וענין ממושבותיכם תביאו לחם תנופה שתים

The maamar opens with the verse about the two loaves of bread that were brought and waved as the Shavuos offering “from your dwellings.” The Alter Rebbe links “dwellings” (moshav, from the root “to sit”) to the Shema, which is called “sitting,” and says that the main thing in prayer is the readiness to give up one’s life at the word “One” in “Hear, O Israel.” The two blessings said before the morning Shema only lead up to that moment.

The Shemoneh Esreh that follows the Shema is called a “drawing-down,” since in it blessing is drawn down from Above. Even so, the core of prayer is the self-sacrifice of the Shema: the nullification of one’s sense of being a separate “something” (yesh).

To explain why self-sacrifice is the heart of prayer, the Alter Rebbe begins with G‑d’s Essence, which is exalted far beyond all the worlds. The words of the first blessing before the morning Shema, “Creator of holy beings, may Your Name be praised,” express this: the worlds, even the holy angels, come into being only from a ray of His light, which, like light from its source, is not the source’s own essence.

Because the Essence is beyond the worlds, the light from the Emanator, G‑d as the source of all emanation, must be drawn anew each day into Keser and Chochmah, the highest levels. Pri Etz Chaim teaches that no day’s flow is the same as the day before, and this new light is drawn through prayer.

Prayer draws this new light specifically through self-sacrifice, which brings about “supernal laughter and delight,” a new joy Above. The bracket sends the reader to Pri Etz Chaim and to the explanation on the verse “Show me your countenance” (Song of Songs 2:14) for more on this.

A parable recorded in Likkutei Amarim in the name of the Maggid of Mezritch, the Alter Rebbe’s teacher, takes up the verse “the heart of kings is unsearchable.” A king’s heart cannot be reached by ordinary means; to have him turn to a commoner’s request, one brings him his little son, in whom he delights, or something novel, like a talking bird.

The king lacks nothing, so gold and silver mean nothing to him; only something new and surprising can awaken his delight and attention.

So too in the verse, “from your dwellings” specifically: the offering comes from the level of “sitting,” the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Only from there can there be a “raising of mayin nukvin (feminine waters),” the Kabbalistic term for an arousal from below that calls forth a response from Above.

The Talmud remarks that Scripture, speaking delicately, uses the word “seat” (moshav) in speaking of a woman; in the Kabbalistic image, the arousal of the receiving, feminine side is what brings about the giving of the masculine side. So with “from your dwellings”: when a being of the lower worlds, which senses itself as a “something,” becomes nullified, that is the novelty, like the talking bird, that moves the King.

Through this self-nullification from below, mayin duchrin (masculine waters), the answering flow from Above, are drawn down from Atzilus, the world that is G‑dliness itself, where “He and His life-forces are one.” “You shall bring bread of waving” means drawing this light into the Torah, and the waving of the two loaves upon the two lambs, raised and lowered, mirrors the raising from below and the drawing down from Above.

The bracketed note quotes Pri Etz Chaim: the Shema is greater than prayer (the Shemoneh Esreh), as shown by the law that one whose Torah study is his whole occupation stops for the Shema but not for prayer. It adds that the union (zivug) of the supernal Abba and Imma, Chochmah and Binah, is so hidden that we cannot arouse it while we are in the World of Atzilus, that is, during the Shemoneh Esreh.

Pri Etz Chaim concludes that we can arouse that union only while we are in Beriah, during the Shema. The Alter Rebbe gives the reason from the parable: Beriah is the first realm of separate existence, so its self-nullification is a novelty, like the talking bird, whereas Atzilus is G‑dliness and its nullification is nothing new.

Therefore, even though the self-nullification of Atzilus is infinitely greater, the main drawing-down of new light, which brings about the union of Abba and Imma, comes specifically through the Shema.

This is because the Shema is the self-nullification of the “something” of the lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The reader is referred to a fuller treatment in the explanation on “Go forth and see” (Song of Songs 3:11), at the end of the discourse beginning “Now, to understand the matter.”

Now the verse is read in full: the two loaves brought “from your dwellings” are Abba and Imma, or the two mazalos, the flows from the supernal “beard” of Arich Anpin that are the source of Abba and Imma; indeed lechem (bread) and mazla have the same numerical value, 78. This is the delight of the Torah in “I have delighted in Your Torah” and “delights day by day,” the same word for delight as the king’s delight in his little son in the Maggid’s parable.

The Zohar speaks in several places of “And I was beside Him as a nursling (amon),” the verse that goes on “and I was delights day by day.” There it reads amon as uman, an artisan: G‑d looked into the Torah and created the world through it.