זה שמי לעולם וזה זכרי לדר דר

The maamar opens with G‑d’s words to Moshe at the burning bush: “This is My Name forever, and this is My remembrance from generation to generation.” The Tikkunei Zohar reads it by numerical value: shemi (“My Name,” 350) plus yud-hei (15) makes 365, the number of prohibitive commandments, and zichri (“My remembrance,” 237) plus vav-hei (11) makes 248, the number of positive commandments.

So the 365 prohibitive commandments are tied to yud-hei, the first half of the Name Havayah, and the 248 positive commandments to vav-hei, its second half. Since yud-hei stands higher in the Name, the first question is why the prohibitions should have the higher root; Likkutei Torah, Pekudei (3b), raises the same question from the same teaching.

A second question: why was the Oral Torah not also given in writing, like the Written Torah? The answer starts from Yeshayahu’s words “Where (ayeh) is the scribe (sofer)?”, which the maamar reads not as a question but as the name of a level.

Ayeh, “where,” names a level so hidden that one can only ask where it is, as the angels ask in the Kedushah, “Where is the place of His glory?”; that hidden level is itself “the scribe.” The place where this “has been explained” is the maamar on “Your heart will meditate on terror” later in Torah Ohr (53b): there ayeh is the great circle, the light that encompasses all, and it is itself the scribe and the weigher that measures out the Sefiros. Sefer Yetzirah says the world was created with three things, sofer, sefer and sippur: the scribe, the book and the telling.

The Written Torah is the sefer, the book, and above the book stands the scribe who writes it. That scribe is ayeh, whose letters are aleph followed by yud-hei: the aleph stands for Chochmah of Atzilus, the source from which the yud-hei of the Name Havayah is drawn. In Likkutei Torah, Sukkos (80b), the Alter Rebbe explains the three in order: sofer is Chochmah, which flows into sefer, Binah or thought, which flows into sippur, speech.

The parenthesis refines this: the aleph is really the source and root of Chochmah, identified elsewhere with mazal notzer, one of the thirteen “adornments of the beard” (tikkunei dikna) of Kabbalah, from which Abba (Chochmah) draws its flow, or else with the hidden Chochmah. Likkutei Torah, Pekudei (5a), referring to this maamar, likewise reads the aleph, pele (“wonder”), as Keser, above the yud-hei, which are Chochmah and Binah. The proof is Iyov’s “a’alefcha chochmah,” where the verb for teaching shares the letters of aleph; according to Sefer HaArachim, cited in the Kehot note, it proves the statement before the parenthesis, that the aleph is Chochmah.

Another reason the aleph stands for the source of the Name: its shape is built from letters of the Name Havayah. As known from the Arizal, in a Torah scroll the aleph is drawn as a yud above, a slanted vav, and a yud below (10 + 6 + 10 = 26, the numerical value of Havayah); in tefillin its lower part is drawn as a dalet. Torah Ohr, Va’eira (59a), describes the same shape, reading the upper yud as supernal Chochmah, the lower yud as lower Chochmah, and the slanted vav as Tiferes, which joins them.

The aleph of the Torah scroll ends below in a yud because the Written Torah carries the light of Abba, Chochmah of Atzilus: “the Torah comes forth from supernal Chochmah,” through the Yesod of Abba, the channel by which Chochmah gives forth. The yud is the letter of the Name that stands for Chochmah.

In tefillin the lower part of the aleph is a dalet, which stands for supernal thought (machshavah ila’ah), called Leah; in Torah Ohr, Vayeitzei, the Alter Rebbe calls Leah and Rachel the letters of thought and the letters of speech. The dalet, with a stroke across and a stroke down, extends in length and in breadth, and so pictures that level.

Now the verse “Where is the scribe?” is applied. The Written Torah is called the supernal book (the Zohar speaks of two books, “There is a book and there is a book,” a book above and a book below), and its source is ayeh, aleph joined to yud-hei.

The aleph is the source of the yud-hei, so ayeh is “the scribe” who writes the book, the source from which the Written Torah is drawn.

As a whole, the Written Torah speaks of fulfilling positive commandments, and these come from vav-hei, the level of Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus. There the lights are divided among vessels, as a body’s life is divided among its limbs, and the 248 “limbs” of Z’eir Anpin are the source of the 248 positive commandments.

Doing a positive commandment therefore draws the light of Z’eir Anpin onto the person; Iggeres HaTeshuvah (Tanya, Part III), chapter 1, likewise says that through a positive commandment one draws light from the Infinite into the upper worlds and onto one’s G‑dly soul. And because in Z’eir Anpin the lights are enclothed in real vessels, the Torah’s wisdom could also be enclothed in writing, in letters and their crowns (tagin).

The prohibitive commandments are also written in the Written Torah, yet their root is higher: they come from yud-hei.

