כי אברהם לא ידענו כו׳ אתה ה׳ אבינו כו׳

The maamar opens with Isaiah’s verse in which Israel in exile cries out that Avraham does not know us, yet G‑d is our Father. It then sets its task: to understand the Arizal’s teaching in Pri Etz Chaim on Purim, that on the night “the king’s sleep was disturbed,” a light from the Yesod of Abba (the channel of Chochmah) reached Nukva, the configuration of Malchus, directly, without passing through Z’eir Anpin, the configuration of the emotive attributes. That light went out even into the three lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, which the verses “Mordechai passed” and “Mordechai went out” are read to describe.

To explain this teaching, the maamar starts from a basic principle: the infinite Creator and finite creatures cannot meet directly, so something must stand between them. The Tzemach Tzedek asks in Or HaTorah how anything can stand between the infinite and the finite, before which one and a million are alike, and answers that the intermediary holds both aspects.

The intermediary is the Ten Sefiros of Atzilus, the World of Emanation, which stand between the Infinite One and the created worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, together with the higher Gan Eden. In Atzilus, G‑d and His attributes are wholly one (“He and His vessels are one”), and yet those attributes are revealed only for the sake of the created beings. Or HaTorah compares this to the heavens and the luminaries, which were created for the sake of this lowly world.

Job’s words “from my flesh I behold G‑d” let us learn this from human experience: a person alone has no need to show his wisdom and feelings; he expresses them only when he turns to someone else.

Chochmah, wisdom, is the first point at which the Infinite is revealed at all, and through it He is revealed in every world, higher and lower. The verse “Havayah founded the earth with Chochmah” shows that all of creation rests on it.

Why it must be Chochmah is explained elsewhere: the gloss in Tanya, chapter 35, to which Or HaTorah points, gives the reason, that the Infinite One is the true One, He alone with nothing besides Him, and that is the level of Chochmah. The higher Chochmah of Atzilus is the intermediary itself, and its upper side belongs to the Emanator, since it is the vessel in which the Infinite Light rests.

The same intermediary also has a side turned toward the created beings, called the lower Chochmah: Malchus of Atzilus. It is the root through which the Infinite One, the “Life of life,” gives life to all creatures of the higher and lower worlds.

This lower side is G‑d’s “speech,” the “breath of His mouth” that keeps all worlds alive, and like the woman of valor who “gives food to her household,” it provides for them all as the light that fills all worlds. It is also called the lower Imma (Mother) and Rachel, akeres habayis, “the mainstay of the house”: the Midrash reads the Torah’s “Rachel was akarah (barren)” as “Rachel was the ikar (mainstay) of the house.”

Malchus of Atzilus is also called the Congregation of Israel, the root of all Jewish souls together. Her three kinds of vessels, inner, middle and outer, are the roots of the soul’s three levels: the neshamah, rooted in Beriah, the ruach, rooted in Yetzirah, and the nefesh, rooted in Asiyah.

So every Jew, however low, carries a spark of the nefesh of Asiyah, and within it a light from the outer vessels of Malchus of Atzilus.

Because Malchus is clothed in every Jewish soul, divine speech, the light that fills the worlds, rises or falls with Israel’s deeds, as the Zohar says. Its fall is what is called the exile of the Shechinah.

The maamar now asks how divine speech, which gives life to the worlds, came out of the higher Chochmah, which is Havayah and the light that encompasses all worlds, a level far above them.

Etz Chaim teaches that Nukva begins from the “chest” of Z’eir Anpin; another transcript of this maamar explains that the chest stands opposite the arms, Chesed and Gevurah, love and awe. Z’eir Anpin is these attributes, and in the soul it is love that fills the vessel of Chesed as its light. The verse “He desires kindness” shows it: Chesed is driven by desire, by love.

The human analogy: life flows from the brain through the veins to the heart, the seat of the emotions, and from the heart and the lungs breath goes out and becomes the voice of speech.

So in a person the life-force passes from wisdom into speech only through the emotions of the heart, narrowed through “apertures and windows.” Above too, speech, Nukva, normally receives from Chochmah by way of the attributes of Z’eir Anpin.

When Israel stood on a high level, in the time of the Holy Temple, Z’eir Anpin and Nukva faced each other “face to face”: the attributes gave to Malchus fully. The face is the right image, since a person’s main life and most of his senses are concentrated there.

The back, by contrast, has little life; even touch, felt all over the body, is far keener on the face than on the back. So when the attributes turn only their “back” to Malchus, the life they pass on is small. Another transcript of the maamar adds that the same holds in giving: one who loves his friend turns his face to him as he gives, while one who gives without love throws it, as it were, over his shoulder.

Before using such images, the maamar cautions that G‑d’s attributes are utterly unlike human ones, and human intellect cannot grasp them at all, not even His “speech.”

