ביאור על הנ״ל

This maamar further explains the first discourse of this parsha, “Many waters cannot extinguish the love” (Torah Ohr, Noach 1). That discourse taught that the prayer of a person busy all day with earning a living can reach a level beyond that of one who studies all day; here the Alter Rebbe explains why, using the Kabbalistic ideas of the worlds of Tohu and Tikkun.

The previous maamar said that the prayer of a businessman can reach a very high level. To see why, the Alter Rebbe first raises the puzzle behind it: the soul is a spark of G‑dliness, yet it is sent down into a body and an animal soul (the life-force that drives a person’s physical needs and desires), where it spends its days worrying about making a living. Why would G‑d arrange such a descent?

¶7 Why the soul descends into worldly worry: paragraph 7 completes the answer.

The answer is a basic principle of Chassidus: the soul descends in order to rise higher than it was before. Through its struggle in a body, it can reach the love of G‑d called “with all your might” (from the Shema), which the Alter Rebbe reads as a love “without limit,” beyond the measured love that comes from the G‑dly soul’s understanding alone.

The Midrash reads the words “very good” at the end of creation as including even the angel of death. The word “very” (me’od) is the same word as “might” in “with all your might”: the very force that opposes holiness, once transformed, becomes the source of limitless love. This comes specifically from the animal soul, with its raw power, when it is turned toward G‑d.

Two parallels: physically, an ox is stronger than a man; spiritually, the Talmud teaches that those who return to G‑d after sin (baalei teshuvah) stand in a place the perfectly righteous cannot reach. In both cases the lower or more distant thing has the greater power.

The Aramaic bechila yatir (“with greater force”) expresses the intensity of the penitent’s return. That extra force, the Alter Rebbe says, comes from the animal soul’s root in the World of Tohu (“Chaos”), the first, unstable order of divine light that preceded our ordered world. The next paragraphs explain what Tohu is.

The Torah lists the kings of Edom who reigned and died one after another “before any king reigned over Israel.” In the Kabbalah these kings stand for the Sefiros of the World of Tohu, which were so intense that they could not endure and “died” (shattered). Because they came “before,” their root is higher than that of Tikkun (“rectification”), the ordered world that followed, represented by the kings of Israel.

To explain why Tohu is higher yet could not last, the Alter Rebbe brings the Midrash: G‑d first “thought” to create the world with judgment, saw it could not endure, and added mercy. He will read this Midrash as describing Tohu and Tikkun.

He first rejects the common reading, that “judgment” simply means holding back G‑d’s goodness. That cannot be the whole meaning, because Gevurah (restraint, the source of judgment) is itself one of G‑d’s attributes, and as such it too gives life.

The verse names “greatness” and “might” (gevurah) among G‑d’s attributes; Chassidus reads the list as the Sefiros of Atzilus, the attributes through which G‑d gives life and creates something from nothing. So Gevurah is a creative, life-giving power, not just a limit.

A second proof: the Torah calls blood “the soul,” the core of a person’s life, and in the Kabbalah blood (red, warm) is associated with Gevurah. Again, Gevurah is the carrier of life, not its absence.

So the Alter Rebbe offers his own reading: the word gevurah is related to tigboros, “intensity.” In Gevurah, the life-force from the Infinite Light comes with more force than in Chesed (kindness). Chesed reaches far down to every recipient.

Chesed reaches so far because it flows gently, in a “cool” and moderate way. Gevurah, by contrast, carries the life-force with an overwhelming intensity.

This is how “judgment” results: when such intense light descends through the worlds, a recipient who is not fit for it cannot receive it. Judgment, then, is not stinginess; it is a light too strong for an unworthy vessel.

Chesed’s gentle flow can spread everywhere; Gevurah’s intense flow is the level of the “seven kings” of Tohu. This is why the Kabbalah calls the Sefiros of Tohu “kings”: each was a proud, sovereign power standing on its own, and that intensity is the “judgment” with which the world was first to be created.

The Arizal’s Kabbalah describes Tohu as “abundant light and few vessels,” and Tikkun as the reverse. The Alter Rebbe explains “abundant light” in the terms he has just set out: light and life-force that come with great intensity.

