וילך ראובן בימי קציר חטים וימצא דודאים בשדה…

The discourse opens with the verse about Reuven, Leah’s eldest son, who went out at the time of the wheat harvest and brought home dudaim for his mother. The Talmud and the Midrash cited here discuss what dudaim were and note that Reuven took only from what was ownerless.

Two more verses are set beside it: “Train a youth according to his way,” and the request of the tribes of Reuven and Gad to receive the land east of the Jordan for their many flocks. The discourse will connect what Reuven found in the field with the land his descendants chose.

On the plain meaning, as the commentaries on the Midrash explain, the verse mentions the wheat harvest to hint that Reuven took what came to hand before the wheat, and so his sons took the land across the Jordan, which came to them first, though the Land of Israel was better. On this reading their choice was a failing, and the Midrash applies to them “An inheritance hastily gotten at the beginning,” whose end “will not be blessed.”

The Alter Rebbe questions the plain reading: “Train a youth according to his way” is a praise, telling us what is proper to do, so the sons’ keeping to Reuven’s way should be no failing. He then adds a second question on the verse itself, raised in Tanya.

The second part of Tanya opens with this question: “according to his way” suggests a path suited to the youth rather than the path of full truth, so why praise his never leaving it when he is old? The rest of the discourse answers both questions together.

To answer, the Alter Rebbe turns to the Midrash’s two views of what dudaim were. The first is that they were a kind of plant, “herbage” (esev); the Ramban discusses on the verse which plant it was.

The second view is that they were barley. An earlier discourse in this parsha, on not eating before feeding one’s animal, explained that “herbage” stands for the flow of divine life to the angels, who are called “animal” (behemah).

The Zohar passages cited speak of “herbage for the service of man” as angels and of the dudaim that “gave fragrance.” The name dudaim is read as coming from dodai, “my love”: this nourishment awakens in the angels a love that burns “like the appearance of torches,” as Ezekiel describes the Chayos of the divine chariot.

On the second view too, barley is food for an animal, so the dudaim still belong to the “animal” level. Barley is only a higher grade of that level than herbage, as the earlier discourse explains.

This animal level is called “Train a youth” because, as the Aramaic teaching quoted here says, a person at birth is given a soul “from the side of a pure animal.” The training of a youth therefore begins at that level, “according to his way.”

The food that suits this level is barley, se’orah, read as two words, shi’ur hei, “the measure of hei,” or herbage, which Psalms calls “for the service of man.” Reuven’s sons, rooted in this level, chose the land east of the Jordan, “a place for livestock,” in keeping with “I will give herbage in your field for your animals.”

Where Scripture implies they acted wrongly (in Joshua their land is spoken of as possibly impure, unlike the land where the Mishkan stood), the fault was not the level itself. They made the secondary thing primary, as the Midrash says of them: they cherished their property more than human lives.

Feeding the animal first is right, as the law that one may not taste anything before feeding one’s animal shows; but afterwards a person must eat himself, “and you shall eat and be satisfied,” the bread of the Torah, “Come, eat of my bread.” The animal level comes first, but it is not the goal.

The Land of Israel has both, “a land of wheat and barley,” so the level of barley was available there too, together with the wheat. Their error was to settle permanently in the level of “a place for livestock” alone.

The Zohar explains the “youth” of this verse as the angelic Prince of the World, of whom it says the verse “I was a youth, and I have also grown old” was spoken; the Alter Rebbe calls this the level of Metatron. A land whose “king is a youth” receives its life through this angel.

Metatron is the source and root of the flow to the “animal” level described above. By contrast, the Zohar reads “Happy are you, O land” as the supernal land whose King is the Holy One, blessed be He, of which it is written that “the eyes of Havayah your G‑d” are upon it. The Alter Rebbe applies this to the Land of Israel, “a land of wheat and barley.”

Still, both halves of the verse hold true: a person must first be trained at the level suited to a youth, and that training must stay with him in old age. The Alter Rebbe now explains what growing “old” means here.

Growing “old” means reaching the level of “man,” for the Talmud teaches that an “elder” (zaken) is one who has acquired wisdom. That wisdom comes through “wheat,” chitah, whose letters add up to twenty-two, the number of the letters of the Torah.

Even then he must not leave the “animal” level of the dudaim and barley, because there is a level of “animal” higher than “man” alone. This is “Man and animal You save”: a person should be both, wise like a man and self-nullified like an animal, as the discourse goes on to explain.

The “animal” level means following G‑d the way an animal follows its master, without first asking for reasons. It is acquired through “Train a youth”: being trained from the very start in the self-nullification of the “animal.”

That “animal” is the angels: the Chayos of Ezekiel’s chariot, with the faces of a lion and an ox, and the Ofanim and Chayos who rise “with a great noise,” as the morning blessing before the Shema says. This self-nullification comes through shi’ur hei, the “barley” described above.

