בחדש השלישי לצאת בני ישראל מארץ מצרים ביום…

The maamar opens with the verse that tells when Israel reached the wilderness of Sinai: in the third month after the Exodus, “on this day.” It is the verse the whole maamar sets out to explain.

The verse says only “this day” and does not name the day of the month. The Sages (Shabbos 86b) identified it by a verbal analogy (gezeirah shavah): the word “this” links it to “This month (hachodesh) shall be for you,” the verse about the new moon, so the day was Rosh Chodesh, the first of the month. The maamar will ask why Scripture calls Rosh Chodesh simply “this day.”

To explain why Rosh Chodesh is called “this day,” the Alter Rebbe first asks what the giving of the Torah added: there were tzaddikim before Sinai, and the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 47:6) says that “the Patriarchs are themselves the chariot,” wholly given over to G‑d’s will, as a chariot has no will of its own apart from its rider. A later maamar in Torah Ohr (Yisro, 73c) asks the same question, naming Adam, Chanoch and Mesushelach, and adds that Avraham kept the whole Torah before it was given.

The answer begins with Avraham. In its plain sense the verse tells that Avram moved on by stages toward the Negev, the south of the land; the Alter Rebbe reads it as an inner ascent from level to level until he reached “the south,” the attribute of the higher love, which the maamar will show comes from contemplating the Infinite Light itself. The Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript of this maamar gives this reading in the name of the Zohar, and Likkutei Torah (Beha’alosecha) reads the verse the same way.

Avraham’s climb made him a “chariot” for this love, wholly its vehicle, so that the love was openly revealed in his soul.

The climb was from below upward, out of “Egypt,” as in the verse “And Avram went up out of Egypt.” The Alter Rebbe reads the name Mitzrayim as meitzar, “constraint”: inwardly, “Egypt” is the narrowness and limitation that the body and the animal soul impose on the G‑dly soul, which they hem in and clothe.

As a result, even when the G‑dly soul grasps G‑d’s greatness, that He is the Life of all life and fills heaven and earth, as the verses say, that understanding alone does not set it free. The abbreviation at the end stands for “the whole earth is full of His glory,” the seraphim’s call in Isaiah’s vision.

The soul still lacks the strength to leave its “sheath,” the prison of the body, and to bring the body’s drives to be subdued (iskafya) or transformed (ishapcha). The body remains as strong as it was at birth, untouched by what the soul understands.

The Sages’ saying about the thief who, at the mouth of the tunnel he is digging, calls on G‑d (found at the end of Tractate Berachos in the Ein Yaakov’s version) shows the point: a person can believe in G‑d and still do what the body wants. Avraham rose out of these constraints until his soul longed to shed its “garments of nogah,” the layer bound to the body that is neither holy nor wholly evil, and to be nullified to G‑d alone in kelos hanefesh, “the soul’s expiry,” a longing so strong that the soul would leave the body.

Avraham’s love came from contemplating the Infinite Light that “encompasses” all worlds (sovev kol almin), beyond any grasp. By contrast, G‑d’s “kingship” over the worlds is only the level of “King,” whose instrument is speech, as a king rules by his word.

The prayer “Blessed is He who spoke, and the world came to be” shows that all creation comes from mere speech. So all the life, existence and creation of the worlds from nothing is only a faint glimmer of G‑d’s light.

A second proof comes from the blessings of the Shema, which praise G‑d “for all the praise of the work of Your hands.” All the worlds, even so vast that, according to the Talmud (Chagigah 13a), the distance from the earth to the firmament is a five-hundred-year journey, are only His handiwork.

The analogy: what a person makes with his hands holds only his power of action, the outermost of the soul’s garments of thought, speech and action, and nothing of his inner self. The Kehot note identifies this power of action with the world of Asiyah (Action), and says the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript shows at length that the same holds in Yetzirah and Beriah.

So too the divine life-force in all the worlds is like that outer power of action, a mere glimmer that does not touch G‑d’s essence. Contemplating this shows how far G‑d Himself is beyond all the worlds.

