שש שנים יעבד

The maamar opens with the verse on the Hebrew servant, “Six years he shall serve,” and reads “serve” as the service of G‑d: through Daas, a deep and felt knowledge of G‑d drawn down into a person, he can become “one who serves G‑d.” The verse in Malachi distinguishes “one who serves G‑d” from “one who has not served Him,” and the Gemara (Chagigah 9b), quoted in Tanya, chapter 15, explains that both may be tzaddikim: one who reviews his learning a hundred times is not like one who reviews it a hundred and one times.

To explain what serving adds, the maamar turns to two verses about “days”: “Days were formed” and “Avraham was old, coming with days.” Plainly ba bayamim means “advanced in years”; the Zohar reads it as Avraham “coming with his days,” bringing “those supernal days” with him.

These “days” are garments for the soul, made from the Torah and mitzvos of each particular day, and a day that passes without a mitzvah leaves the soul’s garment lacking. Torah Ohr, Mishpatim (79b), cited in the Kehot note, says the same: the days are the garments of the Torah a person learns and the mitzvos he does each day, and in them he can receive the revelation of G‑dliness.

The garments let the soul enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah and be “absorbed into the body of the King,” the Zohar’s phrase for the soul’s being taken up into G‑dliness. Yet the Torah and mitzvos that make up these garments are rooted far higher than that “body of the King”; they came down to serve as garments, as a parable brings a lofty idea down to where it can be grasped.

That is why they are made day by day, within time: drawn from their root above time into time, they come within the soul’s reach. Or HaTorah, cited in the Kehot note, asks why a day without a mitzvah cannot simply be made up with two mitzvos the next day, and answers in the same way: the Torah and mitzvos, a bright light above, must come down from above time into time.

In their source, above time, the garments are beyond the soul’s grasp: if it cannot grasp even the radiance (ziv) of the Shechinah without a garment, surely it cannot grasp what is rooted higher than the “body of the King,” and still less the mitzvah itself. Only because the mitzvah has come down to be a garment and a parable can the soul grasp it, and through it grasp the radiance as well.

This is why the garments are called “days”: they are clothed in time, where the soul can reach them.

The parenthesis refers to a maamar in Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar (13b), on “a time for every desire under the heavens.” There the Alter Rebbe explains that the mitzvos, though they are G‑d’s will, are bound to set times because they are “under the heavens,” below the Torah, which is called “heavens.”

Avigayil’s blessing to David, that his soul “shall be bound up in the bond of life,” is explained through the image of a stone bound in a sling: once bound in it, the stone can be hurled upward. Torah Ohr, Miketz (38c), cited in the Kehot note, uses the same image and adds that whatever encompasses (a makif) lifts upward, as a clothed person can be drawn up by his garment.

So too the soul is lifted higher and higher, into the source of life, by being bound up in the days and garments of Torah and mitzvos.

This is what “Six years he shall serve” means: the six years stand for the six thousand years of the world’s existence, the era given for keeping Torah and mitzvos. The verse “today, to do them,” which the Sages read as “today to do them, and tomorrow to receive their reward,” is taken to cover that entire period.

The maamar now reads “yaavod” (he shall serve) as related to ibbud, the tanning of hides, which turns a raw hide into fine leather. The garments of Torah and mitzvos need the same processing: they must be cleansed of all the waste that clings to them, and washed and laundered.

Like a physical garment washed in pure water, the soul’s garments become bright and clean only when they are laundered; left unwashed, they will be neither clean nor beautiful. In Yahel Or, cited in the Kehot note, the Tzemach Tzedek gives a reason they need washing: some mitzvos are done not for their own sake, and such garments are soiled until they are laundered.

This “tanning” is what distinguishes “one who serves G‑d” from “one who has not served Him.” It consists in transforming the emotions from darkness to light and from bitter to sweet, and that transformation comes through the “waters” of Daas, since Daas is the inner core of the emotions.

Daas is drawn down through Moshe, “the faithful shepherd”: the verse “I will give grass in your field for your animals” is read as his work, the grass being Daas, given to the souls called “animals.” Like a shepherd, he also washes and launders them, in supernal waters “from beyond the river,” which the preceding maamar explains as the level above grasped understanding, where the souls are rooted.

