of creation, the seven heavens and the earth and the four directions, so that everything is nullified and included in Him and takes up no space of its own. The numbers match the letters of echad (אחד): after the alef, “one,” ches is eight, for the seven heavens and the earth, and dalet is four, for the four directions.

Yachid, “unique,” describes His true unity before it is drawn into the worlds at all: He alone exists. That is why, even after creation, the Torah says “there is none else besides Him”: before Him all is truly as nothing.

His being “Life of the worlds” is only the aspect of “King,” the attribute of Malchus, “a kingship over all worlds” (Psalms 145:13). The analogy is a human king who rules a country while his own essence does not spread through it: only his name, the fact that he is called their king.

The king’s glory and splendor spread through the land, and that is what leads the people to accept his rule. So too, the light from sovev that creates and sustains all things is only the spreading forth of G‑d’s kingship and exaltation, not His essence.

The morning blessing before the Shema describes Him as “the King Who alone is raised on high from of old.” His very exaltation above the worlds is the source of their life and existence; and because that exaltation is beyond them, its radiance is “true ayin.”

Phrases of the morning prayers describe G‑d as alone, on high and holy, working mighty deeds, and as the King “high and exalted.” The maamar reads them as saying that the One who works the mighty deeds of creation does so as the exalted King.

This is the meaning of “Havayah reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty”: to be King over the world, G‑d puts on majesty and exaltation. That exaltation shines forth and brings the worlds into being, and it is what sustains physical existence.

The verse continues, “The world also is established, that it cannot be moved.” The physical world exists and stands firm because G‑d clothed Himself in majesty and so drew down His kingship.

Now the verse in Esther is applied: the “royal apparel” is G‑d’s majesty and exaltation. The verse says “let them bring” it, implying that someone must bring it: drawing down G‑d’s kingship depends on an arousal from below, on human action.

A king needs a people; if everything is as nothing before G‑d, there is no one for Him to be King over. His kingship comes about when the light that encompasses all worlds is revealed in the objects of the mitzvos, which are His will.

In those objects the Infinite Light is revealed without concealment, so that physical things, which are otherwise under the dominion of kelipas nogah, the “glowing husk” that holds permitted physical things, become nullified before G‑d’s holiness. Their nullification to His light is His reign over the world.

This depends on human action. The Hebrew ya’aseh means both “do” and “make”: the maamar reads “which man shall do them” as “which man shall make them,” for wool becomes tzitzis and parchment becomes tefillin only when a person makes them into mitzvos.

So far the maamar has spoken of the light drawn into the objects of the mitzvos themselves, such as the wool of tzitzis, the parchment of tefillin and the esrog. It will now turn to a further level: the light that reaches the person who does the mitzvah.

The physical substance of tzitzis, tefillin and esrog was itself brought into being from nothing by the light that encompasses all worlds, which surrounds all things equally. That is the light revealed in them when they become objects of a mitzvah. Later in Torah Ohr (Megillas Esther, 92c) the Alter Rebbe explains why it surrounds all equally: physical Asiyah too arose in G‑d’s will, in which His kingship spreads through all alike, and because that will is infinite and is not clothed in the worlds, it is called sovev kol almin.

The maamar now turns to a second level: a person’s own performance of the mitzvos with his body and his possessions, such as wearing a tallis and tefillin, taking the esrog or giving charity. Here light and life-force from the Infinite Light reach the person’s soul itself.

This light too is “encompassing” (makif), shining on the person from above rather than being absorbed as understanding, but it does not come only from the light that surrounds all things equally.

The light that surrounds all things equally comes from G‑d’s exaltation, and exaltation as such means withdrawal: G‑d holds back His light from intense revelation so that the worlds can exist at all, instead of being dissolved in it.

Only once G‑d has risen above the worlds, to show His kingship over them, does a radiance of that kingship reach them. That radiance is sovev kol almin, which surrounds all things equally.

What reaches a person who actually performs the mitzvos is higher: the “royal crown,” the crown “with which his mother crowned him” at Sinai. This returns to the third honor in the verse in Esther, “on whose head a royal crown has been set.”

A crown is made of precious stones, which belong to the inanimate, the lowest of the four kingdoms of creation: mineral, plant, animal and human. The lowest kind of matter becomes the king’s highest ornament.

Though stones are the lowest kind of matter, as a crown they become the king’s delight and glory. So too, the mitzvos done with physical things become a “crown” above.

This crown is G‑d’s own delight, expressed in the Sages’ words that it is “gratification before Me that I spoke and My will was done” (so Rashi explains the “pleasing aroma” of the offerings, Leviticus 1:9). That delight is revealed in the soul of the person who does a mitzvah.

