ויקחו אליך פרה אדומה

The maamar opens with the verse that introduces the red heifer and then cites the Mishnah’s rule about who may perform the “sanctification”: putting the heifer’s ashes into living water to make the water of purification (mei chatas). Anyone may do it, even a woman, except a deaf-mute, a person not of sound mind, and a minor; the same ruling is quoted in the Talmud in Yevamos and in Yoma.

For sprinkling that water on a person who has become impure, the rule is reversed: a woman (like a person of concealed or dual sex) may not sprinkle, but a minor may. The Mishnah excludes only a child who has no understanding, and its continuation shows that a minor does sprinkle, with a woman permitted only to assist him.

The Talmud derives these laws from the wording of verses, but the maamar asks for the inner reason: why should a woman be unfit to sprinkle yet fit to sanctify, and a minor exactly the opposite?

The red heifer purifies from the impurity contracted from the dead. In inner terms this means driving off the “spirit of impurity” that comes from the three kelipos (husks) that are wholly impure, forces of concealment with no good in them at all.

These three kelipos are the source of existence and vitality for every forbidden deed, word and thought: everything that falls under the Torah’s 365 prohibitions and their offshoots. Even forbidden things must receive their life-force from above, and the text now says through what channel.

Their life comes through the three impure kelipos that Yechezkel saw at the start of his vision of the Chariot: a stormy wind, a great cloud, and a flashing fire. They are called “dead corpses” because they have no life of their own, which ties them to the impurity of the dead that the red heifer removes.

The removal of impurity is accomplished by the specific ingredients the Torah prescribes: a red heifer, living (spring) water, and cedar wood and hyssop. The maamar will explain each of them in turn.

The word parah (פרה) is read as par (פר, whose letters total 280) plus the letter hei (ה, five). The number 280 equals the five letters that take a special final form (mem, nun, tzadi, pei, kaf), and the hei stands for the five Gevuros (restraints), the powers of limitation that divide sound into separate letters.

The analogy is human speech: the breath and voice rising from the heart are a single, undivided sound, and they become distinct letters only when they are shaped at the five places of articulation in the mouth. The throat forms alef, ches, hei and ayin, the palate gimmel, yud, kaf and kuf, and the others are formed by the tongue, the teeth and the lips.

The same process exists above. G‑d’s creative “speech” is Malchus (sovereignty), of which the verse says “And You give life to them all,” and its division into the particular letters through which it gives that life comes about through Gevuros. Binah (understanding) likewise has “letters of thought,” for thought too is made of letters.

Those letters of thought are also divided into particular letters by Gevuros, here called the Gevuros of Imma (the “mother,” a name for Binah). The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on waving the omer, where barley (se’orah) is read as shi’ur hei, “a measure of five,” and to his explanation of “Ado-nai, open my lips,” the verse said before the Amidah.

The purpose of dividing the light into letters is to create finite beings. In Atzilus (Emanation) there is no real separation: as the Tikkunei Zohar puts it, “He, His life-forces and His vessels are one,” so the light and its vessels remain wholly one with G‑d.

That same division and descent also lets the three impure kelipos receive life, by way of an intermediate realm called nogah (the glowing husk). Nogah too contains the five Gevuros, but there they are harsh Gevuros; the Alter Rebbe refers to Etz Chaim’s Gate of Kelipas Nogah and to the Arizal’s reasons for the mitzvos on Parshas Chukas.

In nogah the division becomes real: things feel themselves to be a “something” (yesh) standing apart from G‑d, the realm the Zohar calls tura difiruda, “the mountain of separation.” Above there are also many distinct levels, but because all of them are nullified before G‑d, like “the host of heaven” bowing down to Him, they remain united.

An example is the seventy souls of Yaakov’s household who went down to Egypt: the Torah counts seventy but calls them nefesh, “soul,” in the singular, which Rashi, citing the Midrash, explains as because they served one G‑d. Their bittul made them one; in nogah, by contrast, the separation is real, because nogah is a realm of yesh.