In Tohu every one of the ten Sefiros had this intensity, not just Gevurah: even Chesed was a Chesed of overwhelming force. The sentence breaks off with “and also,” leading into the next point.

Because each attribute was so intense, none could make room for another. In a balanced personality or world, kindness contains some restraint and restraint some kindness (“inter-inclusion”); in Tohu that could not happen.

Each attribute stood alone and could not blend with its opposite. This, says the Alter Rebbe, is the meaning of the Midrash’s “He saw that the world could not endure”: a world built of such isolated extremes breaks apart.

A stable world needs Tikkun, which the Kabbalah describes as three “lines” (right, left and center), in which the attributes combine with one another.

Tikkun has more vessels and less light: the light comes gently, in the “cool” manner of Chesed described above. Precisely because no attribute overwhelms, opposites like kindness and severity can coexist and be combined.

The Mishnah in Avos says there were ten generations from Noach to Avraham to show G‑d’s patience, since all of them angered Him until Avraham came. The patience itself is the point: it shows anger that does not erupt at once.

Patience is possible only because the attribute of judgment does not come with overwhelming force; it is held and balanced. The Alter Rebbe adds that in Tikkun even utter opposites can exist at once.

His example is the dedication of the First Temple, a moment of joy unmatched since creation, when Shlomo said the Song of Songs.

At the dedication G‑d’s glory filled the Temple and fire came down from heaven: a revelation of the Shechinah, G‑d’s presence, in the lower world.

Yet the prophet Jeremiah says that the city provoked G‑d’s anger and fury “from the day that they built it” — the very same moment of supreme joy.

The tradition connects that anger with Shlomo’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter, which took place at the time the Temple was completed. So at one and the same moment there was intense joy and intense anger; this, the Alter Rebbe says, was possible only because G‑d “joined the attribute of mercy.”

Joining the attribute of mercy means that the world is built as Tikkun. Since no attribute there reveals itself with overwhelming light, the “vessel” can hold two opposite states together without breaking.

The human (Jewish) soul is rooted in Atzilus, which belongs to the ordered World of Tikkun. That is why a soul contains all the attributes — love, awe, compassion and the rest — together and balanced, as the Tanya explains in its opening chapters.

Angels are different: they are rooted in Tohu, so each camp embodies a single attribute. The camp of the angel Michael is pure love (Chesed), and it is intense.

Gavriel’s camp is pure awe (Gevurah). Michael is called the prince of water (kindness, which flows down) and Gavriel the prince of fire (severity, which rises and burns). The four faces of the Chariot in Ezekiel’s vision — the lion on the right, the ox on the left — come from these single-attribute powers.

The Talmud teaches that a person has three partners in his making — father, mother and G‑d — and that G‑d contributes the soul. Animals and birds, by contrast, get their life from the faces of the lion and the ox in the divine Chariot described just above.

Since the animals’ life comes from those angelic powers, their source is Tohu. This explains the verse “Behind and before You formed me,” which the Sages read as saying man was created both last and first: in the ordered chain of worlds (Tikkun), man stands higher than the animals.

The animals fell very low, yet their root in Tohu is higher than man’s. This is the foundation for the next paragraph: the animal soul’s love, when elevated, has a power the G‑dly soul lacks.

Now the conclusion: since the animal soul is rooted in Tohu, the love it produces when turned to G‑d is the love “with all your might,” a love that is “above the vessel,” that is, beyond the limits of the soul’s understanding and feeling. It has the extra force of Tohu’s intensity.

In the Shattering of the Vessels, Tohu’s lights fell into the lowest levels, which is why the animal soul is now absorbed in physical pursuits and feels itself separate from G‑d. But when it is refined in prayer and its energy is turned upward, its original intensity returns as boundless love.

¶2 This answers the question from paragraph 2.

Evidence that the animal realm strengthens a person: a Talmudic sage explained he had not given a certain ruling the night before because he had not yet eaten beef, implying that meat strengthens the mind. Likewise wine gladdens the heart. Food from the animal and plant world, rooted higher, adds to a person’s intellect and feeling.