Torah study, the Mishnah says, is equal to all the mitzvos, because the halachos are “the ways of the world” (halichos olam): the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 1:5) reads halichos, “ways,” as halachos, and the halachos draw the very Infinite Light into the world. As the Talmud says, all that G‑d has in His world is the four cubits of halachah.

This explains a teaching of the Jerusalem Talmud: in the future the Prophets and the Writings will be “nullified,” but the Megillah of Esther and the halachos will not. The Rambam rules so at the end of the laws of Megillah.

The Alter Rebbe insists that “nullified” cannot mean they will cease to exist. Rather, G‑d’s light will then be revealed so powerfully that the revelation of the Prophets will be swallowed up in it, as a ray is lost within the sun.

Inside the sun the ray is even brighter than it is on earth, but there it is nullified, not seen as anything of its own, because its source overwhelms it. So too the prophetic revelations will be nullified within the revelation of the Infinite One in the Time to Come, when, as Isaiah says, “all flesh shall see” together. In Or HaTorah (Korach), quoted in Kehot’s note, the Tzemach Tzedek explains that the Prophets prophesied with “koh” (“thus”), while the future revelation will be “zeh” (“this”), before which “koh” is nullified.

Why will the Megillah of Esther endure? The Talmud finds Esther alluded to in the verse “I will surely hide (haster astir) My face on that day,” since her name echoes astir, “I will hide.” In exile the Shechinah is hidden, at the level of “that day” (hahu, “that,” the word for what is absent), the concealed worlds that are not revealed.

Of the Time to Come, Isaiah says that “on that day” people will say, “Behold, this is our G‑d.” The word hu, “that,” which speaks of what is absent, will become zeh, “this,” which points to what is present, as if one could point to Him.

Then the Infinite Light now hidden in the concealed worlds will shine openly in the revealed worlds.

Here the text spells the verb אסתר, exactly like Esther’s name. Her level is different: it is a hiding that remains even “on that day,” in the Time to Come, because its root is in the most hidden of all levels, of which Isaiah says, “Truly, You are a G‑d who hides Himself.”

A light hidden so deeply is not a ray but the luminary itself. A ray can be eclipsed by its source, but the source cannot be eclipsed, so the Megillah of Esther will never be nullified.

The halachos are linked to Mordechai, as the Megillah is linked to Esther. The Talmud finds Mordechai alluded to in the Torah’s “pure myrrh” (mar dror), which the Aramaic translation renders mira dachya, close in sound to his name.

Mira, “myrrh,” is heard as merirus, “bitterness,” and dachya means “pure”: so mira dachya is “bitterness in a pure place.” The halachos are “the word of G‑d” (the Talmud, Shabbos 138b: “the word of G‑d, this is halachah”), rooted in the higher Chochmah, yet clothed in the “bitterness” of this coarse physical world: they deal with terumah and tithes, and even with impure creatures from which the Torah separates us.

The verse in Esther about the young women’s preparation before they came to the king, “six months with oil of myrrh,” is read the same way: mor, “myrrh,” shares its root with mar, “bitter.” Oil stands for the higher Chochmah and myrrh for bitterness; together they are the halachos, G‑d’s wisdom clothed in physical matters. In Torah Ohr (Vayeitzei, 21b), to which Kehot’s note points, the Alter Rebbe likewise explains that oil is Chochmah Ila’ah, revealed below in the Torah and mitzvos that are clothed in physical things.

The verse is read as describing the soul’s preparation to enter Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden, where souls receive their reward), which requires “oil of myrrh,” the study of halachah. As the Sages said, “Fortunate is he who comes here with his learning in his hand.”

Three analogies explain why the highest wisdom is clothed in the lowest matters: a great torch lights up places far away, a barrel filled beyond its brim spills over, and only a grown person, with mature intellect, can beget children. In each case, reaching far below is a sign of great abundance above. In Likkutei Torah, Emor (34d), the Alter Rebbe cites this maamar’s torch: because the root of the mitzvos is so high, their light reaches so far.

Maturity gives a person the power to beget others like himself, completing the third analogy. Likewise, the halachos clothed in physical matters show that they come from a light great enough to shine far away and from an abundance that overflows its bounds.

The saying that wine poured like water in a house is a sign of blessing makes the same point: overflow shows plenty. Far from lowering the halachos, their presence in physical matters reveals how great their source is.

A candle lit close by would give more light than a distant torch gives at that spot. But the very fact that the torch’s light reaches so far testifies that the torch itself is very great.

So the light in the halachos, reaching all the way into physical things, comes from so great a source that it can never be eclipsed the way a ray is eclipsed within the sun.