Trained this way from youth, the bittul becomes fixed in his soul. So even when he grows “old,” having acquired the wisdom of the Torah, the bread of “Come, eat of my bread,” he keeps the bittul that is above intellect.

Section two begins with a further source for righteous people being called “barley.” Boaz measured six barleys into Ruth’s shawl, and the Talmud and the Midrash read the six as six righteous descendants who would come from her.

This raises a question: why should such great tzaddikim be compared to barley, the food of animals? The Talmud in Chullin calls righteous people “barley” in the same way, and the Maharsha there gives only a strained answer.

The Alter Rebbe’s answer begins by granting the plain hierarchy. Wheat, the food of man, is far higher than barley, the food of animals.

In general “man” is the souls of Atzilus, the world still one with G‑d, and “animal” is the souls of the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Yet there is another “animal” level that stands higher than “man.”

The Talmud says “man and animal” in the verse refers to people who are shrewd in knowledge like Adam and yet make themselves like an animal, crushed in spirit. The words in parentheses are Rashi’s, there.

Such people are called “barley,” animal food, because they make themselves like animals. This is the “great animal” (behemah rabbah), a level above “man,” which the Alter Rebbe explains in a discourse in Parshas Eikev.

The Zohar reads Boaz’s six barleys as the six orders of the Mishnah, the Oral Torah, which it calls “food of animals.” So the Mishnah is the barley that feeds this level.

Through study of the Mishnah one comes to the level of “Man and animal You save, Havayah,” making oneself like an animal. The Midrash expresses the same idea.

There Israel says to G‑d, “We are like man; save us like an animal, for we are drawn after You like an animal.” The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on the waving of the two loaves on Shavuos for more on this.

Why the Mishnah should be “barley” in particular: se’orim (barley) is the same word as shi’urim (measures), for the Oral Torah gives the exact measures of every mitzvah, how the tefillin and the sukkah must be. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on Israel’s saying “we will do” first.

Besides the measures of the Oral Torah, se’orah read as shi’ur hei, “the measure of hei,” whose value is five, points to the five Gevuros, the powers of restraint that give everything its measure. Its hei also comes from the upper hei of the Name Havayah, the first hei, a very lofty level, as the Alter Rebbe explains at the start of Parshas Lech Lecha in Torah Ohr.

A further reading: se’orim is spelled with a sin, like nis’arah in “round about Him it storms exceedingly,” which the Talmud reads as sa’arah, a hair: G‑d is exacting with those near Him to a hair’s breadth. Barley thus also suggests the hair-fine exactness of the laws.

The laws of the Oral Torah are compared to hairs: the Sages read “His locks are curled (taltalim)” as heaps upon heaps of laws, and say that some laws are “like mountains suspended by a hair,” having little Scripture and many laws. The discourse on “Listen, O heavens” explains se’irim, “fine rains,” as rain as thin as hairs, standing for the Mishnah’s many particular laws.

All this is drawn down through the waving of the omer, the barley offering. The angels also receive from the level of barley, but they are called “standing ones,” for they stay fixed on one level.

The souls of Israel, in bodies, refine the animal soul by subduing it (iskafya), and so they are “those who go,” rising from level to level. The waving of the omer, a lifting up, expresses this ascent.

The ascent of the omer reaches the “great animal” above “man,” and from there flows down the “six barleys,” the six orders of the Mishnah. Their root is the hair of the Ancient of Days in Daniel’s vision, “like clean wool,” amar, a word spelled like omer.

The Arizal’s Likkutei Torah explains this on “an omer for each head (gulgoles),” the measure of the manna. Counting the fifty days of the omer draws down from the “fiftieth gate,” the highest of the fifty gates of understanding, into the omer of barley.

Section three turns to wheat, the food of “man,” which is the twenty-two letters of the Torah. The Alter Rebbe draws on his discourse in Parshas Va’eschanan on “And you shall love.”

That discourse explains that through Torah study a person draws down the Infinite Light so that it is revealed to him as an inner light, within his own grasp. Because the supernal Chochmah itself is then in him, he is called “man.”

The discourse on “And you shall honor the face of an elder” explains how the Torah held in the mind makes G‑d dwell within a person. Barley, by contrast, is contemplation of how G‑d fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds: a knowledge of G‑d through His relation to the worlds.

Such contemplation does not grasp G‑d’s essence at all, nor even the essence of the supernal Chochmah, only the fact that He exists. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on “And you shall not omit the salt,” which shows that even the soul’s intellect is only a vessel for its essence.

Because it grasps only existence and not essence, this level is still called “animal.” The great basin of Shlomo’s Temple, the “sea,” stood upon twelve oxen: the oxen, “animals,” below, and the sea above them as an encompassing light (makif), as the discourse on “Who has counted” explains.

