ביאור ע״פ ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר כו׳…

The maamar explains Exodus 24:10, what Nadav, Avihu and the seventy elders saw at Sinai: “under His feet” was something like a brick of sapphire. It opens with the rule that Etz Chaim calls the constant order of the worlds: the lowest level of each world, Malchus, becomes the highest level, Keser, of the world below it, all the way down. Another version of this discourse, the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript with glosses by the Tzemach Tzedek, is printed in Sefer HaMaamarim 5568; the explanations below call it “the parallel version.”

Seen from below, then, the whole World of Beriah corresponds only to the lowest part of Atzilus. It stands to Atzilus as Netzach, Hod and Yesod, the “legs,” stand to a body: “outside the body,” the Zohar’s phrase for the thigh that the angel could touch in Yaakov, which the following parts explain.

To show why Netzach, Hod and Yesod count as “outside the body,” the Alter Rebbe first defines Chesed. Chesed is the attribute in its own essence, lit up by the intellect: a love born of contemplation, which arises by itself once the mind has grasped its subject.

Because Chesed flows directly from the mind, it is called “the right arm.” The arms and hands express a person’s joy spontaneously: when the mind is full of joy they move, without any deliberate decision about how to move.

Two sources illustrate this. In Isaiah’s vision the seraphim fly with two of their wings, which the Alter Rebbe reads as a motion that happens of itself; and the Zohar says that the King’s “head” is arrayed in Chesed and Gevurah, so the “arms” belong with the head, the seat of the intellect.

Netzach is the attribute’s outflow without the guidance of the intellect: a drive to prevail, like the natural love expressed in the saying “a son is his father’s leg.” That is why Netzach and its companions are called “legs,” outside the body; the parallel version adds that they are further removed from the intellect in the head.

The legs too can express joy, in dancing, but only when a person thinks about how to dance; they do not move of themselves as the hands do. This completes the contrast: Chesed answers the intellect directly, while Netzach is a step removed from it.

Adam Kadmon, “Primordial Man,” is the first, all-inclusive level of emanation, above Atzilus. The configurations, in both their “circle” and “upright” forms, end above the partition that divides Atzilus from Beriah, but the lowest part of Adam Kadmon, its Netzach, Hod and Yesod, pierces that partition and reaches down through Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

The reason lies in what Adam Kadmon is: G‑d’s primordial thought, “I shall reign,” the original intention to be King. That thought already held the goal of the whole chain of worlds down to the end of Asiyah, the subduing (iskafya) and transforming (is’hapcha) of what opposes holiness, so it reaches down to the place where its purpose is fulfilled.

This is why Adam Kadmon can be enclothed even in the lower worlds. It also explains why even the most unworthy and lowly person is capable of giving his life to sanctify G‑d’s Name: the highest level reaches him too.

The power for such self-sacrifice comes from Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Adam Kadmon, which end and are enclothed at the very end of Asiyah; Iggeres HaKodesh 20, to which the Tzemach Tzedek’s gloss points, likewise says that the feet of Adam Kadmon end at the bottom of Asiyah, with the encompassing Infinite Light shining beneath them. The parenthesis sends the reader to the discourse “For the conductor, on the sheminis” (a psalm heading, “on the eighth,” read there as circumcision, given on the eighth day), which Kehot locates in the Siddur’s section on circumcision. The discourse with that opening in Likkutei Torah, Tazria, says that all the configurations end at the partition, but the feet of Adam Kadmon are in Asiyah itself: “the bottom of its heel is the head of Asiyah.”

The maamar now defines the difference between Atzilus and Beriah. In Atzilus, in the Tikkunei Zohar’s phrase, “He and His life-force and His vessels are all one”: as Iggeres HaKodesh 20 explains, the lights (His life-force) and the vessels (His organs) there are G‑dliness itself, and so they are not limited.

In Beriah, by contrast, angels and souls are created beings with real limits. Moshe, whose soul was of Atzilus, was told to “approach Havayah” alone (Exodus 24:2), and so he reached the lights of Atzilus themselves.