Another phrase of the same blessing, “Creator of holy beings, may Your Name be praised,” points to a higher level. The angels and souls, the “holy beings,” relate to G‑d’s “Name,” which is also only a radiance.

Yet the angels and souls stand above the outer dimension of the worlds, which is only “the work of Your hands.”

To explain the difference, the Alter Rebbe returns to the craftsman: the power of action he puts into a vessel becomes separate from him, so that taking hold of the vessel does not draw the person himself along with it. Tanya (Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, ch. 2) uses the same image of the craftsman’s vessel, which keeps its form after his hands have left it.

A name is different. When a person is called by his name, he himself responds, because a name, though only a radiance, is still bound up with the essence of the soul.

Still, a name is only a radiance. G‑d Himself, “in His glory and essence,” is exalted far above both the worlds and the holy beings.

G‑d Himself is the level that “encompasses all worlds,” before whom above and below are the same. “I, Havayah, have not changed” teaches, as the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript explains, that there is no change at all in Him between before creation and after it. Grasping this, the soul pours itself out toward G‑d like a child into its father’s embrace.

Its longing becomes kelos hanefesh, as in “My soul longs, indeed it expires”: complete self-nullification to G‑d alone, as in “Whom do I have in heaven?” Tanya (ch. 50) traces the same steps, from thirst to love-sickness to the soul’s expiry, citing this verse. This is why the prophet joins “I have not changed” to “you have not expired.”

Read this way, Malachi’s verse is a prophet’s astonished question: since G‑d is unchanged by creation, why do Israel not reach kelos hanefesh? In its plain sense lo chelisem means “you have not been consumed”; the Alter Rebbe hears in it the soul’s expiry (kelos), and Likkutei Torah (Rosh Hashanah) reads the verse the same way.

The Alter Rebbe now asks what holds the soul back from this self-nullification, as the verse testifies that Israel “have not expired.”

Even when a person contemplates G‑d’s greatness, that He is unchanged, not everyone becomes, like Avraham, a “chariot” of the higher love through that contemplation. The cause is the soul’s weakness: it lacks the strength to break out of its sheath, the prison of the body.

The soul’s weakness is tied to the verse “My strength stumbles through my iniquity” and to Isaiah’s “your iniquities have separated between you and your G‑d.” The Alter Rebbe adds that the separating “screen” here is not actual sin but the body’s physicality and coarseness. A maamar of 5662 (“Pesal Lecha”), cited in the Kehot note, explains that avon here means crookedness: bending one’s way after the body’s materiality and desires until the G‑dly soul too is caught and cannot get out.

This physicality is the “constraint” of Egypt that hems in the soul and drags it after the body, so that it cannot rise. “And You saw the affliction (oni) of our fathers” in Egypt refers to the confinement of the attributes of love and awe, the attributes of the Patriarchs, with Avraham as the attribute of love. In Sefer HaMaamarim 5634 the passage ends by reading oni as poverty: “there is no poverty except in Daas,” the source of love and awe, which is poor because it is in Egypt, the body’s constraint.

This is why the Torah was given. The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 31:5) calls the Torah oz, “strength,” and the Alter Rebbe explains why: it gives the G‑dly soul the power to overcome the coarseness of the body and the animal soul and to go free, like a prisoner leaving his confinement.

The verse “Havayah will give strength (oz) to His people; Havayah will bless His people with peace” is read accordingly: through the Torah, “strength,” comes “peace.” The word beshalom is read as beis shalom, “two peaces,” since the letter beis stands for two.

The two are the Sages’ “peace in the household above and in the household below.” Peace means connection; Likkutei Torah (Shir HaShirim) defines it as the joining of two opposites. In the “household above,” the G‑dly soul, the Infinite Light is revealed, so that the soul is bound to G‑d in self-nullification.

