ביאור על הנ״ל

The heading marks this maamar as a biur, an “explanation,” of the maamar just before it. Likkutei Torah, quoted in the notes on paragraph 3, refers to it as “the explanation on [the verse] ‘Those who came, Yaakov will take root.’”

The Alter Rebbe sets out to explain the root of the previous maamar’s ideas by raising a contradiction between sayings of the Sages. The Zohar’s teaching that three are bound together, Israel to the Torah and the Torah to the Holy One, blessed be He, puts the Torah above Israel, as the link between Israel and G‑d. The longer transcript of this maamar in Maamarei Admur HaZaken, Nevi’im (the Alter Rebbe’s discourses on the Prophets), opens by naming the problem outright: two sayings of the Sages that contradict each other.

Other sayings put Israel above the Torah. The Sages read the verse “The Torah that Moshe commanded us is an inheritance (morashah) of the congregation of Yaakov” as me’orasah, “betrothed,” making the Torah a bride and Israel the groom, the higher partner. A Torah scholar is called baal Torah, and baal means both “master” and “husband,” so the one who learns is the Torah’s master.

A third proof is the verse “Israel is holy to Havayah, the first of His produce,” for the Torah is called by the names of produce: bread (“Come, eat of my bread”), wine, “the produce of the vineyard,” and oil, since the Sages count the olive, too, as produce. If Israel are “the first” of this produce, its beginning and source, then Israel would seem to stand above the Torah, the opposite of the first saying.

The answer begins with a story in the Talmud: Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, in great poverty, prayed and was given the leg of a golden table from Heaven; when his wife saw in a dream that their table in the World to Come would lack a leg, he prayed again and it was taken back. The Sages remarked that the second miracle was greater than the first, for Heaven is known to give but not to take back.

Gold coming down from Heaven is not so remarkable, because flowing downward is the natural direction of the chain of descending worlds. As the Sages say, every blade of grass has a mazal, a spiritual force above it from which its life is drawn, “from nothing to something”: every physical thing receives its existence from a spiritual source above it.

The second miracle, the gold rising back up, runs against that whole order: it is a movement from something to nothing, and therefore far more wondrous. In Likkutei Torah, Pinchas, which refers back to this passage, the Alter Rebbe adds that creation from nothing to something is the ordinary order, while the something becoming nothing is a change of nature, and so it brings joy Above.

This power to raise the something into nothing belongs specifically to Israel, whom the prophet calls “a land of desire.” The “desire” is G‑d’s own will that created existence become nullified to Him, and Israel are to be that desire.

Knesses Yisrael, the Congregation of Israel, is the collective source of all Jewish souls. It is called “land” (eretz, which also means “earth”) because, like the earth, it has the power of growth, making each seed sprout into fruit of its own kind.

The analogy is examined closely. A seed has no taste or sweetness of its own; it is like a bit of wood.

Nor does the earth’s power of growth contain the form of any particular fruit. The proof: the same earth grows wheat, barley or grapes, depending on what is sown. If the earth already contained wheat, no one would need to sow wheat.

So fruit needs both partners. The seed holds the fruit’s form, but hidden, and the earth supplies the power of growth; when the seed unites with the earth, that power enters the seed and brings out fruit like it. The Alter Rebbe’s Siddur makes the same point from natural science: the whole form of the apple can be seen in its sown seed through a viewing instrument.

The mitzvos follow the same pattern. Coming down through all the worlds, they have reached this world in a form that seems tasteless, like a seed: tzitzis are plain wool and tefillin are parchment, and nothing about the physical object shows its divine meaning.

Yet hidden within them is the supernal delight, G‑d’s own pleasure in the mitzvah. When Jews perform the mitzvos, that delight “sprouts” and grows until it is revealed, as the earth draws fruit out of a seed.

Israel can do this because they are on the level of “earth,” which is Malchus, the last of the Sefiros, into which all ten flow. The nature of Malchus is bittul, and in a person’s service it appears as iskafya, subduing one’s inclinations, and is’hapcha, transforming them.

Iskafya here is not about outright evil: with real sin one may not count on repairing it afterward, for the Sages say that one who says “I will sin and repent” is not given the chance to repent. Iskafya means holding back in what is permitted, in the spirit of the Sages’ teaching “Sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you,” and that is the bittul of the something into nothing, higher than creation’s something from nothing.

Bittul, then, is the root of the souls of Israel. When the “seed” of Torah and mitzvos is absorbed in the souls, their power of growth, the Malchus of Ein Sof, makes the supernal delight hidden in the mitzvos sprout and show itself. This Malchus is described as “their end is wedged in their beginning”: the last level is rooted in the very first, which is why the lowest can bring out what the highest holds.

This is also why the Congregation of Israel is called “a woman who fears Havayah.” Bittul expresses itself as awe, living with “the dread of G‑d before one’s eyes,” and this awe is what the verse praises.

A second analogy, from the formation of a child. The Talmud teaches that the father “sows the white,” from which the bones and sinews form, so the essence of the child comes from the father.