In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe adds that the oil for the Menorah was brought “for the luminary” (la-maor), not merely for light, and that the Sages speak of “the luminary in it,” meaning in the Torah: the source of light itself, not a ray.

The Megillah of Esther is like the halachos: its miracle came hidden in natural events, through Achashverosh, and that very concealment shows that its source is very high, like a far-reaching torch or a barrel whose wine passes over its brims. So the days of Purim “shall not pass (ya’avru) from among the Jews,” the same verb as the wine that “passes” (overes) over the brims, in keeping with the teaching that the Megillah will never be nullified. In a later maamar (Torah Ohr, Megillas Esther, 100a) the Alter Rebbe adds that revealed miracles have the advantage of being seen, yet in the essence of the light, miracles clothed in nature come from a far higher place.

To draw down this light, which can never be eclipsed, Israel declared at Sinai “We will do and we will hear,” putting doing before hearing.

“We will do” before hearing expresses complete surrender of one’s own will to G‑d, the Master of the will: an ascent through self-nullification. “We will hear” then draws the Torah down to be heard and understood.

This surrender is the “royal crown.” The 613 mitzvos of the Torah and the seven mitzvos of the Rabbis total 620, the numerical value of keser (כתר), “crown”; and the maamar speaks of 620 pillars of light in Keser, each a pillar joining above and below.

Like those pillars, the Torah and the mitzvos join the highest place, the Infinite Light itself, with the lowest, this physical world.

The royal garment and the royal crown still need the third honor, the horse. The verse “When You ride upon Your horses,” said of the Giving of the Torah, shows that G‑d’s revelation at Sinai came through His “riding.”

The Talmud describes how G‑d spends the hours of the day (there, sustaining the world is the third set of three hours, after Torah study and judging), and says that at night He “rides upon His swift cherub” through eighteen thousand worlds. The maamar goes on to explain what this riding means.

The eighteen blessings of the Amidah, the standing prayer (Shemoneh Esreh), correspond, the Sages say, to the eighteen vertebrae of the spine. The maamar asks what this correspondence means.

The spine carries the flow from the brain down to the thighs, the lowest point. So in the first blessing one bows at “Blessed,” bending the head, the top of the spine; bowing the head draws down the higher Chochmah, the brain.

Later one bows again at “We give thanks to You” (Modim): acknowledgment (hoda’ah) belongs to the thighs, the Sefiros of Netzach and Hod, so the blessings span the whole spine, from the highest level to the lowest. In Likkutei Torah, Balak (71a), the Alter Rebbe adds that the eighteen blessings are vessels for the light drawn down in prayer, as the vertebrae are vessels for the spinal cord, and that bowing at Modim, an act of self-nullification, is what draws the light into them.

Jews draw down the eighteen blessings in their three daily prayers. The angels sing at night, the time when, in the verse about the woman of valor, “she rises while it is still night and gives food to her household.”

At night the flow of the eighteen blessings is drawn into the angels and divided among eighteen thousand worlds. The verse “The chariot of G‑d is myriads, thousands of shinan” is the source of that number.

The Talmud reads shinan as she’einan, “that are not”: two myriads, twenty thousand, less two thousand leaves eighteen thousand. The divine flow is divided among these eighteen thousand levels, each receiving according to its capacity. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (72a), the Alter Rebbe explains the number: Z’eir Anpin has only nine Sefiros of its own, nine descending and nine ascending, the eighteen blessings of prayer, while Malchus has ten complete Sefiros, the “myriads.”

This flow to the angels is G‑d’s riding on His “swift cherub.” The cherub stands for certain combinations of letters through which the divine flow is channeled.

The second half of the same verse joins Sinai to G‑d’s chariot of angels: “the L‑rd is among them, Sinai, in holiness.”

Just as G‑d’s flow reaches the angels through combinations of letters, so at Sinai the combinations of letters carried the revelation of the Infinite Light itself into the Torah. The Torah given there is a “riding” of G‑d, like His riding on the cherub.

After Sinai came the command “And they shall make Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell within them”: the Shechinah was to rest in the gold, silver, copper, curtains and beams of the Mishkan, in physical materials.

These channels of great revelation are the “horses” of “When You ride upon Your horses”: certain combinations of letters are called “horses.” In Likkutei Torah (Supplements to Vayikra, 53b), to which Kehot’s note points, the Alter Rebbe sums up this passage: the drawing down from sovev kol almin, which surrounds the four worlds equally, comes through the letters called “horses.”