In the present order man is far above animals; but in their root, in Tohu, they are higher. The Kabbalah calls this “the advantage of light that comes from darkness”: the greatest light comes precisely from transforming the darkness.

How does a person reach this in practice? By reflecting during prayer on his own day: how he spends it chasing a living, food and bread, and on where that food draws its life.

The Midrash teaches that every blade of grass has a mazal, a celestial force above it that makes it grow. The Alter Rebbe traces the chain: the constellations get their power from the seventy angelic princes of the nations, those from the Ofanim (a class of angels), and the Ofanim from G‑d’s Malchus, His kingship over the worlds. All the sustenance a person chases is at the far end of this long chain.

And all of Malchus, next to G‑d’s own essence, is only a faint ray. This explains Rabbi Akiva’s words: if G‑d grants so much good even to those who transgress His will (through this outer ray), how much more will He give those who do His will.

For those who do His will receive the endless delight of His essence itself. The Psalm says G‑d’s “splendor” is on earth and heaven, meaning the whole divine light that fills and surrounds the worlds is only His outer splendor; but Israel is “the people close to Him,” close to His very essence.

Reflecting on this contrast, the person’s soul is set aflame with intense longing to cleave to G‑d Himself, not to anything He gives. This is the Psalmist’s cry: “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing.”

The Alter Rebbe applies this to the wording of every blessing over a mitzvah. “King of the world” refers to the light G‑d sends into and around the worlds, His kingship over them, as the verse says, “His kingship rules over all.”

But “who has sanctified us” (asher kiddeshanu) expresses the love of the Jewish soul for G‑d’s essence. The Alter Rebbe reads asher as related to osher, “happiness,” as in Leah’s “be’oshri,” and so as G‑d’s endless inner delight. Through the mitzvos, such as tallis, Israel draws down from that supernal delight, beyond the level of “King of the world.”

¶21 How mitzvos draw down G‑d's essence: paragraph 21 explains.

Now the Alter Rebbe turns to Isaiah’s words, “For this is as the waters of Noach to Me,” the verse of the first maamar of this parsha, where G‑d compares His oath to Israel to His oath after the Flood. The burden of earning a living is also “the waters of Noach,” like the Flood; but first he asks what the Flood was for, since its purpose was not simply to wipe out the wicked.

¶12 Why livelihood's worries are “the waters of Noach”: paragraph 12 explains.

G‑d could have wiped out the wicked instantly; a year-long flood of water was not needed for destruction alone.

Proof that G‑d can destroy instantly: He told Pharaoh He could have struck him and he would have been “cut off from the earth” at once. So the Flood had another purpose: to purify a world that had become “filled with violence.”

The sins of that generation drew down kelipos, forces of concealment, so the world needed cleansing by water, as a mikveh purifies. The Alter Rebbe connects this to rain, called in the prayers gevuros geshamim, “the mighty powers of rain.” Ordinary rain, falling in measured order, is Chesed and makes things grow.

The Flood fell with Gevurah, meaning with overwhelming intensity: it was the Chesed of Tohu, kindness in Tohu’s unbounded form. Only such a light, higher than Tikkun, could purify the earth; its sheer intensity is what made it destructive to those unfit to receive it.

So the Flood “wiped out all existence” not as punishment for its own sake but because they could not receive such intense light. And the waters rose fifteen cubits above the mountains.

“Mountains” stand for Tikkun, the blending of attributes, as the Talmud says Avraham called the Temple site a “mountain”; the Flood’s Tohu-waters rose above Tikkun. In a person, the worries and thoughts of this world that come from the animal soul are likewise from Tohu, and they are the “waters of Noach” in his life.

¶10 This explains the “waters of Noach” from paragraph 10.

G‑d tells Noach to enter the teivah, the ark. The Hebrew teivah also means “word,” so the Alter Rebbe reads it as the words and letter-combinations of prayer and Torah, the refuge from the flood of worldly worry.

The name Noach means “rest,” and the Targum translates G‑d’s resting on the seventh day with the same root, so Noach is the level of Shabbos. This rest is not stopping altogether, but like a worker who rests from his labor: a rest that follows effort.