In the father’s drop all of this is only potential and hidden. During its months in the mother’s womb, where, the Sages say, the child “eats from what its mother eats,” it develops limb by limb and comes out into revealed existence. In Torah Ohr, Bereishis, the Alter Rebbe uses the same image to explain “Havayah is Elokim” as the revelation of what was hidden.

The mitzvos are like the father’s drop: their root is G‑d’s supernal will, and they came down through the many stages of the worlds until they reached the form of a “seed.” They are the 620 “pillars of light” (the Torah’s 613 commandments and the seven of the Sages; 620 is also the numerical value of keser, “crown,” the level of the divine will), and like a pillar each mitzvah joins above and below.

When the mitzvos are absorbed in Israel, whose souls hold the power of growth, they grow until they are revealed as they truly are Above.

The verse “A woman who fears Havayah, she shall be praised” is read in a new way: tis’halal, “she shall be praised,” shares its root with behilo, “when His lamp shone,” so it also means “she will be made to shine.” The same root is in halelu Yah, “praise Yah,” read as “make Yah shine.”

This is why the Pesukei deZimrah, the psalms that recount G‑d’s praises, are said before the Shema: the love commanded in the Shema (“You shall love”) is born of contemplating His greatness in them; the words “Who forms ministering [angels]” come from the blessing before the Shema, which praises Him in the same way. Yet that contemplation, the level of Yud-Hei (the letters that stand for Chochmah and Binah, the mind), must itself be lit up from Above: “make Yah shine.”

The ten halleluyahs say the same: each of Psalms 146–150, said in the Pesukei deZimrah, opens and closes with “Halleluyah,” and together they “make shine” from ever higher, up to the loftiest heights. So too Israel, the “woman who fears Havayah,” must be made to shine from Above, and only then can the seed of Torah and mitzvos be absorbed in them and grow.

The same holds for the Torah, which also came down to the state of a seed. The Sages say, “Fortunate is he who comes here with his learning in his hand”: only learning that is truly absorbed and held “in hand” can take root and grow.

The maamar now turns to the future. “Light is sown for the righteous”: in the present, the light of Torah and mitzvos is like sown seed, and in the Time to Come it will appear as fruit, as the prophet says, “they will fill the face of the world with produce.”

The resurrection of the dead will come through the revelation of sovev kol almin, the light too great to enter the worlds. Before Him “darkness is like light,” so this light can reach even those lying in the darkness of death.

But sovev kol almin exists even now, so what will be new? The answer begins by distinguishing makifim, “encompassing” lights that stay beyond a thing, from pnimiyim, “inner” lights that enter it; sovev kol almin is an encompassing light and memalei kol almin an inner one.

There are two kinds of encompassing light. The first stays outside, yet it relates to the inner and shines into it, and its radiance gives the inner life. In Likkutei Torah, Behar, the Alter Rebbe sets out these same two makifim, citing this maamar, and uses the distant one to explain why G‑d’s foreknowledge does not compel a person’s free choice.

The second is the general makif, which surrounds everything equally and does not shine into the inner at all. The Sages’ teaching that the Shechinah rests upon every group of ten is an example of a makif; in Iggeres HaKodesh (the Holy Epistle, the fourth part of the Tanya), epistle 23, the Alter Rebbe explains that this indwelling is a light without limit that cannot enter a finite soul, and so it encompasses it from above, from head to foot.

An example of the first kind: someone praying in a minyan, or watching another pray with devotion, is moved to pray with more feeling than usual. The other person’s devotion does not become his own inner experience, yet it stirs him; it is a makif that shines into the inner.

Another person in the same minyan is not moved at all. For him the presence remains a general makif, surrounding him without shining within.

Sovev kol almin as it is now is the first kind, a makif that relates to the inner: its very name, “encompassing all worlds,” defines it in relation to the worlds. In Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah, the Alter Rebbe explains that because sovev encompasses the worlds it is still within their category, as the heavens that surround the earth are themselves finite. Of the Time to Come, though, Isaiah foretells that “the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll,” and the next paragraph explains what this means.

Isaiah also speaks of “the new heavens and the new earth.” The maamar reads the present heavens as today’s makifim: they will be “rolled up,” drawn inward to become inner light, and new makifim, new heavens, will be revealed.

Through that great light the dead will live, for before Him darkness is like light. The analogy is a flame: the larger it is, the farther its light reaches, and so the greatest light reaches even those who lie in the dust.

That future revelation will come from the mitzvos, which will bear their fruit Above: the seed sown now is what grows into the great light of the Time to Come.

The analogy of a child shows how what grows through something can surpass it: though the unborn child grows from its mother, “eating from what its mother eats,” a male child may be greater than she. In the Kabbalistic terms the maamar uses, male and female stand for the functions of giving (mashpia) and receiving (mekabel), the receiver being called Nukva; the point of the analogy is that what grows by means of the receiver can be greater than the receiver, as the Additional Explanation that follows spells out.

This explains why the mitzvos are called both “garments” and “fruits.” Now they are seeds and garments that hide what is in them, so that tzitzis of wool, for example, seem to have no taste at all.