The seventy elders grasped only what the verse calls “under His feet”: what extends below the Throne. That is Adam Kadmon as it is enclothed in Beriah: its lowest part, Netzach, Hod and Yesod, which pierces the partition.

The Throne is the partition between Atzilus and Beriah. The wordplay splits kisei (throne) into kes, “covered” (as in kisui, a covering), and alef, the first letter: the Throne is where what is above it, the “alef,” is covered and concealed from the world below.

The prophet Yechezkel likewise saw only within Beriah. His vision of “a likeness like the appearance of a man” upon the throne (Ezekiel 1:26) is of something defined and limited, as everything in Beriah is. Kehot notes that Etz Chaim and many other places put Yechezkel’s chariot in Yetzirah, a world lower than the Beriah named here.

Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes, is called Adam, “man,” because it divides into distinct lines, like the limbs of a human form. Chochmah and Binah, a radiance of the Infinite Light itself, have no such division and are not called Adam.

Since Atzilus as a whole is Chochmah, the “man” Yechezkel saw cannot be Atzilus itself. It is Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Adam Kadmon as they are enclothed within Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, the same level the elders saw “under His feet.”

The maamar returns to the verse and introduces two ways of spelling out the letters of the Name Havayah: Mah, spelled out with alefs, and Ban, spelled out with hehs. Mah, which refines, is essential self-nullification, with no sense of separate existence at all; Ban, which is refined, is the self-nullification of a being that does exist and yet sets itself aside before the One who brings it into being. The angels of Michael’s camp, whose quality is love, are such beings rising toward essential nullification, which Or HaTorah calls the refinement of Ban.

Each of these two kinds of nullification needs a means of coming into the open, as a light needs a vessel to hold it. That means is the Names themselves: the letters of Mah and of Ban reveal the essential nullification and the nullification of a being.

The letters of the Name Mah are called “stones,” as in Sefer Yetzirah’s saying that “two stones build two houses,” where the stones are letters. A stone is a natural creation, formed “by the hands of Heaven” and not made by people.

The word even (stone) is read as alef joined to ban: the alef stands for Mah, whose letters are spelled out with alefs, and ban for the Name Ban. Bricks, in contrast, are made by people from mud and earth and must be fired in a kiln before they become hard as stone and fit for building.

This is linked to G‑d’s words to Israel, “like the four winds of the heavens I have spread you out” (Zechariah 2:10): the dispersion has a purpose. The Sages teach that Israel was exiled among the nations only so that converts would join them (Pesachim 87b), and the Alter Rebbe applies this to raising the seventy languages into the holy tongue.

The Sages read “I am a wall” (Song of Songs 8:10) as the Torah; here the Alter Rebbe adds that the letters of the seventy languages can also become part of this “wall.” The proof is the Gemara itself, where the Tannaim and Amoraim discuss Torah in Aramaic, with phrases such as “hachi hashta” and “i amras bishlama.” Or HaTorah, cited by Kehot, adds that Aramaic, the Targum’s language, belongs to kelipas nogah, the “glowing husk” that can be raised to holiness, and so is holier than the other languages of the nations.

Translating the Torah into the language we speak, a foreign tongue, likewise raises that language to the holy tongue. But first its letters must be “burned” in the Shema, through loving G‑d “with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 6:5).

The burning works like this: the words spoken in any language in the course of business earn the food and drink a person lives on, and with the energy of that food he prays and recites the Shema. Through that devotion the letters of everyday speech are “burned” and made fit for building, as clay is fired into brick.

The generation of the Dispersion (haflagah), the builders of Babel whose speech was split (nifl’gu) into seventy languages, said, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly,” and “the brick served them as stone” (Genesis 11:3): fired brick becomes like the stone that Heaven made. Brick refined in this way is called “a brick of sapphire,” bright and shining like sapphire.

