ויעש משה נחש נחשת וישימהו על הנס והיה…

The maamar opens with the verse in Bamidbar: when the people in the desert were bitten by serpents, Moshe set a serpent on a pole, and whoever had been bitten looked at it and lived. Moshe made it of copper (nechoshes), a detail the maamar will explain later.

The Mishnah at the end of the third chapter of Rosh HaShanah asks whether a serpent can kill or give life, and answers that when Israel looked upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in heaven they were healed, and if not, they wasted away. The healing, then, came from turning the heart to G‑d, not from the serpent.

Two questions follow. If healing came from looking upward, why make a serpent at all, when the one who was bitten could simply look up? And what is this “looking upward,” when the Talmud teaches that one who prays should keep his eyes downward and his heart upward?

To answer, the Alter Rebbe first asks about the soul’s descent into this world. Its purpose is to cleave to G‑d with love and awe, chiefly in prayer, whose words are closer to a person’s own understanding; he then begins to describe the soul’s state before it came down.

Both before it enters the body and after it leaves, the soul cleaves to G‑d more fully, with an inner love and awe. In the body it is held back: the body does not let it serve G‑d, and the body’s material nature even pulls the soul to take pleasure in physical things.

This is against the soul’s own will, for it is “a part of G‑d above,” in the words of Iyov, and it longs to be close to its Creator. This raises the question of what the descent gains.

The answer begins with a saying of the Zohar: one who does not turn the bitter into sweet has no share at all in this world. The Zohar passage he cites speaks of those who turn darkness into light and taste the bitter as sweet; he also refers to the Ramaz’s commentary there.

Turning the bitter into sweet is the whole purpose of man (“this is the whole of man”). For in the First Temple era they did not pray at all, and in the Second Temple era the Men of the Great Assembly instituted only a short prayer.

Since those generations served with little prayer or none, their whole service must have been this turning of the bitter into sweet. It is possible because judgments (dinim), the harsh, limiting forces, are “sweetened in their root”: brought back to their source, they lose their harshness.

Every evil and harsh judgment in the world draws its life from a root and source that is good. The Zohar illustrates this with a parable: a king, wishing to test his beloved son, sends a harlot to try to seduce him, yet all she truly wants is that he refuse her.

If the son resists, she rejoices, because she has done the king’s bidding and is loved by him; if she managed to seduce him, that would not be the king’s will. So too the forces that tempt a person are, at their root, carrying out the King’s wish that he overcome them.

The Sages say that the Satan and Peninnah, who provoked Chanah, acted for the sake of Heaven. Yet elsewhere they say that the evil inclination set its eyes on the First Temple and destroyed it, which suggests real envy rather than a heavenly purpose.

The two sayings are reconciled by the principle that the root of evil, which gives it life, is good. The Zohar asks whether a servant can really rebel against his master; human servants do break away from their masters, but only because master and servant are separate, each with his own life.

G‑d’s servants, however, receive their very life from Him, and He gives life to everything, so how can anything that opposes Him have life at all? The Zohar answers with the parable of the harlot and the king’s son: the opposing force is itself doing the King’s will.

At their root above, then, all evils are good. Only as their life descends step by step through the chain of worlds (hishtalshelus) does it truly become complete evil and harsh judgment, both in a person’s worldly affairs and in matters of the spirit.

The principle now applies to a person’s own afflictions: he should “not judge by what his eyes see” and conclude that they are bad. Their root is truly good, for, as the Alter Rebbe reads the words of Eichah, evil does not come forth from G‑d.

From G‑d comes only complete good; it is simply not grasped, because that good cannot come down into this lowly world and remains above. The Alter Rebbe refers to Tanya, chapter 26, and to the epistle “To give you understanding” in Iggeres HaKodesh, which explain that suffering is good that is hidden, not perceived.

Such hidden good is called mikla dakik, “fine food”: it is truly G‑d’s life-force, in the finest of forms. For the word dakik he refers to the Zohar, which explains David’s “almost” (kim’at) as “like a fine thread,” the narrowest of measures.

This is also the sense of loving G‑d “with all your me’od,” for the Midrash on “very (me’od) good” says that “good” is the angel of life and “very” is the angel of death. The angel of death is called “very good” because its good is beyond all measure and limit.

Its good is simply not yet revealed and not grasped. The Alter Rebbe refers to the Zohar at the beginning of Yisro, which reads “good” as the right side and “very” as the left side, to the Ramaz’s comments there, and to his own explanation of “These are the journeys.”

So too “Yah has sorely chastened me”: afflictions come from the Name Yah, the first two letters of the Name Havayah, the beginning of its revelation. At that stage the good has not yet come into revelation and is not grasped, for not everything has yet been revealed.

This is the way of Nachum Ish Gam Zu, who said of whatever befell him, “This too is for the good.” He truly contemplated that the root of evil is good, and so raised the matter up to its root, to ayin, “nothingness,” the level above any defined existence, where a change could be made.

So Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, when his daughter lit the Shabbos lamp with vinegar by mistake, said: “He Who told the oil to burn will tell the vinegar to burn,” and it burned. At the root, above nature, the nature of things can be changed; the Alter Rebbe also refers to his discourse “This is the statute of the Torah,” on “Who can bring the pure out of the impure.”

Prayer in the body is to be understood in this light. Within the body the soul suffers troubles and afflictions, because it longs to cleave to its Maker and the body holds it back.

Just as the Shechinah in exile is compelled to give life even to the wicked, so the soul is compelled to give life to the body. Its purpose is not its own benefit but to raise the body up from the dust.

The soul must refine the body as a refiner purifies silver: the more dross is mixed in, the hotter the flame must be. So too the body must be refined of the evil inclination and brought back to its root.

Bringing the evil to its root means seeing it as in the parable of the king’s son and the harlot, as serving the King’s will. The greater the mixture of evil, the greater and stronger the fire of prayer needed to separate it and cleave to G‑d; the Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of “And I shall be sanctified” in Parshas Emor.

That is why in the First Temple era, when there was little evil, fervent prayer was not needed. Bringing the evil and the judgments back to their root through the offerings was enough.

In the Second Temple era they began to institute prayer, and it was short. Its length matched the fire that was needed, in proportion to the evil mixed within the people.

Our own generation must pray more and more, with very great fervor, and so must every later generation. As the next words explain, this is no sign of greater merit.

It is not that “the generations have become more worthy,” a phrase the Talmud uses as a question of surprise; on the contrary, the evil mixed into each generation has grown. So a stronger fire of prayer is needed to separate the evil, refine it and bring it back to its root.

Bringing evil to its root means contemplating, as in the parable of the king’s son and the harlot, that the evil’s life-force comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. Without Him it could not live at all, and He gives it life only in the way the parable describes.

Seen this way, there is no evil at all. So too with the afflictions of this world: when a person thinks of them in this way, “all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered,” and the forces of evil lose their hold.

All the tzaddikim regarded suffering in this way, seeing its root as good. Nachum Ish Gam Zu alone could also change the flow that came down from above, so that its goodness was seen openly below, in physical terms, as when the dust that replaced his jewels turned into swords and arrows.

That is why the name is gam zu, “this too”: zu, “this,” is said of something that can be pointed to and grasped. The Alter Rebbe refers to Etz Chaim on the meaning of gam, and to its later version (Mahadura Basra), where gam is a drawing-down from the hidden world (alma de’iskasya) into the revealed world (alma de’isgalya), which is called zu.

He also refers to his discourse on the Menorah, on G‑d’s promise to Yaakov, “And I will also (gam) surely bring you up”: the level of gam itself will have an ascent. From this comes the special power of Nachum Ish Gam Zu.

The other tzaddikim, though they thought in the same way, could not bring the hidden good down. It stayed above as it was before, and that good was not grasped below.

This answers the first question: the serpent had to be set on a pole because the serpent itself had to be raised on high while the people looked upward. One must not think of the serpent as something separate from G‑d, for then it would be real evil and would remain evil.

When one sees the serpent raised to its root, not separate from G‑d and drawing its life from Him as in the parable of the harlot, then no evil descends from above. That is why it was made of copper, a metal that changes into several hues: the change comes through ayin, the level of nothingness where things can be transformed.

In Kabbalistic terms, citing the Zohar and Etz Chaim, the harsh gevuros (severities) expressed in the fiery serpents are sweetened through the copper serpent. The copper serpent is Tiferes, the harmonizing attribute, of kelipas nogah, the husk that holds both good and evil, at the level of Atzilus.

This happens through looking upward, which raises kelipas nogah to its root in the World of Tohu, the primordial world that preceded the ordered worlds; the good within it then prevails, since no evil descends from above. Then the good in Tiferes of nogah is bound with Tiferes of holiness in Atzilus.

Through Tiferes of holiness the gevuros of holiness are also sweetened by the chasadim; this is the “peace in the household above,” harmony among the heavenly forces. Iggeres HaKodesh, on the verse “And the work of tzedakah shall be peace,” explains it at length.

From there peace is drawn into the household below, the chambers (heichalos) of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, until even in the chambers of nogah the good prevails and the evil is sweetened. This too comes through Tiferes of nogah, which is the copper serpent.

All this depends on looking upward and subjecting the heart to the Father in heaven, in the words of the Mishnah with which the maamar began. The Alter Rebbe adds several pages of the Zohar, Part II, which speak of copper and the “mountains of copper.”

He refers also to the Zohar on Mikeitz, to the Midrash Rabbah on Noach and to the Jerusalem Talmud. The Midrash tells that Moshe, told only “make a saraf” without being told of what, chose copper, nechoshes, because the word echoes nachash, “serpent”; the Yerushalmi likewise notes that the material was not specified, and that Moshe reasoned that its essence is a nachash.