A parenthetical note explains that the Gevuros above work the other way: the five Gevuros of Imma (Binah) actually bring about bittul, because they are “sweetened” Gevuros. In human terms, holy Gevurah is like the Talmud’s advice that a person should always “incite his good inclination against his evil inclination,” a sternness turned against the self; the Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on “And you too shall judge My house.”

The five Gevuros of Binah flow into Malchus, and from there descend into the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah as the angel Gavriel, whose name comes from gevurah and who arouses the souls to serve G‑d. The Alter Rebbe cites the Zohar for this.

The Zohar references continue (Vayikra 23a and Shelach 171b), and the Alter Rebbe points to his explanation of a Zohar passage in Pekudei (233a) on Yechezkel’s vision of “a man whose appearance was like the appearance of copper.”

The point is that the root of the supernal five Gevuros is not concealment but its opposite: they arouse the nullification of the yesh. This is also explained in the discourse on “Ado-nai, open my lips.”

Further discussions are listed: an earlier passage on the threads of techeiles (the blue thread of the tzitzis), the end of the discourse on “Havayah—those who contend with Him shall be shattered,” and the end of the discourse on “And you shall draw water,” on “the cup of salvations.”

In nogah, by contrast, the Gevuros are harsh: a complete tzimtzum (contraction) that hides the divine light entirely, so that a creature can exist as a yesh, a thing separate from G‑d. The Alter Rebbe also points to his discourse on the law “If the baheres (bright spot) preceded [the white hair]” from the laws of tzaraas.

This is the essence of nogah: unlike the three impure kelipos, which are entirely evil, nogah is a mixture. It too is half evil, but only half.

Its other half is good, yet even that good is still called kelipah, a “husk,” because it is experienced as a yesh, a self standing on its own. The example is someone who studies Torah “so that they will call me Rabbi”: the act is good, but it serves the self.

Holiness, by contrast, means bittul. That is why the impure kelipos draw their life through nogah: nogah is half good and half evil, and its evil half receives from its good half.

The wholly impure kelipos receive their life from nogah’s evil half. Even nogah’s good half is only the sense of yesh; yet because it is good, nogah can be refined and brought to complete bittul in the Infinite Light (Or Ein Sof), like the host of heaven that bows before G‑d.

This is why nogah can at times rise entirely into holiness. The Alter Rebbe refers to the Zohar in Vayakhel (203b) with its commentary Mikdash Melech, and to the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) on Parshas Pinchas.

The text continues with “whereas”: the contrast seems to be with the ascent “sometimes” just mentioned, for a nogah that has in it eisan, a firm strength, cleaves to holiness, and of it the verse says “And behold, it was very good.” “See there” then points to the beginning of Parshas Chukas in the work just cited.

This explains why the heifer is burned to remove the spirit of impurity: the heifer represents nogah. A parah (cow) is female, the level of Nukva (the feminine, receiving configuration), which receives from “the face of the ox” that Yechezkel saw on the left side of the Chariot.

But the heifer stands for the very harshest Gevuros, the good of nogah, as the reading par-hei (280 and the five Gevuros) showed. Since the impure kelipos draw their life from it, it is the heifer that must be burned to remove the impurity.

The heifer is burned until only ashes remain. The Talmud teaches that ashes can be called “dust” (afar), proving it from the verse about the red heifer, “from the dust of the burning of the sin-offering”; and whatever is burned leaves ashes behind.

Everything physical is composed of the four elements, fire, air, water and earth, with earth as the main basis of physical existence and the other three mixed into it.

Burning breaks the compound apart and leaves only the essential element, earth, as ash. In the same way, burning the heifer strips away everything but the source of speech, the point at which the Gevuros are still in a state of bittul, before they divide the voice into separate letters.

The word efer (אפר, ash) has the letters of par (פר) with an alef (א) where parah has a hei (ה). The alef, the first letter, signals Gevurah as it is in its root, before the five Gevuros of nogah drew it into separate existence; once that root is reached the forces of impurity fall away of themselves: “all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered,” and “they shall be as though they had not been.”