Moshe’s level was Atzilus, where there is no “brick” at all, only “stones”: everything there is one with G‑d, so there is no being that first exists and then nullifies itself. The self-nullification of a being, which the brick stands for, has no place in Atzilus.

Nadav, Avihu and the seventy elders belonged to Beriah, so what they saw was “the brick of sapphire”: the letters of the Name Ban, the self-nullification of beings that exist. Their vision was of the refining that comes from below.

“The essence of the heavens” is the letters of the Name Mah: “heavens” stand for Z’eir Anpin, associated with Mah, and their “essence” is the letters of Mah, which reach up to the Supernal Purity (tehiru ila’ah). The verse’s latohar, “for purity,” is read as the Zohar’s tehiru, the highest purity; Likkutei Torah (Vayikra) sums up this passage: these are the letters of the Written Torah, whose root is in the Supernal Purity.

Emek HaMelech, the Kabbalistic work of Rabbi Naftali Bacharach, places the Supernal Purity above Adam Kadmon, a view the maamar supports with the Zohar’s “He engraved engravings in the Supernal Purity” at the very start of creation; the Kabbalah of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s disciple, identifies it with Adam Kadmon. The letters, the last and outermost expression, reach so high because “their end is wedged in their beginning”: what comes last in deed was first in thought. Or HaTorah draws the lesson: through study of the Written and Oral Torah, the letters of Mah and Ban, what is refined below is raised as high as the Supernal Purity.

The maamar moves to the next words of the verse, which plainly mean that G‑d did not harm the nobles though they had seen Him. The nobles, as Rashi and the Ramban explain, are Nadav, Avihu and the seventy elders: souls of Beriah like the rest of their generation, but its most distinguished. Their name, atzilei, the word in “from its nobles I called you,” shares its root with Atzilus, so it hints at the level of Atzilus within Beriah.

“He did not send forth His hand” is read to mean that they did not attain the “supernal hands” above the Throne, Chesed and Gevurah as they are joined to the “head,” the intellect, as in the Zohar passage cited in paragraph 2, “the head of the King is arrayed in Chesed and Gevurah.” Targum Yonasan, which Kehot cites here, says that what they saw was “the glory of the Shechinah.”

Moshe and Aharon were rooted in Atzilus. The Torah names them in both orders, “Aharon and Moshe” and “Moshe and Aharon,” which Rashi explains as showing that they were equal, and both are among the “seven shepherds,” the seven leaders (Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, Yosef and David) whom Kabbalah pairs with the seven attributes. The Patriarchs, who are the “Chariot” of G‑d, were also of Atzilus, so they too attained the supernal hands.

Next comes “And they beheld Elokim, and they ate and drank.” Vayechezu, “they beheld,” is the Targum’s Aramaic word for seeing rather than the Hebrew vayiru, and the Aramaic denotes the “back” (achorayim), the outer side of a thing; so what they saw was only the level of Elokim, G‑d as concealed. Likkutei Torah, Vaeschanan, reads echezeh in “from my flesh I shall see G‑d” the same way: the Targum word is only the “back” of actual sight.

Havayah is likened to the sun and Elokim to the shield or sheath that screens it so that its light can be borne; only in the Time to Come will G‑d take the sun out of its sheath. “They ate and drank” refers to eating and drinking as they are in Beriah, which correspond to the “feminine waters” that rise from below and the “masculine waters” drawn down from above, and to the Names Mah and Ban.

The Alter Rebbe describes the body’s nourishment, in the medical terms of his time, as a parable. Food gives life from above to below: it descends to the stomach, is digested in the liver and rises to the heart and brain, and from there a power descends from the brain to the heart, making it open and close so that the blood spreads through the limbs in a rhythm of “running and returning.”

The blood itself, being coarse and thick, cannot rise into the brain, whose vessels are very fine. Something else is needed for nourishment to rise, and the next paragraph identifies it as drinking.

