ביאור הדברים הנה אית רצון ואית רצון כו׳

The heading, “Explanation of the matters,” marks this as a short explanation of the preceding maamar on “Lift up the head,” which turned on the saying “there is will and there is will.” The first kind of will is born of the intellect: the more deeply a person grasps how much good a thing holds for him, the stronger his longing for it grows.

Applied to G‑d: His essence is beyond all thought, but the mind can grasp the “spreading forth of His greatness,” His bringing the worlds into being from nothing and giving them life. When a person contemplates this deeply, a longing for G‑d is born in the outer dimension of his heart, the level of feeling a person can sense.

This is possible because the heart can receive what the mind understands: the mind rules over the heart, so a felt love can grow out of contemplation.

The parenthesis ties this to the verse “Her husband is known in the gates” (Proverbs 31:23), read as G‑d, the “Husband” of the Matronita (the Queen, a Zohar name for the Shechinah), becoming known. Such love comes from above through many stages of descent, in which G‑d’s greatness spreads down to where a person can grasp it; and as the Sages say, wherever you find His might, there you find His humility, His lowering Himself so as to be known.

The Zohar reads “known in the gates (she’arim)” as “according to what each one measures (meshaer) in his heart”: each person knows G‑d according to the depth of his own understanding. G‑d’s praise as the “Husband of the Matronita” is exactly this, that He makes Himself known.

The love born of understanding has degrees, smallness and greatness, because it follows how great or small the person’s understanding is. The text gives only the start of an analogy, “a child loves, etc.”: what a person loves matches the stage of his mind.

Because this love spreads from the soul’s powers, its intellect and emotions, it is called the “lower will.” Above it there is a will rooted in the source of the soul, the place from which it was “hewn,” throughout the four worlds of Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

This higher will shines below in Yechidah, the innermost, “single” level of the individual soul. It shows itself as nullification: the person’s understanding counts for nothing before G‑d’s exaltedness, which no thought can grasp, and all creation is as nothing before His essence.

The parenthesis explains what can be contemplated here: G‑d’s essence itself is beyond thought, but one can reflect on how far His greatness surpasses all created beings, as the verses “Every soul shall praise” and “His greatness is unsearchable” say. This contemplation stirs the soul to go out of its “sheath,” the body, toward G‑d.

The outer dimension of the heart, where ordinary feelings are sensed, cannot hold this love and awe, for they are higher than it. Instead the soul is nullified, out of its own powers, as though it did not exist.

This is the love “with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), a love beyond the measure of the soul’s powers. It shines equally in every Jewish soul; what holds it back is only that it is not enclothed in the body but stays above it, as an encompassing light (makif).

Now the verse “Lift up the head … by their skulls” (Numbers 1:2) is explained: the “head” is the lower will, born of contemplating G‑d’s life-force spreading through creation, and it is to be lifted to the “skull,” the higher will of the soul’s root and Yechidah, born of contemplating that created beings are nothing before His essence. The words “therefore, what is written on the matter of being cut off, etc.” break off, and a note in Likkutei Sichos observes that something seems to be missing here.

Even the wicked are “full of regrets” because their regret comes from Yechidah, the soul’s innermost level, which is present even in them. What joined this encompassing level to the soul’s powers in the body was the Giving of the Torah on Shavuos, when the souls flew out at each utterance, for each utterance drew from G‑d’s very essence: the “I” (Anochi) of the first commandment, “I am who I am.”

The Torah as a whole is likewise one with G‑d: “He and His wisdom are one.” That is why its reasons were not revealed, for G‑d is “wise, but not with a known wisdom,” as the Tikkunei Zohar says.

Though the Torah is one with G‑d, the human mind can grasp it in its outer dimension, because it is enclothed in physical matters, the laws of the orders of the Mishnah such as Zeraim (Seeds) and Moed (Festivals). When a person attaches his mind to it, the “light within it,” which is G‑d’s very essence, “brings him back to the better,” in the words of the Midrash.

The Alter Rebbe distinguishes “good” from “better.” “Good” (tov) is the hidden light stored away for the righteous, whose radiance they will enjoy in the time to come; “better” (mutav) is higher still, the source of that good in its root, and it is there that the Torah’s light brings a person back.

Yet there is also a descent: “when the Mishkan encamps, the Levites shall set it up” (Numbers 1:51). The Mishkan’s encamping is read as a fall, like “the fallen sukkah of David” and “her feet descend,” and the Levites, in their three families Gershon, Kehas and Merari, raise it up.

Gershon, whose name suggests garesh, “drive out,” stands for subduing the sitra achra and removing the evil, as in “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Merari, from merirus, “bitterness,” stands for feeling bitter over this descent, the fall just described, and that bitterness turns darkness into light.

Kehas is read through “and to him shall be the gathering (yikhas) of the peoples,” the stage at which “the night shines as the day” and deliberate sins become like merits. This is the Levites’ service: raising the fallen Mishkan up from its fall.

The Kohanim’s service is introduced by “Aharon and his sons shall come” (Numbers 4:5), the verse in which they cover the holy vessels. It is explained through the Sages’ saying about one who says “I have nothing but Torah,” and through the verse “I held him and would not let him go until I had brought him” (Song of Songs 3:4).

The stress is on “I held him”: one must hold fast to G‑d Himself, not to the Torah alone. Yet since no thought can grasp Him, this hold cannot be revealed and spread in the soul’s powers “until I had brought him,” and the text leaves the rest to the one who understands.