The Alter Rebbe adds sources from Kabbalah: the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah; the Zohar HaRakia on a Zohar passage in Mishpatim (105b) about “the ground of dust”; Rabbi Chaim Vital’s Gate of the Rectification of Sins (Sha’ar Tikkun Avonos); and Mishnas Chassidim, in its tractate on midnight (Chatzos), according to the Kehot note.

Further sources follow: the Arizal’s practice, recorded in his Siddur, of placing ashes on the place of the tefillin during Tikkun Chatzos, the midnight lament over the destruction of the Temple; the Midrash Rabbah on Vayera; two Zohar passages in Pekudei; and the Ramaz and the Mikdash Melech on Parshas Chukas.

The second section turns to the living water poured onto the ashes. Water represents Chochmah (wisdom), and living spring water represents the source of Chochmah, from which wisdom flows out of ayin, “nothing,” as Chassidus reads the verse “And Chochmah shall be found from ayin.”

This source is called tala divdolcha, “the crystalline dew,” the Zohar’s term for the hidden source above revealed Chochmah, the hidden Chochmah. The Alter Rebbe lists Zohar passages and Iggeres HaKodesh 28, the letter that opens with the question why the section of Miriam is placed next to the section of the red heifer.

Physically, living water is water that wells up from beneath the ground, because, in Sefer Yetzirah’s words, “their beginning is wedged in their end”: the highest source shows itself at the lowest point. From Chochmah downward, each level develops out of the one before it, “from something to something”: from Chochmah to the emotions, and on to thought and speech.

The step from what is above Chochmah to Chochmah itself, however, is creation “from nothing to something,” and that power appears specifically in the lowest place, the earth, which keeps bringing forth new growth without end, as in “The earth, out of it comes bread.”

Living spring water, rising from below, stands for the source of Chochmah. The sanctification of the mei chatas, putting living water onto the ashes, therefore means drawing that source down into the ashes.

The living water brings the source of Chochmah, whose quality is bittul, into the ashes. The ashes are the good of nogah after it has been refined: the source and root of speech, with everything that would become separateness burned away.

As explained above, the heifer (par-hei) is the five Gevuros that divide the voice into revealed speech. Burning leaves only the root of speech, and the living water then draws bittul down onto that root.

Once the root is joined to bittul, the forces of impurity have nothing to hold on to and scatter of themselves. The Alter Rebbe cites the Zohar in Pekudei, mentioned earlier, and a Zohar passage in Chukas.

Sprinkling extends this purifying bittul onto the person being purified, and here the maamar answers its opening question; “woman” and “minor” stand for the spiritual levels on which, in its reading, the two laws are modeled. A woman represents the Gevuros and Malchus, of which Kabbalah reads “her feet go down to death”: Malchus is divine speech, the lowest level, and as it descends it becomes the root to which the external forces attach.

Therefore the level of the woman lacks the power to drive off the spirit of impurity. The Alter Rebbe supports this from the Talmud’s reading of “and conquer it”: “it is the way of a man to conquer, and not the way of a woman to conquer,” and from the Midrash on the same verse.

A minor, by contrast, represents the masculine (dechar), the emotive attributes of Z’eir Anpin, where the external forces have no hold. Z’eir Anpin is called the Tree of Life, while Malchus is called the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, because its “feet go down” toward the realms below.

The minor’s love and awe are still in their “small” state (katnus), yet that is enough to drive off impurity. And although a minor lacks Daas (knowledge), this does not prevent him from doing so.

The reason is that the forces of impurity lack Daas too. The Zohar says that “the other god,” the side opposed to holiness, is castrated and bears no fruit, and the Alter Rebbe suggests that the Midrash alludes to the same idea when it compares the deep, which is neither sown nor yields fruit, to the deeds of the wicked.

The Midrash concludes, “so the deeds of the wicked do not bear fruit,” and the Talmud in Kiddushin (40a) likewise teaches that a sin has no “fruits” unless it is a sin that bears fruit. The Arizal raises an objection: the souls of idolaters are drawn from the three impure kelipos, so the other side does seem to bear fruit.