Drinking thins the blood, so that only a fine essence, a moisture, rises from it to the brain and strengthens it. This life-force that comes by way of ascent is, the text says, the level of feminine and masculine waters: the raising from below that calls forth the flow from above.

The Zohar reads “I am asleep” (Song of Songs 5:2) as the voice of the Congregation of Israel in exile. The Alter Rebbe explains this “sleep” as the departure of the intellect from Z’eir Anpin, because no feminine waters are raised from below, just as the brain weakens without the fine moisture that drinking sends up.

This is why a person can die of thirst even while eating: without drink the blood cannot spread through the limbs. The Rambam, explaining the Mishnah that one may not make an eruv with water or salt, says that they are not foods but carry the food to its places in the body.

Moshe, during his forty days on the mountain, ate no bread and drank no water (Exodus 34:28). He was nourished instead by the eating and drinking of Atzilus; Or HaTorah, quoting this, adds the Midrash: “bread he did not eat, but he ate the bread of Torah; water he did not drink, but he drank the water of Torah.”

This higher eating and drinking is the one in “I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey ... eat, friends; drink and become drunk” (Song of Songs 5:1), which refers to Chochmah and Binah. Chochmah is “eating” because it is a point, a flash, like the lightning in “His arrow shall go forth like lightning” (Zechariah 9:14).

Binah is “drinking” because it broadens and expands: from a single statement it draws out a wide, detailed understanding. The parable is the drop, a mere point, which grows over nine months in the mother’s womb until it takes the form of a body with limbs.

The same growth is seen in Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes. It begins as “three included within three,” the embryonic state in which, as the Arizal teaches, Netzach, Hod and Yesod are folded within Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes; then it grows into six extremities, each containing all six, making thirty-six, the numerical value of eleh (אלה), whose letters spell Leah, who bore six sons. Then each grows to contain ten, making sixty.

It grows further, each containing ten of ten, until it reaches sixty myriads, six hundred thousand. This growth is the work of Binah, the “Mother” (Imma), who raises the attributes as a mother raises her child, as explained elsewhere.

This pair, Chochmah and Binah, corresponds to the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Written Torah is called “bread,” as in Wisdom’s invitation, “Come, eat of my bread” (Proverbs 9:5); the brief Aramaic phrase that follows, “it holds two yuds,” is given without explanation, and Kehot notes no source for it.

The Oral Torah corresponds to Binah: it gives the reasons (ta’amim) of the mitzvos. The Written Torah commands, for instance, “they shall make for themselves tzitzis” without a reason, and the Sages came and explained its reason.

The Talmud’s constant question, “What is the reason of Rabbi Meir? Of Rabbi Akiva?”, shows the Oral Torah’s concern with reasons. That is why it is called “drinking”: a person can drink even when he is not thirsty, because a drink has taste (ta’am, the same word as “reason”).

Bread, by contrast, has no taste of its own and is eaten only out of hunger. So the Oral Torah, full of reasons, is “drink,” and the Written Torah, which does not state its reasons, is “bread.”

To sum up: eating is Chochmah, a mere point, and drinking is Binah, its broad expansion. In general, all of Torah is “eating,” the drawing down of “masculine waters” from above to below.

Prayer, by contrast, is “drinking,” the raising of “feminine waters” from below, as in “Pour out your heart like water before the face of Havayah” (Lamentations 2:19). The text also refers the reader to the Zohar on Vayikra, which speaks of eating above and drinking below.

So Torah and prayer each need the other, just as the body is not sustained by food without drink, or by drink without food; and in the same way the soul’s food must have both.

The parenthesis turns to “Come, eat of my bread” (Proverbs 9:5). In the verse lachamu is the verb “eat,” but the maamar reads the same letters as “his bread”: the Torah as it is below, food for the soul, is “his bread,” while in its root above it is, as it were, lachmi, “My bread,” G‑d’s own.

This is the difference between the elders and Moshe: they “ate and drank” at the level of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, the Torah as “his bread,” while Moshe on Mount Sinai grasped the Torah as “My bread,” as it is in its root above.