מבן עשרים

The maamar opens with the census verse, which counts the men of Israel “from twenty years old and upward.” It links that age to a Talmudic law: one may not sell real estate inherited from his father until he is twenty, a law whose inner reason Etz Chaim explains.

The reason Etz Chaim gives is that at twenty the makifim of Abba enter a person: encompassing lights rooted in Chochmah, the higher intellect, which surround the mind rather than being grasped by it. The parenthesis and the reference that follows send the reader to other discourses on the same theme.

The discourse on “When you go out [to war]” finds two levels in the “point of the heart,” the soul’s innermost core, which lies above understanding and knowledge: its radiance, which can transform a person’s thought, speech and action, and its very essence, which can transform the emotions themselves. The Alter Rebbe brings it because the same pairing of a radiance and an essence is about to be applied to the levels above intellect.

A parallel from the discourse on “Blow the shofar on the New Moon”: the Supreme Will, which transcends intellect, has two levels. One is the will that is enclothed in Chochmah and finds expression through it; the other is the Gulgalta, the “skull” of the supernal configuration, which covers over the “brain” of Chochmah and is never enclothed in it.

The same levels of will also underlie the difference between mitzvos in general and chukim, the statutes that have no stated reason, as the discourse “If in My statutes” explains. They also match the three steps of the saying in Pirkei Avos. The first step, “Make His will as your will,” is the lowest will: Binah becomes the Keser (the Crown) of Z’eir Anpin, a will that follows from understanding and so stands below intellect.

The second step, “so that He will make your will as His will,” is the Supreme Will enclothed in Chochmah: something above intellect present within intellect, called the soul of the Keser of Z’eir Anpin and drawn from the Tiferes of Abba. Loving G‑d “with all your heart and with all your soul” corresponds to these two levels, while the third step, “Nullify your will,” is the Gulgalta, beyond all intellect, and corresponds to “with all your might,” a love without measure.

Spelled out in full, the letter yud (yud-vav-dalet) has the numerical value twenty (10 + 6 + 4), which links it to the age of twenty. The yud itself is Chochmah, Abba; the added letters of its spelling stand for what extends from Abba: the vav (six) for the six emotive attributes, the six days of Creation, and the dalet for speech, Malchus, of which the Zohar says “Abba founded the daughter.”

The text points to what it has written on the verse “For from the top of the rocks I see him,” and then gives a second reading of the filling: the vav is voice, which carries to the emotive attributes, and the dalet is articulated speech. For more on all this it points to the theme of the half-shekel.

A further reading of the vav and dalet: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. At twenty, then, the full yud, the mochin of Abba, shines in a person; this is higher than the hei, Binah with its fifty gates (the Talmud’s “fifty gates of understanding,” Rosh Hashanah 21b), which is understanding that can be grasped and flows into the emotions.

Only then can there be the elevation “to their Gulgalta”: the census word legulgelosam (“by their heads”) is read as the Gulgalta, the Supreme Will that Chochmah cannot grasp at all, like Moshe approaching the “thick darkness.” The two encompassing lights match the soul’s two highest levels: Chayah, the mochin of Abba (as “Chochmah gives life,” techayeh), and after it Yechidah, the Gulgalta.

The text points again to its discussion of “And Moshe approached [the thick darkness],” and to the Midrash on “Open for Me”: if Israel open even a small opening, G‑d will open a great one for them, which the text calls “the opening of the Ulam,” the Temple’s entrance hall. The text describes this great opening as a level “above twenty,” beyond the twenty that, as the next part says, stands for Abba and Imma.

Similarly, in the years of Sarah’s life, “a hundred years and twenty years,” the twenty stand for Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah) and the hundred for Keser. Therefore only from twenty upward can a person’s mochin be lifted up to the level of Keser.

The reason is that the light of Chochmah is the nearest to Keser, so it rises first and carries with it everything that branches out from it. This is “Chochmah is found from ayin (nothing)”: Chochmah issues from the ayin, the Keser that is beyond grasp.

Below twenty a person does not yet have the mochin of Abba, only the mochin of Imma, Binah; he is still far from the light of Keser, and so he could not be raised “to their Gulgalta.” This is why the census counts only from twenty years old and upward.