His answer is that the kelipos have only the “minds” of Chochmah and Binah, without Daas, the faculty of connection; this is the sense of “Also, without Daas the soul is not good.”

This is why Scripture speaks of “two women, harlots,” and the Kabbalah of “two birds”: two, corresponding to Chochmah and Binah, without the third, Daas. Since the forces of impurity lack Daas, the minor’s lack of Daas does not prevent him from driving them away.

Sanctifying is different. It raises the “feminine waters” (mayin nukvin), the upward striving from below, of the Gevuros of nogah to their source in the living water of Mocha Stima’ah (the hidden brain); such an ascent requires Daas, so a minor cannot perform it.

Nullifying the yesh into ayin requires Daas, as in “Avraham recognized his Creator”: recognition here means a felt awareness, and that is what Daas is.

For more on Daas the Alter Rebbe lists the explanation on “Many waters” and the discourses on “And these are the laws,” “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov,” “Arm from among you,” and “And you shall know this day.” The last reference is to the Zohar HaRakia, a commentary on the Zohar, on the Zohar’s passage in Terumah (166), which the Alter Rebbe also cites in Likkutei Torah, Nasso, for the root of Daas above Chochmah and Binah.

That is why Daas reaches up to Keser (the Crown), above Chochmah and Binah, which only draw the light downward. The Midrash on “For Havayah gives wisdom; from His mouth, knowledge” likewise says that knowledge “from His mouth” is greater than wisdom: “great is wisdom, and greater than it is knowledge and understanding.”

Hence it is precisely Daas that the kelipos lack: they have no bittul of the kind expressed in “he recognized his Creator.” At most, in the Talmud’s phrase, they call Him “the G‑d of gods,” acknowledging a supreme power without nullifying themselves before it.

So a minor, whose Daas is not yet revealed, cannot sanctify. A woman can, because she has Daas; the Sages’ phrase that her Daas is “light” is read to mean that her Daas comes from the side of the Gevuros.

The Kabbalah reads kalah (light) as kal-hei: kal (קל) is 130, five times 26, the numerical value of Havayah, and the five are the Gevuros from which her Daas comes. A long parenthetical gives sources: an earlier discourse on “Go forth and gaze,” explaining the 130-shekel weight of the princes’ silver dish, and the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on “that he turned aside to see.”

The Arizal’s words there are that kal “descends to Malchus from the secret of this Daas,” and Pri Etz Chaim (Gate of the Shofar, chapter 1) mentions it too. A discourse on Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak, who danced before the bride with three [myrtle branches], explains the idea: the stronger one’s Daas, the more one can bear.

One with strong Daas can bear even the opposite of what he longs for, whereas one whose Daas is “light” cannot, and his soul at once “expires” in longing. In this sense “her Daas is light” describes an intense yearning to be absorbed into Atzilus, which is why a bride is called kallah, from “my soul pines (kalsah)”: a yearning in the mode of Gevuros, a withdrawal that strives upward.

The word kal also appears in the Sages’ description of G‑d at night riding “His light (kal) cherub,” discussed in the discourse on “Let them bring royal apparel” regarding “the horse that [the king rode],” and there is the related teaching that “extra Binah was given to woman.” Closing the parenthesis, the Alter Rebbe states the meaning: all the Gevuros contained in the Havayos are drawn into Malchus.

Yet Malchus also has Daas, and therefore a woman may sanctify. Sanctifying the water is itself the ascent of the Gevurah of kelipas nogah after it has been refined in the living water, and so a woman, who has the atara digevurah (the crown of Gevurah), is fit to perform it.

The third section explains the cedar wood and hyssop cast into the fire. The question is how Chochmah, the level of bittul and the highest of grades, can be joined to the heifer’s ashes.

The ashes are nogah, the very lowest grade, and the link between the two extremes is made through cedar and hyssop. Wood (a tree) stands for the emotive attributes, which can be “great” (gadlus) or “small” (katnus), mature or immature, just as trees are tall or low.

