ויאכילך את המן וגו׳ למען הודיעך וגו׳

The maamar opens with Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moshe tells Israel that G‑d fed them the manna “in order to make you know” that man lives not by bread alone but by what comes forth from G‑d’s mouth. The Alter Rebbe first identifies the manna with dew, since it appeared when “the layer of dew went up,” and with the dew that, the Talmud says (Chagigah 12b), is stored on high to revive the dead. That dew, he says, is the level of “great mercy.”

The bridge from dew to mercy is the second blessing of the Amidah, which praises G‑d as the One “who revives the dead with great mercy.” To explain what “great mercy” is on high, the Alter Rebbe turns to Jeremiah’s prophecy that G‑d will sow Israel “with the seed of man and the seed of beast.”

The parenthesis gives the verse’s place (it is Jeremiah 31:27) and refers the reader to the Alter Rebbe’s discourse on the verse “And these are the laws” (in Torah Ohr, Parshas Mishpatim). He reads the prophecy as describing two kinds of Jewish souls, one at the level of “man” and one at the level of “beast,” and the rest of the paragraph explains both.

In Ezekiel’s vision of the Chariot each creature has four faces, with “the face of a lion on the right”; the right side is love, so the lion stands for love. Yet the prophet links the lion with fear: “A lion has roared; who will not fear?” (the verse is Amos 3:8, though the printed reference says chapter 2). The Days of Awe are called “lion” too: the Kehot note cites the Shelah, in the name of early authorities, that אריה is the initials of Elul, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Hoshana Rabbah.

Love and fear meet in a letter-play: אריה (lion) and יראה (awe) are made of the same letters. The love of the “lion” on high comes from the revelation of G‑d’s own greatness, and because “His greatness is unsearchable” (Psalms 145:3), no world can contain it.

Since the worlds cannot take in this revelation, what reaches them is “terror and dread,” in the words of the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:16). The fear comes from the limits of the receiver, not from the source.

On high this level is love; only in the recipient does it become fear. The bracket recalls an analogy explained elsewhere: a seal whose letters stand out leaves them sunken in the wax.

In the same way, G‑d’s greatness, which on high is love, is impressed on the worlds in reverse, as awe. The Talmud (Yoma 21b) and the Zohar describe the fire on the altar as crouching in the form of a lion and consuming the offerings; this lion-fire is that revelation of greatness.

The fat and the blood are the parts of an offering that belong to the altar, and they are what this revelation consumes. So the verse calls G‑d “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), one that burns up all the fires. The worlds’ own love, by contrast, comes from the face of the ox on the Chariot’s left side.

The left side is Gevurah, the attribute that restrains and hides G‑d’s greatness from the worlds. The love that arises through this hiding is called behemah (“beast”), a feminine word, because like Nukva it only receives, here from the ox. It is also called ahavas olam, and the next parts explain the name.

This love exists precisely because G‑d’s life-force is hidden within the worlds: the hidden life-force strains upward to return to its source and be absorbed in it, in the light that encompasses all worlds. The Alter Rebbe cites “O G‑d, do not be silent” (Psalms 83:2), which the Zohar reads as a cry that never stops.

The Zohar (2:140a) applies the psalm to a call that “is never stilled.” A person who keeps contemplating how G‑d’s life-force is hidden in the world (olam, “world,” comes from helem, “concealment,” a reading the Kehot note traces to the Tikkunei Zohar) is stirred by the same longing to rise to its source.

“To be illumined with the light of life” is a phrase from Job 33:30. The text names this love, born of the world’s concealment, “the great beast” and also “the lesser love” (ahavah zuta), the love that lives within the worlds; paragraph 2 will use the name “the great beast” for a still higher love, above the level of “man.” The level of “man” is the figure Ezekiel saw upon the throne, “as the appearance of a man” (Ezekiel 1:26).

That figure stands for the “masters of Torah,” a phrase the Kehot note traces to the introduction of the Tikkunei Zohar. A human body has 248 limbs and 365 sinews, a structure that no animal shares.

The Torah has the same structure as a human being: 248 positive commandments, like the limbs, and 365 prohibitions, like the sinews. That is why “man” stands above “beast”: love and awe are only “wings” that carry a person up to the Torah, and the Torah itself is the essential thing.