The Jews of Shushan “rested on the fifteenth” after their war: rest after struggle, a calm of the spirit. There are two such “rests”: the lower Shabbos, our weekly Shabbos, and the higher Shabbos, the “day that is entirely Shabbos” of the future. Prayer, too, is a “rest” and a Shabbos, where the week’s work is lifted up.

¶17 The lower and higher Shabbos: paragraph 17 explains the difference.

Weekday prayers are fully lifted on Shabbos, when all the worlds ascend. In the Kabbalah, 288 sparks of holiness fell in the Shattering of the Vessels, and during the six workdays Malchus descends into the lower worlds to refine and gather them, as Proverbs says “her feet descend.” This refining has particular times, such as midnight, the time of Tikkun Chatzos, the midnight lament over the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Shechinah.

The six days correspond to the creative sayings, “Let there be light,” “Let there be a firmament,” through which divine influence flows out into the worlds. On Shabbos the flow reverses: Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah rise into Atzilus, which is the World of Tikkun.

The Tikkunei Zohar says of Atzilus that G‑d is one with His “life-force” and with His “vessels.” The Alter Rebbe explains these as the lights and the vessels: in Atzilus both are wholly one with G‑d.

The verse “Yours, O G‑d, is the greatness and the might” shows this: in Atzilus even the opposites Chesed (greatness) and Gevurah (might) belong to “Yours,” wholly united with G‑d and with each other, which is the essence of Tikkun.

Prayer works like Shabbos: everything a person did during the day, eating or even studying Torah, is lifted up in prayer through the boundless love “with all your might.”

This is the “lower Shabbos,” lifting the lower worlds into Atzilus. The future “day that is entirely Shabbos” will be greater: Atzilus itself will rise higher and higher.

¶14 This explains the two levels of Shabbos from paragraph 14.

Then the cycle of weekday and Shabbos will end. Today every Shabbos is followed by a weekday, because Atzilus must keep refining the lower worlds; in the future that refining will be complete and no longer needed.

For then G‑d will “remove the spirit of impurity,” and death will “be swallowed up” forever. Malchus (the “woman of valor”) will become “the crown of her husband,” rising above Z’eir Anpin, and “a female shall surround a male.” The Alter Rebbe leaves the details to another place.

The Alter Rebbe now reads a verse from the Song of Songs: “Many waters cannot extinguish the love, and rivers cannot drown it.” The “many waters” are the preoccupations of worldly life, rooted in Tohu, the same “waters of Noach” described above; the “rivers” are the stream of thoughts those worries set flowing, which keep running on without pause.

Tohu itself has these two levels, the waters and the rivers. Yet they cannot put out the love that the soul’s divine power brings with intensity, the love that says to G‑d “besides You I desire nothing” — nothing but G‑d Himself.

The next words of the Song say that if a man gave all the wealth of his house for love, “it would be utterly scorned”; in the plain sense love cannot be bought, but here, as paragraph 23 says, the wealth itself is what the lover scorns. The Alter Rebbe interprets each word: “his house” is Chochmah (wisdom), because Proverbs says a house is built with wisdom.

“The wealth of his house” is the inner treasure of wisdom: the reasons of the Torah, which the souls enjoy in the Garden of Eden, lower and higher, as reward. The Torah comes from Chochmah, so its reasons are the “wealth” of the “house” of wisdom.

The word “man” (ish) in the verse recalls “G‑d is a man of war.” Understanding G‑d through wisdom, the delight of the souls in Gan Eden who “enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah,” is only a ray of His light.

That ray comes to them through “a man of war,” that is, through many contractions (tzimtzumim) that reduce the light until created minds can grasp it as wisdom. The love described above is different: “besides You I desire nothing.”

This love seeks no reward, not even the spiritual reward of the World to Come or the higher Gan Eden, but G‑d’s essence alone. In the classic phrase: to Him, and not to His attributes.

How can a person reach G‑d’s essence, which is beyond all light? Through the mitzvos. The 613 commandments of the Torah plus the seven Rabbinic commandments total 620, the numerical value of Keser (כתר = 20+400+200), the “crown” above wisdom. So the mitzvos are called “620 pillars of light.”