Peace in the “household below” is within the person himself: the powers of the G‑dly soul shine through the body and the animal soul, so that they do not resist but consent to this union with G‑d. This is the state of iskafya and ishapcha, when the other side is subdued and its darkness becomes light.

The Torah is also called tushiyah, a word that usually means “sound wisdom”; the Talmud (Sanhedrin 26b) connects it with mateshes, “weakens,” and the Alter Rebbe applies this to the Torah’s power to sap the sitra achra that comes from the body. As G‑d told Rivkah of Yaakov and Eisav, “one nation shall prevail over the other”: when one rises, the other falls.

A question follows: how can the Torah strengthen the soul against physicality, when the Torah itself is clothed in physical matters, such as the laws of terumos (the portion of the harvest given to the kohanim) and tithes? The Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript spells it out: terumos and tithes are taken from grain and tzitzis are made of wool, and it asks how such laws can give the G‑dly soul strength in its grasp of G‑dliness, even for self-sacrifice.

The answer: the Torah’s source is in the “holy mountains” above, in G‑d’s own essence, the level that encompasses all worlds and does not change. “The Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one,” so the Torah’s strength is G‑d’s own. Earlier in Torah Ohr (Va’eira, 57c) the Alter Rebbe brings this saying of the Zohar and stresses that it means the Holy One Himself, so far beyond the worlds that they could not receive life even from His radiance.

The heart of receiving the Torah is in the opening of the Ten Commandments: “And G‑d spoke all these words, saying: I (Anochi)….” The Alter Rebbe focuses on the word “saying” (leimor).

Elsewhere in Scripture, “saying” means “to say it to others,” as when G‑d speaks to Moshe for him to pass the words on to Israel. Likkutei Torah (Shir HaShirim, 40b) asks the same question and notes that in the Torah’s other mitzvos, which Israel heard from Moshe, “saying” fits.

That cannot be its meaning in the Ten Commandments: all Israel heard G‑d directly, “face to face,” and the covenant included even those “not here,” the generations to come, so no one was left to whom the words still had to be told. A maamar of 5730 sharpens this from Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer: the souls of every generation stood at Mount Sinai.

The new meaning: “saying” refers to Israel themselves saying and speaking all the words of Torah already given to Moshe at Sinai. All of Scripture and Mishnah, the halachos (laws) and the aggados (the non-legal teachings), were given at Sinai.

The Talmud gives teachings in the names of the Tannaim (the sages of the Mishnah) and the Amoraim (the sages of the Gemara), as in “Beis Shammai (the school of Shammai) say thus.” Yet each ruling is still “the word of Havayah,” which the Talmud (Shabbos 138b) defines as halachah, given at Sinai and now spoken through the mouth of that sage. Or HaTorah notes that the Midrash Rabbah on Yisro (end of ch. 28) clearly implies this.

This is like Isaiah’s promise, “My words which I have placed in your mouth.” The power for halachah spoken by Jews to be G‑d’s own word from Sinai was given at Sinai, in that one word “saying”: to say again what had already been said.

That power is self-nullification: the words of Torah do not become the speaker’s own, as though he were their author, but are as the verse says, “My tongue shall answer Your word.” Or HaTorah calls this “a wondrous matter” and links it to the level of Moshe.

The verse is read this way: the Torah is G‑d’s word, and the person’s tongue only “answers,” repeating it after the One who speaks. In its plain sense ta’an means to declare or sing aloud; the Alter Rebbe takes it as answering, as one repeats after a reader, and Likkutei Torah (Shemini Atzeres) reads the verse the same way, as David’s prayer for all Israel.

The Ten Commandments contain the whole Torah in general form, so receiving them from G‑d’s mouth meant receiving the whole Torah. What Israel received was the self-nullification through which G‑d’s word speaks in their mouths.

They were to be only like one who repeats after the speaker. This is the revelation of the Infinite Light below just as above, in complete self-nullification.

A practical consequence: a thoughtful person who takes to heart that the Torah he studies is truly G‑d’s word from Sinai will be filled with dread and fear as he learns.