Asaf’s words in Psalms 73:22, “I was [like] beasts with You,” use the plural behemos. The Alter Rebbe reads the plural as pointing to a second “beast,” higher than the level of “man,” called “the great beast.”

This higher “beast” is ahavah rabbah, great love, which goes beyond any knowledge the worlds can grasp, because it comes from the light that encompasses all worlds, before which everything is nothing. The bracket points to Etz Chaim’s account of the supernal configurations, the partzufim.

According to Etz Chaim, even the highest partzufim of Atzilus first drew their nourishment from two “breasts of the beast”: the “beast” is a source above them. From this higher “beast” comes the “great mercy” with which the maamar began.

A parable explains why great mercy comes from so high a level. The more exalted a king is above his ministers and subjects, the more compassion he feels for them, because they are so lowly compared to him.

The greater the distance, the greater the compassion. So it is with G‑d: before His Infinite Light all things are nullified and count as nothing, even the highest worlds.

Eliphaz’s words in Job 15:15, “the heavens are not pure in His eyes,” show that even the upper worlds are lowly before G‑d, and so His compassion for them is great. That compassion reaches even the lower and upper Gan Eden, the realms where souls receive their reward, and the bracket refers to the Alter Rebbe’s discourse on Isaiah 54:10, “For the mountains may depart.”

The Talmud (Berakhot 17a) describes the World to Come: “the righteous sit and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.” The Alter Rebbe points out that this is only a radiance spreading out from G‑d, not G‑d Himself.

In G‑d’s own essence there is no room even for Gan Eden as a separate thing, for everything is absorbed in His oneness. Nothing there has an existence of its own that could be named.

The bracket refers to the discourse “I will sing to Havayah” in Torah Ohr, Parshas Beshalach, on the hidden world. The Talmud (Berakhot 34b) distinguishes Eden, which “no eye has seen,” from the Garden (Gan) that it waters, and so Eden is the higher level.

Eden corresponds to Chochmah, the first flash of divine wisdom, and yet Psalms 104:24, “You have made them all with wisdom,” counts even wisdom as mere “making” compared to G‑d. G‑d’s compassion therefore extends even to these lofty levels, which have descended so far as to be nothing before Him.

Having shown that G‑d’s mercy grows with the lowliness of its object, the Alter Rebbe turns to the reader: he should feel that same great mercy for his own soul. Its core is a spark of G‑dliness, “a part of G‑d above” (Job 31:2), of the G‑dliness that never changes: “I, Havayah, have not changed” (Malachi 3:6), who “was, is, and will be,” as the piyyut “And all believe” says, and “You are He before the world was created,” as the liturgy says.

This unchanging spark is held captive by the vanities of the world, which hide the truth, and by a life spent on things that are nothing. Even Torah study can belong to these vanities when it is done “for the sake of his own honor,” as the Zohar (1:223b) puts it.

Torah studied to make oneself a “somebody” is, in the Zohar’s words, toil “under the sun,” and of all that is under the sun Koheles says, “all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14). Each person is to think this through deeply, according to what he honestly knows of himself.

Since “a person knows his own soul,” no one else can make this reckoning for him. Seeing how low and how far from G‑d his soul has fallen, he will feel great mercy and pity for it.

This mercy brings the soul back to life, in the same way that the dead will be revived. The Resurrection will come through dew, “For Your dew is a dew of lights” (Isaiah 26:19), the dew that, the Zohar says, drips from Atika, “the Ancient One,” the innermost level of the divine Crown (Keser).

The Alter Rebbe explains how this dew revives: there will be an overwhelming revelation from G‑d, the Source of all life, so that, in Isaiah’s words (40:5), “the glory of Havayah will be revealed.” Then even a place that holds only the faintest trace of life will be affected.

Every scattered trace of life will be aroused, rise toward the One and dissolve in Him like a candle’s flame before a torch, and be gathered from wherever it was cast. The dead can be revived because a “measure of life,” a phrase from the Zohar (1:83a), always remains in them.

The same happens in a person’s spiritual life: a soul bound up in worldly vanities is considered dead, as the verse in Isaiah (53:9) hints and as the Talmud (Berakhot 18b) says, “the wicked in their lifetime are called dead.” Even the life they do have is counted as death.