In the Time to Come they will be fruit, their taste and delight revealed. Rashi, on the verse “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” writes that G‑d has promised to appear again to explain to Israel the secret of the Torah’s reasons; the Hebrew ta’am means both “reason” and “taste,” so the revealed reasons are the fruit’s revealed taste.

The verse “To every perfection I have seen an end; Your commandment is exceedingly broad” contrasts two things. “Every perfection” (tichlah) is the comprehension of souls and angels in the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah: as created, finite beings, their understanding has a limit. At the end of Iggeres HaKodesh 17 the Alter Rebbe reads tichlah as kelos hanefesh, the soul’s yearning in Gan Eden, the world of souls, which has a limit, and “Your commandment” as tzedakah, a broad vessel for the Infinite Light.

“Your commandment,” the mitzvos as they are Above, is “exceedingly broad.” “Broad” describes a wide vessel, able to receive the Infinite Light without limit.

The verse says “broad” and not “long,” though the Torah is called “longer than the earth.” “Long” describes the Torah’s descent, drawn down step by step through the chain of worlds, ever lower.

Length is extension downward. This verse speaks of the mitzvos as they are Above, and so it calls “Your commandment” specifically “broad”: a capacity to contain the Infinite, not a line of descent.

Now the opening question is resolved. “Israel is holy to Havayah, the first of His produce” speaks of the Torah as it is enclothed below, in the state of a seed, and from that point of view Israel stand higher than the Torah.

Israel hold the power of growth, and so they are called reishis, “the first of His produce”: reishis also means “beginning,” and Israel are the beginning from which the produce sprouts and grows, its taste revealed and multiplied.

But from the point of view of the Torah and mitzvos as they are Above, the Torah is far higher than Israel, and so the saying is true that Israel are bound to the Torah. Each set of sayings is right, each from its own point of view.

Now the verse on which this explanation is built, “Those who came, Yaakov will take root; Yisrael will bud and blossom,” is explained. Taking root and growing belong to Yaakov, a name read as yud and akev, “heel,” the lowest part of the body; Yaakov is also called “the middle bar,” the bar that ran through all the boards of the Tabernacle from end to end, a connecting level that reaches all the way down.

Through Yaakov’s rooting, “Yisrael will bud and blossom”: the letters of Yisrael spell li rosh, “a head for Me,” the level of the head and of revealed light; earlier in Torah Ohr, Shemos, the Alter Rebbe explains li rosh as the level of Chochmah. Yaakov’s role as connector is seen in “The voice is the voice of Yaakov,” for the voice is what brings the spiritual into physical form.

To show how the voice connects, the maamar traces a desire from its start. The Sages call the eye and the heart “the two agents of sin,” for the eye sees and the heart desires: through the eye’s channels the brain is affected, and from there the impression passes to the heart, where the desire is still spiritual.

Then the heart’s breath passes through the windpipe and the lungs and divides among the five places of articulation in the mouth, becoming physical speech. The inner, spiritual desire has become an audible, physical thing.

So the voice is the bridge between physical and spiritual. Even within the voice there are three elements: fire and water, which are opposites, and air (ruach), which joins them; this middle, joining element is Yaakov’s quality, as the next paragraph shows.

The Talmud says the Patriarchs instituted the prayers, and Yaakov, the third, combines the qualities of Avraham and Yitzchak: Avraham’s drawing down from Above and Yitzchak’s rising up from below.

An analogy shows why a combining, middle level is needed. If a teacher conveys an idea as it is in his own mind, the student will understand nothing; if he withholds it, the student also receives nothing, so there must be a middle level that combines giving with holding back.

This is “You will give truth to Yaakov”: truth is Torah, and the Torah has Yaakov’s quality. It too combines both directions: it holds mitzvos in the mode of “ascents,” raising from below, and in the mode of “drawings-down,” bringing light from Above.

Isaiah’s “So says Havayah, your Creator, Yaakov, and He who formed you, Yisrael” is read by the Midrash, quoted at the start of the previous maamar, as G‑d telling His world, “Yaakov created you; Yisrael formed you”: Yaakov is linked with creation and Yisrael with formation. Another verse, “Who forms light and creates darkness,” links formation with light and creation with darkness, as the next paragraph explains.

Every created thing has matter and form. Matter, the bare existence of the thing, corresponds to Yaakov, yud-akev, reaching down to the heel: it is the work of creation, something from nothing. In Torah Ohr, Mikeitz, the Alter Rebbe explains that the matter of each thing was created by G‑d’s word, from nothing to something, while its form, its shape and appearance, was made by His “desire” (chefetz).

Form, the revelation of light in the thing, corresponds to Yisrael, li rosh, the head. It is like a great torch whose light reaches far.

This explains the Mishnah, “Anyone whose fear of sin comes before his wisdom, his wisdom endures.” Fear of sin is iskafya, the bittul of “a land of desire,” the earth in which seeds grow; when it comes first, wisdom, the revealed light, can endure.