The Sages (Berachos 22a) learned this from two adjacent verses: “make them known to your children,” followed by “the day that you stood” at Sinai. As Sinai was in dread and awe, so must Torah study be.

The Alter Rebbe asks how the comparison holds: at Sinai the people saw the voices and heard G‑d face to face, while a person studying alone has no such experience.

The answer is the point just made: every person’s Torah study, at any time, is the very word of G‑d given at Sinai, and knowing this brings awe, as if he were receiving the Torah from Mount Sinai today. Torah Ohr (Vayeitzei, 22b) answers the same question: the Torah one learns draws down supernal Chochmah, where the Infinite Light shines beyond the chain of worlds and nothing is hidden, so “just as there, so here.”

Torah study in this self-nullification is what gives the G‑dly soul “strength and might” and acts as tushiyah, weakening the sitra achra. Or HaTorah (on the Prophets and Writings) quotes this line: the Torah gives the G‑dly soul the power to overcome the animal soul until it longs to leave its sheath, the body’s prison.

This is hinted in the first commandment, “I (Anochi) am Havayah your G‑d, who brought you out of Egypt.” Receiving the Torah drew down Anochi, “I” in the fullest sense: G‑d’s own essence, which encompasses all worlds.

The same Anochi appears in “these words which I (Anochi) command you today.” This essence reaches Israel through the Name Havayah, by contraction and expansion, until it becomes Elokecha, “your G‑d,” in actuality.

Then comes “who brought you out of the land of Egypt”: out of the meitzarim, the constraints of the body and the animal soul that limit the G‑dly soul and keep it from leaving its sheath.

The verse “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to a good and spacious land” describes the result: out of narrowness into a “spacious” land. Receiving Anochi, the transcendent level of “I have not changed,” through self-nullifying Torah study is what gives the G‑dly soul its power.

The Torah also weakens the body’s desires. This explains the custom of the people of Jericho, who recited the Shema without a pause between “One” and “And you shall love,” that is, without saying “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom” in between.

The reason: receiving “One” means receiving the higher unity (yichuda ila’ah), in which everything is nullified before the Infinite Light that encompasses all worlds.

From that self-nullification love grows until it is “with all your heart,” which the Mishnah explains as with both inclinations, the good and the evil, since the animal side is subdued and even transformed. So “One” leads straight into “And you shall love.”

“Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom” is different. It refers to Elokim, G‑d as the life-force of the worlds, which, as the verse “Elokim reigns over the nations” shows, gives life even to idolaters; the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript explains that the nations receive from combinations (tzirufim) of the Name Elokim.

This connects to the Sages’ teaching (Sifrei) that Yaakov’s sons were “not like Avraham, from whom Yishmael came forth”; in the Talmud’s telling (Pesachim 56a), when they declared the Shema, Yaakov answered “Blessed be the Name….” We say it only in a whisper because, as the Zohar explains, its va’ed (“forever”) is echad (“One”) with its letters exchanged, so that “One” is not said openly.

The maamar now turns to the moon, by which, the Talmud says (Sukkah 29a), Israel reckon their calendar. The moon has no light of its own; all its light is received from the sun.

Each month, before its renewal, the moon shrinks to a mere point, because it stands directly beneath the sun to receive from it; in that position it gives no light to the earth.

Afterward it grows brighter until it is full, and all of that light is the sun’s. Its waning and waxing show that it has nothing of its own.

After it is full, the moon wanes again to a point at the end of the month and is then renewed. Israel are like the moon in all of this; the Mitteler Rebbe’s transcript says it plainly: the souls of Israel have nothing of their own except what they receive from G‑d’s light shining on them, the Infinite Light.

Israel are nullified to the Infinite Light, and their Torah study and service “have nothing of their own,” like the moon. There is no independent self (yesh, “something”), no “one who learns” or “one who loves”; everything is nullified to the Infinite Light.