Their root is too high to be enclothed in vessels. A positive commandment does have a vessel for its light: the tefillin or the esrog is a physical object through which the light comes.

The light of the prohibitive commandments has no such vessel; it cannot come through a “yes,” an action. It is grasped only through a “no,” the way something whose essence cannot be known is grasped only by negating its opposite, saying what it is not.

So the prohibition of eating forbidden fat and blood asks not for an act but for refraining. These things oppose the holiness of that light because they come from the sitra achra, and setting them aside is how the light is reached.

Negating the opposite does draw down a revelation of that light, but it cannot be drawn through an act such as putting on tefillin or wearing tzitzis, the way the lights of the positive commandments are drawn.

The lights drawn through prohibitive commandments are greater and higher, so no vessel of “yes” can be made for them; they come only through a “no” that comes before the “yes.”

That “no” is the negation of the opposite. This, the Alter Rebbe says, is Yirmeyahu’s “in a land not (lo) sown,” a level known only through a “not,” and it is why the prohibitive commandments are drawn from yud-hei, above vav-hei. In Likkutei Torah, Pekudei (3b), he reads the verse the same way: the “sowing” is the lo, the keeping of the prohibitions, which draws from a level higher than the positive commandments.

All the rabbinic enactments, “the words of the Scribes,” work like the prohibitive commandments, because their purpose is to make a fence around the Torah, as the Talmud reads “Keep My safeguard” to mean “make a safeguard for My safeguard.” A fence is a “no”: it keeps a person away from what is forbidden.

That is why they are called the words of the soferim: their root is sofer, “Where is the scribe?”, aleph yud-hei, the same root from which the prohibitive commandments come. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (7a), the Alter Rebbe explains likewise that the sofer, above the sefer (the Written Torah), is the Oral Torah, which is why the words of the Sages are called the words of the Scribes, and that most of their fences are in the prohibitions.

Coming from there, the words of the Scribes stand above the Written Torah, the “book,” whose 248 positive commandments come from vav-hei and are enclothed in vessels.

Because the words of the Scribes come from a level above vessels, they could not be enclothed in writing and had to remain oral. This answers the maamar’s second question, why the Oral Torah was not written down.

Speech itself comes from supernal Chochmah, as in the saying “Abba founded the daughter”: Chochmah (Abba) is the foundation of Malchus, the level of speech (the daughter); Torah Ohr, Bereishis (4c), explains that Malchus, like Chochmah, comes directly from “nothing,” not by gradual descent. So the spoken word is drawn straight from “Where is the scribe?”; the parenthesis refers to a fuller discussion on the verse “I am black, yet comely.”

Even within the Written Torah some things were left unwritten because they are so lofty. Often the Torah does record G‑d’s own command to Moshe about a mitzvah, in the familiar words “And Havayah spoke to Moshe, saying.”

Sometimes the Torah records only Moshe’s command to Israel about a mitzvah, and not G‑d’s command to Moshe.

Much of Deuteronomy (Mishneh Torah) is like this: Moshe teaches Israel mitzvos, and the Torah never says where G‑d commanded him about them.

Such cases are common, and the question is why G‑d’s command was left unwritten. The answer begins with Moshe’s level: he is the Yesod of Abba, the channel through which Chochmah gives forth. A maamar among the supplements to Torah Ohr (112b) explains that as the Yesod of Abba, Moshe is the “faithful shepherd” who draws kindness down to Malchus, as “Abba founded the daughter.”

This is why the Torah was given through Moshe, since “the Torah comes forth from supernal Chochmah.”

The words “And Havayah said” or “And Havayah spoke to Moshe” describe the speech and flow from the Emanator, the Infinite Light, into the Yesod of Abba, supernal Chochmah, about a particular mitzvah or teaching. G‑d speaking to Moshe is the flow from the Infinite into Chochmah.

“And Moshe spoke to the children of Israel” is the second stage: the flow from the Yesod of Abba, Moshe, by which the matter is revealed to Israel.

Because the flow has two stages, some matters are too lofty for the first stage, the flow from the Infinite Light into supernal Chochmah, to be enclothed in writing. For them only the second stage was written, the flow from the Yesod of Abba downward: “And Moshe spoke.”

An example is the plague of locusts. Moshe warns Pharaoh, “For if you refuse to let My people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your border,” yet the Torah never records G‑d commanding him to give that warning.

The reason is that the root of the locust is very high. The word arbeh, “locust,” is spelled like va’arbeh, “and I multiplied,” in the verse about G‑d multiplying Avraham’s seed and giving him Yitzchak.

A parenthesis notes a difficulty: a little later the Torah does record G‑d’s command about the locusts, “Stretch out your hand.” It answers that it was only the warning to Pharaoh that could not be written.

The reverse also happens: G‑d’s command to Moshe is written, but Moshe’s passing it on to Israel is not. It is simply understood that Moshe told them, since the Torah says G‑d told him.