¶9 This explains the mitzvos' role raised in paragraph 9.

A pillar reaches from top to bottom; so the mitzvos stretch from Keser (called Gulgalta, the “skull” of the highest configuration), which stands between G‑d and all that emanates from Him, down to our world. The mitzvos are called “the King’s limbs.”

The verse “His right hand embraces me” is explained by a parable: a person loves a great sage for his inner self, his wisdom, but he cannot hug the wisdom directly. He can only embrace the sage’s body.

By embracing the body he embraces the whole person. So too, the mitzvos are G‑d’s will, His “limbs”; by doing them we “embrace” G‑d’s very essence, which cannot be grasped in any other way.

The Zohar speaks of the soul being “absorbed in the body of the King”; this, says the Alter Rebbe, is the mitzvos. He contrasts them with the unions described in the Shema: “Havayah is our G‑d” is the union of Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah), “two companions” who never part; “Havayah is One” is the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the emotive attributes and Malchus.

“Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom” is the lower unity, G‑d’s oneness within the world. All these are unions of divine levels as they come down into the worlds. The mitzvos are something more: the next verse says “these words which I command you.”

The “I” (Anochi) in that verse refers to Keser, above all the levels that unite. The mitzvos reach there; and even speaking words of Torah (“you shall speak of them”) is itself a positive commandment, and so also connects to Keser.

Summing up the verse: “all the wealth of his house” is the higher and lower Gan Eden, the wisdom of the Torah’s reasons; and “it would be utterly scorned”: the love scorns that wealth.

It would be scorned because that wisdom is only a ray of G‑d’s light. True love says “besides You I desire nothing”: it is directed to G‑d Himself, not to His attributes, to His very essence.

The next verse, “We have a little sister,” refers to the Jewish soul and to Malchus, the Shechinah. Now she is called “this is my beloved,” a relationship between two. When she rises through the mitzvos into G‑d’s essence she is called “my sister” (achosi), which the Alter Rebbe connects to the Talmudic words for “joining” (me’achin, ichuy). In the laws of mourning (Moed Katan 26b) these words mean sewing together a mourner’s torn garment, including the especially fine “Alexandrian” mending, which makes the torn pieces one garment again. So “my sister” names a union in which Malchus is rejoined to the essence as one seamless whole, not two parties facing each other.

Then she is truly one with Him, as “a woman of valor is the crown of her husband”: Malchus rises to become a crown. There she is called “little,” a single point. When she receives from Chochmah, she is called “great.”

So the Zohar reads “great is G‑d… in the city of our G‑d”: G‑d is called “great” when Malchus (“the city”) is full of many flows of influence. But when Malchus rises to be the crown, she contracts into a single point.

The Zohar (Ra’aya Mehemna) describes Malchus as a crown on the head, from the side of the segolta. A higher point, though small, contains everything below it, as the Talmud says the feet of the Chayos (the angels of the Chariot) are equal to everything beneath them. So the “little” point includes all. The segolta is a cantillation mark of three dots placed above the word. The passage reads it as an image of Malchus, ordinarily the lowest point, rising to rest above as a crown, which is the ascent the maamar attributes to the mitzvos.

“She has no breasts”: breasts give milk, so they stand for bestowing influence. Now Malchus nourishes the worlds, sending life into the chambers of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. But when she rises above, she is wholly absorbed in receiving from G‑d’s essence and gives nothing out — as the Talmudic idiom says, “busy swallowing, it does not emit.”

The verse continues: “What shall we do for our sister on the day she is spoken for?” Below, G‑d’s speech rules and creates: “And G‑d spoke,” and “the word of a king is authority.” Malchus is associated with speech.

In this lower state, speech is a “configuration” (partzuf) of its own that guides the worlds and gives to others. Above, the verse says she is “spoken for” (yedubar bah, literally “it is spoken in her”), passive: speech does not stand on its own but is absorbed within her, and it is not drawn down. The maamar ends with this image of Malchus wholly united with G‑d.