It is the Infinite Light itself that dwells within their Torah and their service, so the halachah they speak is “the word of Havayah,” speaking through them.

This is the “sun” of the verse “For Havayah Elokim is a sun and a shield”: the Name Havayah is the sun, the source of the light that Israel, like the moon, receive.

The Name Elokim, which conceals and limits, is called the “shield”; the maamar only notes that this is explained elsewhere. The Torah comes from the Name Havayah, the “sun.” The maamar then turns to the three things on which, the Mishnah says (Avos 1:2), the world stands, Torah, divine service and acts of kindness, all three of which are needed; acts of kindness here means tzedakah, charity.

Tzedakah has a broad sense, the whole Torah, which is called “tzedakah,” and a specific one, actual charity. Charity “revives the spirit of the lowly,” and so it is like the sun, as in the verse “a sun of tzedakah”: in Malachi the word means righteousness, and the Alter Rebbe reads it as charity.

Just as charity revives the lowly, sunlight shines into darkness where there is no light. Both are an influence from above to below.

This influence comes through divine service, which is self-nullification from below upward toward the Infinite Light. Through it the Infinite Light rests and is revealed below as it is above, just as the moon, nullified before the sun, receives its light.

The maamar returns to its opening verse. When Israel left Egypt they began counting the Omer, the seven weeks from Pesach to Shavuos (“seven weeks shall you count”), as a preparation for receiving the Torah on Shavuos.

The goal of that preparation was the revelation of the Infinite Light below as above through self-nullification: that Israel “say” after G‑d what He says, so that His very word is present in their Torah study.

Rosh Chodesh Sivan, the day Israel reached Sinai, is the third day of the seventh week of the Omer. By then it is as if the whole week had come, so Israel were already prepared to receive this self-nullification; a maamar of 5729 explains that they were ready not only through the light drawn from above but also through their own service below.

That day was also the birth of the new moon (molad): after the moon’s nullification to the sun, when it shrinks to a point, comes a new revelation of light. This is why the verse calls it simply “this day,” since “day” means light and revelation, as in “G‑d called the light ‘day.’”

Here the revelation is of a love that comes from self-nullification. In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe adds that this love is called “this day” because zeh, “this,” signifies the higher unity; the Sages teach that Moshe alone prophesied with the words “This is the thing.”

On Rosh Chodesh the Community of Israel (Knesses Yisrael, the source of Israel’s souls, in Kabbalah the sefirah of Malchus) receives mochin, intellect, from Chochmah. In Likkutei Torah (V’Zos HaBerachah), in the discourse beginning “And it shall be, from one new moon to the next,” the Alter Rebbe explains that on weekdays it receives G‑d’s speech by way of the emotions, but on Rosh Chodesh from Chochmah itself; therefore the love of that day is a love of self-nullification.

The numerical value of ve’ahavta, “And you shall love” (414), is twice that of or, “light” (207), which is why this love is called “day.” Then Israel came to Sinai, whose name the Talmud (Shabbos 89a) links to sin’ah, “hatred”; here it means tushiyah, the weakening of the sitra achra.

Midbar, “wilderness,” is related to dibbur, “speech,” as in “your speech (midbarech) is lovely.” But it has an added mem, one of the letters (remembered as he’emantiv) that are added to a root, which the Alter Rebbe says diminish its sense: midbar is speech that is not independent, only a repetition of what has already been spoken.

Such speech is nullified within the word of G‑d that speaks through the person, and the text again refers to the discourse on Rosh Chodesh for more. Likkutei Torah (Pekudei), to which Or HaTorah points here, calls this speech that is “spoken” of itself: the word of G‑d is spoken in the person, not by him.

Then the verse says, “they journeyed from Refidim,” and the Talmud (Sanhedrin 106a) reads Refidim as rifyon yadayim, “slackness of hands,” here the weakness of the soul. Israel left that weakness behind because they were given strength and might for the soul and tushiyah against the sitra achra, the gift of the Torah described throughout the maamar.