These terms are used only “to accommodate the ear,” giving it what it can hear, on the principle of “from my flesh I behold.” The analogy of wood and ash shows the gap: Avraham, “the one who loves Me,” a “chariot” for the Chesed of Atzilus, is only “dust and ashes” beside that Chesed, and the angel Michael of Beriah is merely the outer level of Avraham’s soul. In Iggeres HaKodesh (Tanya, Part IV, 15) the Alter Rebbe spells it out: ash is the very substance of the burnt wood, yet bears no likeness to the tree before it burned; so Avraham’s love, though it came from the supernal Chesed, bore no comparison to it.

In the time of the Temple, the higher attributes, Chesed and Gevurah, passed the flow they receive from the higher Chochmah on to Nukva “face to face,” with the fullness of life. The Tzemach Tzedek draws from this passage (Or HaTorah, Vayikra, vol. 1, p. 263) that when the attributes of Z’eir Anpin shine, miracles come openly.

Even the attributes we see in this world, such as the alternation of day and night and the directions east and west, came down step by step from those higher attributes to Nukva, the light that fills all worlds, and from her into the world.

That is why Moshe could perform miracles, revelations of what is above nature: G‑d “led the arm at the right hand of Moshe,” and the right is Chesed, the attribute of Avraham.

But when Israel sinned, the prophet says, “they have turned their back to Me”: by their deeds they caused the “face” of the higher attributes to withdraw from Malchus. Now the attributes shine to her only with their “back,” where, as explained, there is little life.

The split in the lower worlds between contrasting attributes, such as day and night, comes only from the “back” of the higher attributes, when they stand back to back.

A person turns his “face” to G‑d when he feels a wondrous longing whose only aim is to cleave to G‑d alone, with nothing else beside Him.

If he gives the matters of this world only his “back,” with little life, he joins the hei (Malchus) to the vav (Z’eir Anpin) face to face. His arousal from below brings a matching arousal from above, “in the manner of the face,” as the priestly blessing says: “May Havayah make His face shine.”

Then the verses of beauty apply above: the maiden “beautiful of form and fair to look upon,” and “goodly to behold.” And the person’s longing below calls forth, “as the appearance of a man,” Ezekiel’s words for the likeness on the throne, delight and longing flowing from above to below. The previous maamar (Torah Ohr, Megillat Esther 4:2) explains that “appearance of a man” through love: the beloved’s image is engraved upon the one who loves.

Etz Chaim states that in exile Nukva receives her mochin, her “intellect,” not through Z’eir Anpin but directly from the higher mochin: the higher Chochmah, the Yesod of Abba, the light that encompasses all worlds.

What she receives is not the Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Z’eir Anpin, the lower parts of the configuration above her that ordinarily become her mind. Rather, she takes Z’eir Anpin’s own mochin, which he used to receive from the Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Abba and Imma; now that he is in dormita, “sleep,” they pass to her, as the text’s own reference to Pri Etz Chaim’s chapter on Purim explains.

An analogy: a person can speak words of wisdom straight from his mind, without the feelings of the heart in between. So too with the light that fills all worlds, which is clothed within the worlds to give them life and sustain them.

Its own life comes to it directly from the higher Chochmah, the “Life of life” and the light that encompasses all worlds, without first passing into Z’eir Anpin’s attributes and down through their many contractions.

This, the maamar says, is what Israel declares in exile, “For Avraham did not know us … for You, Havayah, are our Father”: the attributes do not reach us now, but our Father, the higher Chochmah, does; another transcript of the maamar adds that “Yisrael does not recognize us” is Z’eir Anpin, the attributes. So every Jewish soul has “the G‑d of his father” as its help, even before he has turned his face to G‑d.

It is enough that he believe with true faith that “You are our Father,” the encompassing light before which all is as nothing. The Shechinah rests on every gathering of ten, and at that level sins do not separate Israel from G‑d.

At this level sin does not cut off. “To G‑d, a sin-offering” recalls the Yom Kippur goat on which the lot “for G‑d” fell and which was made a sin-offering, as paragraph 25 explains in the same terms; G‑d “bears iniquity”; and, as the Talmud says of teshuvah, willful sins become merits. Before the encompassing light the world does not interpose at all.

The Sages said that G‑d’s might is shown in His forbearance while idolaters revel in His Sanctuary; the maamar cites it to show that at the encompassing level nothing in the world interposes before Him. Like a fly at the edge of a house, which takes up no space, the world is as nothing before Him, yet even this image is only for human understanding.

In truth the worlds “take up space” before Havayah, the encompassing light, incomparably less than the fly in the house. Another transcript of the maamar draws the lesson: even in exile, as soon as a person believes with true faith that all before Him is as nothing, G‑d’s light surrounds him on every side.