The Song of Songs speaks of “a flock of ewes that have come up from the washing”; ewes, being animals, stand for “the seed of animal,” the souls of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, whom the shepherd washes, and “washing in milk,” from another verse of the Song, adds to the image. The maamar on this verse in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (36d), reads the ewes the same way, as souls whom Moshe, the faithful shepherd, washes as a shepherd washes his flock, and refers back to this explanation of “Six years he shall serve.”

The phrase “the whitening (libun) of the halachah,” used for clarifying a law, literally means washing white, so it belongs to the same idea of laundering. This laundering takes place through prayer, the opportune time for Daas to be revealed through contemplation, as the Shemoneh Esrei itself asks: “You graciously grant man knowledge (daas).”

Through prayer the garments are refined, and so prayer is called the “continual burnt-offering”: as the olah “ascends,” so through prayer the Torah and mitzvos of the whole day ascend (olim) to G‑d.

Prayer is where the garments are “tanned” and rectified, and all this belongs to the six thousand years of the world, the servant’s “six years.” That is why it is said that tzaddikim have no rest: they keep going “from strength to strength,” ever ascending.

The verse’s “in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing” refers to the seventh millennium. “For nothing” (chinam) means “without mitzvos,” as the Sifrei reads the word: then there will be rest for life everlasting, since there will be no further ascent beyond it. Sefer HaMaamarim 5640, cited in the Kehot note, observes that the end of “V’eileh hamishpatim” seems to place that rest in the seventh millennium, while the end of the explanation (biur) on it seems to place it in the days of Mashiach.

The heading marks a gloss (hagahah), a note set apart from the main text. It takes up the term “beast” (behemah), used in this discussion for souls and levels.

The gloss starts from Tanya, chapter 46, on the verse “I was as beasts with You.” Tanya reads it as the soul’s admission that it does not feel its union with G‑d, yet “I am always with You.”

Tanya’s comment on the plural “beasts” is that before G‑d even Higher Daas, which includes Chesed and Gevurah, is like “beasts.” (The print has כם, a misprint for גם, “even,” as the Tanya itself reads.) This seems difficult, for the first maamar of this parsha, “V’eileh hamishpatim,” explained that even the Lower Daas of Atzilus, the Daas that binds the intellect to the emotions, is called “the seed of man,” the higher of the two levels.

The question is put plainly: how can even Higher Daas be called “beast”? The answer draws on the maamar on “Many waters” in Torah Ohr, Toldos, on Yitzchak, whose quality will be revealed in the future, when, as the Gemara says, Israel will say to him, “For you are our father.”

Yitzchak’s wife Rivkah is linked to rivkah, a team of cattle yoked together three by three, so her name itself suggests animals joined into one. In Torah Ohr, Toldos (18a), cited in the Kehot note, the Alter Rebbe explains that this is the joining of the “beasts” of the Divine Chariot, the faces of the lion and the ox, Chesed and Gevurah, included in one another.

The explanation grants that the level of “man” of Atzilus is above Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, which are called “beast.” But emotions come in two kinds, those born of the intellect and those above it, the emotions within Keser called “mountains of darkness,” and the latter are drawn down only through Higher Daas, which stands in the middle line directly beneath Keser; the Mitteler Rebbe explains these two kinds at length in Sha’ar HaEmunah (ch. 68 ff.), as the Kehot note says.

There is also a Daas that draws Binah into the emotions, the Daas through which understanding gives rise to feeling. The emotions above the intellect are called “the great beast” (behemah rabbah), a level higher even than “man.”

Yet relative to the Infinite One even this level above intellect is called “beast” in the plain sense, just as the higher Chochmah itself counts as “physical action” before Him, as in the Tanya passage quoted above (“You made them all with wisdom”). The print abbreviates this as ח״ע, read as chochmah ila’ah, “the higher Chochmah.”

That is why even Higher Daas, through which these emotions are drawn down, is called “beast.” It is like the supernal Keser: in itself “a pure light,” yet “black” before the Cause of causes (the print doubles the word, “black, black,” and so does Likkutei Torah’s explanation of “Zos chukas,” as the Kehot note observes). The gloss then refers to the maamar on “And He fed you the manna” in Likkutei Torah, Eikev, which reads the plural “beasts” as a level of “beast” above “man,” a great love beyond grasped Daas.