This also explains how an “animal” can be higher than “man.” Measured against the Infinite Light itself, even the supernal Chochmah, the level of “man,” has no advantage.

Before the Infinite Light, the supernal Chochmah is like physical action, as the discourse explains below on “the advantage of man over the animal is ayin.” The Alter Rebbe then goes higher still, to Adam Kadmon, the first and highest configuration of divine light.

Adam Kadmon, the Keser of all the worlds together, is called “the Adam of Beriah”; since the souls of Beriah are “animal,” as explained above, even Adam Kadmon is at the level of “animal” relative to the Infinite One. It is also called “lion,” and the Alter Rebbe refers for more to his discourse on “And you shall eat, eating.”

In a person’s service of G‑d, “man and animal” means the self-nullification that is above intellect, like an animal’s, joined to the wisdom of “man.” This is the “animal” that stands above “man.”

The discourse on “And the kohen shall wave them” explains the two words for lamb: keves, with the beis before the shin, and keshev, with the shin before the beis. On Shavuos the two loaves of wheat, “man,” were waved upon the two lambs, “animal,” to be at the level of “Man and animal You save, Havayah.”

The same idea explains the Midrash on Yaakov’s message to Esav, “I have an ox and a donkey”: the donkey is King Moshiach. The Midrash bases this on the verse that Moshiach comes “humble and riding on a donkey.”

Moshiach is the “great animal” above “man,” just as Adam Kadmon, the highest level, is called “the Adam of Beriah,” the level of “animal.” His level is the self-nullification of the “animal” that stands above the wisdom of “man.”

So too Yissachar, the tribe of Torah scholars, is called “a strong-boned donkey,” and the Talmud says that a donkey’s stride comes from barley: the “animal” and its barley again stand for the higher self-nullification. The Mishnah “Know from where (me’ayin) you came” is then read as “Know that you came from Ayin.”

Koheles says “the advantage of man over the animal is ayin,” plainly “nothing,” but it is read as Ayin, which is Chochmah, as Job’s “And wisdom, from where (me’ayin) shall it be found?” is read: wisdom comes from ayin. Man’s advantage is his root in Chochmah; the Alter Rebbe also points to the question Tanna DeBei Eliyahu raises on the verse, and to Koheles Rabbah and Rabbeinu Bachya.

This is the “advantage of man.” Yet the verse ends “for all is hevel,” breath: even the supernal Chochmah is only hevel, a mere glimmer before G‑d, just as “Bereishis,” which stands for Chochmah, is counted among the sayings of Creation, and speech is breath.

The Midrash on Koheles says the seven times “hevel” appears in its opening verse correspond to the seven days of Creation, so even Shabbos, the seventh, is hevel. Shabbos stands for the supernal Chochmah, so even Chochmah is called hevel.

The reason is that there is a higher Shabbos within Shabbos: compared with the future “day that is entirely Shabbos,” even the Shabbos of today is like a weekday. Relative to that, it is hevel.

Hevel can also be understood through the Midrash on “with hei He created them”: the letter hei is sounded with breath alone, with no movement of lips or tongue, and so G‑d created this world without toil. Hevel, breath, is the hei.

The hei, “a light letter,” as the Aramaic hymn Akdamus calls it, stands for Malchus, the root of all the worlds. Even Adam Kadmon has its root in the Malchus of the Infinite One.

Hevel also equals thirty-seven, the added letters of the Name Sag when it is spelled out in full: the spelled-out Name is sixty-three, of which the four letters of the Name itself make twenty-six. The root of the World of Tohu, the world of chaos that came before the ordered worlds, is in the final yud of that spelling.

The Mishnah continues, “and to where (le’an) you are going”: the word an refers to a place, as in Ezekiel’s “Where are your faces set?” The place a person goes to is the reward at the Resurrection of the Dead, which will be in this world, in a physical place.

It seems strange that a soul rooted in Ayin, Chochmah, should have its destination in a physical place. But the reward comes through the revelation of the Infinite Light itself, before which spiritual and physical are the same.

Therefore the revelation will come in the physical world, making it a dwelling place for G‑d among the lower realms. The Mishnah’s third phrase, “before Whom (mi) you are destined to give an accounting,” points to the level called Mi, “Who,” as in “Who created these.”

This Mi, “Who,” is a lofty level. It appears in verses that begin with mi: “Who would grant that this heart of theirs be,” and “Who would grant from Zion the salvations of Israel.”

The same Mi appears in “Who can bring forth the pure from the impure,” in “He Who spoke and the world came to be,” and in the heavenly voice at Sinai, “Who revealed this secret to My children,” when Israel put “we will do” first. All of these point to Atika Kadisha, the Holy Ancient One, the innermost level of Keser.

This line marks the end of the discourses on the Book of Vayikra in Likkutei Torah.