Of the Future, Isaiah says that G‑d will “put on garments of vengeance”: to execute judgment He must as it were clothe Himself, contracting His light into the higher attributes and descending through many contractions. Only then can there be vengeance against the idolaters who revel in His Sanctuary, since at the level of the encompassing light itself the world does not register at all.

The Psalmist’s “And I am prayer” is read as the words of Malchus, together with Ezekiel’s “And I am in the midst of the exile.” In exile, receiving directly from above, she herself is prayer; she need not draw through the higher attributes, for “You are our Father,” and, as the Zohar says, “Abba founded the Daughter.”

Outside exile she stands face to face with Z’eir Anpin, her “husband,” and asks her needs of him, as Esther asked the king: “my life at my request.”

So Z’eir Anpin is called baal tefillah, “the husband of prayer” (baal also means master): the one to whom she brings her requests. But in exile she is herself prayer, since tefillah means a bond: the lower Chochmah, Malchus, bound directly to the higher Chochmah. The previous maamar (Torah Ohr, Megillat Esther 4:10) draws the same sense from naftulei, Rachel’s word in naming Naftali.

“Avraham did not know us” also means that the faith in “You are our Father” is above love and awe, the attributes. But contemplating it afterwards brings a person to love and awe “face to face,” flames of longing for G‑d alone. This is the nesirah, the “sawing” apart of Malchus from Z’eir Anpin’s back so that she can be returned face to face; it proceeds through the attributes in the days until Yom Kippur.

Yochanan the High Priest abolished the “awakeners,” who would cry out the verse “Awake! Why do You sleep?” The reason, says the maamar, is that in truth “You are our Father” never sleeps; only Z’eir Anpin is in dormita.

Micah’s “For I have fallen, I have risen” is read “in my very fall I rose”: at the moment of exile, Malchus receives the mochin directly from the higher Chochmah, not through Z’eir Anpin.

Amos’s “She has fallen, she shall rise no more” is read the same way: there can be no rising greater than the one that happens within the fall itself.

Yet exile is not the goal: creation was meant for the revelation of G‑dliness, which is fuller and visible to the eye outside exile. The Rebbe Rashab explains (Sefer HaMaamarim 5657, p. 65), from this maamar’s own analogy of speech that bypasses the emotions, that a flow which does not pass through the attributes has no vitality in it, so the light Malchus receives in exile does not shine openly.

In the Future, two kings will use one crown, though in the Talmud the moon complained that they cannot: Z’eir Anpin and Nukva will be equal in stature, and she will receive her mochin from Abba and Imma just as he does. Even now she receives from Abba, but then she will be “a woman of valor is the crown of her husband,” and the attributes will no longer sleep.

The back-to-back state corresponds in the Kabbalah to the five Gevuros, the powers of restraint, expressed as inverted forms of the Name Havayah. When the five Chasadim, the kindnesses, come, they separate Z’eir Anpin and Nukva so they can turn face to face.

In a person, likewise, the vital soul’s desire for this world is the back-to-back state, while the intellect, whose will is turned to G‑d, is in the state of the nesirah, face to face. Toward the world one gives only the “back”: the Sages described even marital union as done “as though a demon compelled him,” and all the more so other worldly matters. The previous maamar (Torah Ohr, Megillat Esther 4:3) teaches the same, adding that then the bond with G‑d is face to face.

Purim and Yom Kippur share one level: on both, the light of the Yesod of Abba shines into Nukva, and this light goes out all the way down into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. That is why, as Pri Etz Chaim cites from the Sages, all the festivals will cease except Purim; and the Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 1:5) says that the Megillah of Esther and the halachos, the laws of the Torah, will not cease either.

A known analogy explains why the highest light reaches the lowest place. The lion is an unclean animal, yet in the holy Chariot “the face of a lion is on the right,” because its source is so high that it has no fitting vessel in which to be clothed except the lowest place: an unclean animal, the realm of the kelipos, the “husks” that conceal holiness.

In a clean animal the vessel would be nullified before so great a light.

In the same way, the light of the higher Chochmah is clothed in the lowest place: the laws of the Torah about this world, what is impure and what is fit. These laws reveal G‑d’s supernal will, rooted in His Chochmah, in the most mundane matters. Likkutei Torah (Shir HaShirim 3a) points back to this passage: the very essence of the higher Chochmah is clothed in the revealed laws of the Torah, while even Gan Eden receives only a glow of it.

This is “Mordechai went out from before the king in royal apparel”: Mordechai stands for the higher Chochmah, going out from Malchus clothed in “the apparel of Malchus,” that is, physical matters. “Mordechai passed,” as Etz Chaim explains, speaks of the same going out.