The cedar, tallest of the trees, stands for the emotive attributes as they exist within Chochmah itself. The Alter Rebbe cites this from Me’orei Or, a Kabbalistic lexicon arranged by letters, and from the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar.

The hyssop, a small plant that grows out of a wall and is the lowest of the “trees,” stands for the “drop” of Yesod (foundation): what flows from Yesod into created beings is only a drop, a glimmer of the light above. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourse on “These are the journeys” and its reading of “and he also drew, drew for us,” said of Moshe drawing water at the well in Midian.

For this reason the yud in the name Pinchas, who was zealous for the covenant (the realm of Yesod), is written small in the Torah scroll. The Alter Rebbe cites the Zohar on Pinchas and his explanation in Parshas Mikeitz on “Who is enthroned on high.”

Likewise the vav of ezov (hyssop) is called small, and Zohar passages in Metzora and Yisro are cited for it. The point is that Yesod is the connector that lets Chochmah be enclothed within created beings.

That connection is the drawing of living water into the heifer’s ashes. The crimson thread binds the cedar and the hyssop together, because the flow by which the “drop of the brain” from Chochmah reaches Yesod and becomes its drop comes about through the Gevuros, which the red thread represents.

A parenthesis gathers sources on the role of Gevurah, the left side, in arousing love and union: the discourse on “Havayah—those who contend with Him shall be shattered” and its words “He will give strength to His king”; the Arizal on “And I multiplied his seed and gave him Yitzchak”; and the Zohar on “the arousal of love.”

The Zohar passages continue: in Vayeshev on “I have aroused [one] from the north,” and in Va’eira, “Were it not for the arousal of the north” and “His left hand is under my head.” The left side, the north and Gevurah, comes first and arouses the union.

Further Zohar passages are cited: in Terumah on “He rejoices like a mighty man,” and on the “crimson wool” among the materials of the Mishkan. The Alter Rebbe adds the end of the discourse on “Your cheeks are lovely with circlets.”

Another way to understand the pairing of cedar and hyssop comes from the Raaya Mehemna on “the rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less”: “the rich” is the central pillar, Tiferes, and “the poor” is the Tzaddik, Yesod.

Me’orei Or says the same: hyssop is Yesod, the small vav, joined to the cedar, the large vav (Tiferes), as “body and covenant.” The Alter Rebbe then turns to the blessing of the land in the Grace after Meals.

The Sages require that blessing to mention the covenant and the Torah: the covenant corresponds to Yesod and the Torah to Tiferes. This is also the meaning of “These are the generations of Yaakov: Yosef,” Yaakov being Tiferes and Yosef Yesod.

The cedar is Yaakov: Midrash Tanchuma reads “Like a cedar in Lebanon he shall grow” as referring to Yaakov, and the Midrash Rabbah says the same.

This is like the words of the Amidah, “and the awesome, Kel Elyon”: the vav of vehanora draws down the “awesome,” the revelation of bittul that flows from Kel Elyon, “G‑d Most High,” the level above the chain of descent. That vav is a drawing-down from above to below.

This is the cedar as the large vav. Me’orei Or adds that Z’eir Anpin is called “cedar” when it rises into Abba, called “Lebanon,” and the Zohar on “Like a cedar in Lebanon” reads the cedar as the Holy One, blessed be He, and Lebanon as Eden (as quoted in the Kehot note).

For this bittul to reach created beings it must pass through the small vav, the hyssop, which is Yesod. The Alter Rebbe also cites the Ramaz on Parshas Chukas.

The Ramaz maps the three items onto the Sefiros: cedar wood is Daas, the crimson thread Tiferes, and hyssop Yesod, and he notes that Daas is rooted in the Yesod of Abba and of Imma. The Alter Rebbe also refers to his discourse on the cedar in Parshas Vayigash, “And Yehudah approached him.”

The section closes with further sources on hyssop (the Midrash on Bo, where hyssop is used for the blood of the Pesach offering; the Zohar on Tzav and Bo; and the Ramaz) and on the words “And they shall take to you” (the Midrash on Emor).