When a person arouses great mercy for his own soul, great mercy is aroused for it from Above. Every remaining spark of life in him is then gathered back to its source, and he receives abundant new life.

The great mercy described in paragraphs 2 and 3 reaches the worlds through the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, the attributes G‑d revealed to Moshe. Because this mercy is boundless, it needs a channel before anything finite can receive it.

Boundless mercy can enter the worlds only through contractions: the Thirteen Attributes (middos) act as measures (middah) that give it a proportion the worlds can bear. The bracket brings Psalms 133:2, “Like the good oil upon the head, running down upon the beard.”

The Zohar (1:88a) reads the oil and the “dew of Chermon” in that psalm as one: “It is oil and it is dew.” So the dew of great mercy “runs down upon the beard,” clothing itself in the thirteen tikkunim (arrangements) of the supernal beard, which are the Thirteen Attributes.

The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto), in his commentary, quotes the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah that the beard has two levels: the hairs themselves and an inner level. The Kehot note cites Or HaTorah for the details: the hairs are the root of Imma, while the inner level within the hollow of each hair is “the good oil running down upon the beard.”

The thirteen correspond to the twelve tribes plus Levi, the tribe that includes them all. That is why the Thirteen Attributes are recited in Selichos from Rosh Chodesh Elul, the season when this mercy is aroused; the Kehot note cites the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 581) for the custom.

Psalms 119:156, “Great are Your mercies, Havayah; according to Your judgments, grant me life,” describes this mercy: it draws life even into the place of judgment. This is also the prayer of the Days of Awe, “Inscribe us for a good life.”

In Isaiah 63:16 Israel tells G‑d that even Avraham and Yisrael do not know them, but “You, Havayah, are our Father”; the Alter Rebbe identifies “Havayah our Father” with great mercy. The bracket supports this from the Ramaz: Abba, the supernal “Father,” receives its very existence from the inner level of the beard, the Thirteen Attributes of paragraph 4.

The bracket also refers to the Alter Rebbe’s discussion of this verse in connection with Megillas Esther. Because “our Father” is great mercy, during the Ten Days of Teshuvah we say Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, our King,” a custom the Rema records.

This level is higher than the Patriarchs, even though “the Patriarchs are themselves the Chariot” (Bereishis Rabbah 47:6), wholly given over to G‑d’s will. G‑d told Moshe, “By My Name Havayah I was not known to them” (Exodus 6:3), which the Alter Rebbe reads as their lacking a bond with “Havayah our Father.”

Now the maamar returns to its verse: the manna, the dew of great mercy, is the food “which your fathers did not know” (Deuteronomy 8:16). The Patriarchs had no knowledge of the level from which the manna came.

The parenthesis lists Midrashim on this theme; Bamidbar Rabbah 1:2, for instance, says that Israel ate the manna in Moshe’s merit, “which the holy Patriarchs did not see.” The verse then continues: G‑d fed them the manna to teach “that not by bread alone does man live.”

The Talmud (Yevamot 109b) teaches that one who says he has “nothing but Torah” does not even have Torah. In this light the Alter Rebbe reads the verse: “not by this,” by Torah study alone, does “man” live.

The “man” of the verse is the supernal Man seen upon the throne (Ezekiel 1:26), whom, as the Zohar (3:7b) says, Israel “sustains.” What gives Him “life” is everything “that comes forth from the mouth of Havayah”: a person’s contemplating, as he learns, that the Torah is G‑d’s own word, for “the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one.”

This is the “dew of Torah” of the Tikkunei Zohar (12a): “Whoever occupies himself with Torah, the dew of Torah revives him.” The Torah comes from the level that encompasses all worlds, yet it has become physical, written in ink as letters on a scroll; the bracket refers to the Alter Rebbe’s discourses on “my speech shall distill as the dew” (Deuteronomy 32:2) and on “He will revive us after two days” (Hosea 6:2).

Now the opening verse is explained: the manna makes known (“in order to make you know”) that something from a level the Patriarchs never knew could become physical food, pounded in a mortar (Numbers 11:8). From the manna we learn about the Torah: G‑d’s own word, which came down and clothed itself in physical letters.

That is why “man” lives through this: through the Torah, G‑d’s own word clothed in physical letters, which is the dew that revives. The bracket lists passages in the Zohar that explain “by everything that comes forth from the mouth of Havayah.”