The Psalmist laments, “We have not seen our signs; there is no longer any prophet.” This describes the exile: most miracles then happen through nature. Likkutei Torah (Ki Seitzei 37b) makes the same point, referring to the maamar “And Mordechai went out”: in this world the divine flow comes clothed and hidden, “until ‘we have not seen our signs,’” though it comes from above, and a person need only make a vessel for the blessing.

So it was with Achashverosh: nothing visibly supernatural happened, only the king’s love for Esther; yet it is plain that every cause was beyond nature.

The miracle came down and clothed itself in nature because only when the higher attributes shone face to face were they revealed openly in the lower worlds, as with Moshe: “Who led at the right hand of Moshe.” Now that they shine only from the back, the miracle must come through nature.

When the attributes shone face to face there were prophets: emissaries of the holy attributes, through whom G‑d’s word came into human speech, as Isaiah says, G‑d “creates the speech (niv) of the lips.” Rashi (on Exodus 7:1) derives navi, “prophet,” from this very niv.

All prophecy comes from Netzach and Hod of Atzilus, which are “the two halves of the body”; like the kidneys, which “counsel” and ripen the seed, they determine how the flow will pass through Yesod.

They are “outside the body”: not the core of the body, the attributes Chesed and Gevurah, but messengers who carry a word from them, which is what prophets are. When the attributes withdrew and only the light of the Yesod of Abba remained, it had to be clothed in lower things, in nature: the Name Elokim, whose numerical value (86) equals that of hateva, “nature.”

A question about the story: why did Esther act entirely on her own, without Mordechai’s advice, and why did she make two feasts? The answer: Esther is Rachel, Malchus, “the mainstay of the house,” to whom the conduct of the world belongs.

Her “husband” Mordechai is the Yesod of Abba, who “took her for himself as a daughter”; like the husband of the woman of valor, “his heart trusts in her” that she will do nothing improper.

That is why Esther made two feasts: to raise Haman up and draw him too close to holiness, so that he would fall of his own accord.

Kelipah, the force that conceals holiness, can draw life and exist as a separate “something” only at a distance from holiness. Brought close, it dissolves by itself, “as wax melts before fire.”

Esther brought Haman as close as possible, seating him at the feasts of the king and the queen; as the Sages said, “when the lion and the lioness stand together, woe to whoever passes between them,” and placing Haman between them brought his downfall. After the first feast he still stood as a “something,” so she made a second, until “Haman’s face was covered.”

Esther’s invitation, “Let the king and Haman come today,” alludes to the exile: when Israel went into exile in Babylon the Shechinah went with them, and she was in exile “within him,” within the kelipah that Haman embodies. Esther is the “mainstay of the house” of holiness, and, the maamar adds, in the plain sense of the story as well.

Of the kelipos, by contrast, it is said, “Let there be no tikvah (hope),” words from the Amidah’s blessing against the slanderers: tikvah reads as tik, a “sheath,” for the letters vav-hei, the kelipah being a case that holds the vav-hei of the Name apart from its yud-hei. Esther drew Haman so close that he was nullified, the Name Havayah was whole again, and he was hanged.

Mordechai’s summary says that “Haman … cast pur, that is, the lot” (Esther 9:24), but the earlier verse says it was cast “before Haman” (Esther 3:7): others cast it before him, not he himself. The kelipah wants to imitate holiness, where the lot is cast “before G‑d,” as a monkey imitates a man.

On Yom Kippur in the Temple, lots were cast over two goats, one “for G‑d” and one “for Azazel.” The one casting cannot know beforehand how the lots will fall, and he settles his mind on a goat as the one for Azazel.

Yet if the lot “for G‑d” falls on that very goat, it becomes a sin-offering for G‑d. The lot thus reaches a level where sins do not separate and willful sins become merits, the level of the encompassing light described in paragraph 12.

Hence the lot is cast “before G‑d,” in the Sanctuary, since it reaches so high a level. Haman, rooted in Eisav, wanted in his arrogance to soar like the eagle, as the prophets say of Edom, and to imitate holiness, so he too had a lot cast “before Haman.” A later passage of Torah Ohr (Supplements, Megillas Esther, 123c) explains the lot the same way, as the will above reason, with Haman’s wish to soar like the eagle.

He made a gallows fifty cubits high from the impurity of the kelipah of Beriah, as a counterpart to the fifty of holiness, Mordechai’s fifty gates of Binah, understanding. He meant to hang Mordechai and draw holy Mordechai’s life-force into his own house.

Kohelet speaks of “man ruling over man to his harm,” and Tzofar, in the book of Job, of the one who “swallowed wealth and will vomit it up”: the base man tries to snatch nurture from holiness, but it is turned against him. As the Megillah says, “it was turned about,” and Haman’s house was given to Mordechai.