Some combinations of letters are called “horses” and others “cherub,” for there are many kinds of letters: of speech, of intellect and of thought, and letters exist even at the stage that precedes intellect (kadmus ha-sechel, the first stirring of the mind before any idea takes shape). Different combinations carry divine revelation at different levels.

This is the meaning of the horse in the verse in Esther. The royal garment and the royal crown can be revealed only through the “horse,” the combinations of letters that carry G‑d’s revelation down below just as it is above.

All three levels revealed at Sinai were revealed again on Purim. This returns to the maamar’s opening: the Jews then accepted what they had “begun to do” at the Giving of the Torah.

At Sinai, “We will do and we will hear” was a nullification of will; in the days of Mordechai and Esther it became actual self-sacrifice. Haman’s decree was against Jews as Jews, so remaining one meant risking one’s life.

The Talmud explains that Mordechai is called “a Jewish man” (Yehudi), though he was of the tribe of Binyamin, not Yehudah, because whoever repudiates idolatry is called a Yehudi. A Yehudi, in this sense, is one who denies every other god.

Even the Kohanim and Levites, who were not of Yehudah, were called Yehudim because they were ready to give their lives rather than abandon their faith. This self-sacrifice completed the acceptance of the Torah and brought the revelation of the garment, the crown and the horse.

After Haman’s proposal, the king ordered him to dress Mordechai in the royal garment and lead him on the royal horse, so Haman himself handled them. The maamar asks how Haman could have any connection to these holy levels.

The Talmud finds Haman alluded to in G‑d’s question to Adam, “Is it from the tree (hamin ha-etz)…?” In the maamar’s Kabbalistic terms, the spiritual roots of the nations are traced to the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, a realm where good and evil are mixed, while Amalek, called “the first of the nations,” stands above them.

Read as a question, “From the tree?” implies that Haman is not from the Tree but above it. Yet the Torah does name him beside the Tree, so he must have some link to it.

His link is that of something “encompassing” (makif): he hovers over the Tree, touching it and not touching it. This hovering above is what appears as brazenness and arrogance.

Opposite this arrogance there is a holy counterpart, also called “Haman,” after refinement. The proof is the Sages’ teaching that some of Haman’s descendants taught Torah: what came from Haman could be refined and brought into holiness.

Refined, this quality is the heart “lifted up in the ways of Havayah,” as said of King Yehoshafat. The Sages teach that one who prays should keep his eyes downward and his heart upward; the eyes are Chochmah, koach mah (“the power of mah”), the humility of Moshe, “more humble than any man.”

The heart must be raised, because it holds the element of fire and the soul’s thirst, and the nature of fire is to rise. A person needs both: eyes downward and heart upward.

Without any self-elevation, a person would not dare approach the service of G‑d at all, thinking, “Who am I, and what is my service?” So he needs a raised heart, the longing and thirst that carry him upward. In Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar (15c), the Alter Rebbe cites these very words to explain why the Torah was given on a mountain, though on a low one: a person must be very humble, yet he needs strength and some elevation of heart.

Alongside this he needs “eyes downward,” complete self-nullification before the Infinite Light. This comes through Torah study, which draws down the higher Chochmah, since the Torah comes forth from Chochmah, as in the verse about “My words that I have put in your mouth.”

The Talmud says that a Torah scholar should have “an eighth of an eighth” of pride. The maamar works out the number: Chochmah has thirty-two paths of wisdom (Sefer Yetzirah 1:1), and lev, “heart” (לב), also equals thirty-two, so together they make sixty-four. In a further discourse in Torah Ohr (Supplements, 119c) the Alter Rebbe explains the Talmud’s image for this measure, the chaff that “crowns” the ear of wheat: it shields the kernel from the sun’s heat and the rain while it grows, and falls away once the grain is ripe.

An eighth of an eighth is one sixty-fourth: a small measure of the heart’s elevation, joined to Chochmah, the heart’s thirty-two joined to Chochmah’s thirty-two.

The main thing remains Chochmah, the self-nullification drawn down through Torah; yet it cannot be drawn down without first rising. The heart’s ascent must come first, and only then the drawing down: without ascent there is no drawing down.

This holy elevation is the holy form of exaltation, “Haman after refinement.” Its root above is in the supernal lights of the garment and the horse, which is how Haman could come to handle them.

The garment is G‑d’s majesty, His exaltation, as in “Havayah reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty.” The horse, sus (סוס), equals 126, twice 63, the numerical value of the divine Name Sag, the spelling-out of the Name Havayah whose letters total 63.

The crown is different: “the crown with which his mother crowned him” has no counterpart on the opposing side, not even at Haman’s level. It is pure nullification of will, “we will do” before “we will hear,” and so the verse says that Haman took only the garment and the horse.