כי תהיין לאיש שתי נשים האחת אהובה והאחת…

The maamar opens with the Torah’s case of a man with two wives, one loved and one hated, whose firstborn son is the son of the hated one. The Alter Rebbe sets out to understand why the firstborn, the first and most important son, should come specifically from the “hated” wife; by the end of the maamar the two wives will turn out to be the two souls within every Jew.

He begins with a teaching of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s chief disciple, in his work on holiness (Shaarei Kedushah): every Jew has two souls, as hinted by the plural “souls” in Isaiah’s verse. The first is the vital, animal soul, which lives in the blood and gives life to the body.

This soul does not come to a person directly from G‑d: it passes down through many intermediate stages, including the angelic “princes” and the mazalos, the heavenly constellations through which G‑d directs nature. The Sages’ saying about the blade of grass shows that even the smallest thing below receives its life through such an intermediary above.

The verse from Ecclesiastes describes a hierarchy in which every power stands under a higher one, a picture of the many links between the soul’s source and this world. Each step down is a further concealment and contraction of G‑d’s light, until the soul is finally clothed in a physical body of flesh and blood.

Because it has come so far from its source, the animal soul is a mixture of good and evil. Bad traits come from the “evil elements” in it, the negative sides of the elements of which everything physical is made, and so does ordinary human intellect.

Like every soul, the animal soul has intellect (Chochmah, Binah and Daas) and emotions (middos). It is this soul that makes it possible for a person to go against G‑d’s will; the verse “And a soul, if it sins” is cited to show that the capacity to sin belongs to a soul.

The root of sin is the feeling of independent existence. Because G‑d’s light is so heavily concealed at this level, a person feels himself to be yesh, a “something” standing on its own rather than nothing before G‑d, and from that feeling comes the possibility of transgression.

The second soul, found in every Jew, is the G‑dly soul, called, in words taken from Job, “a part of G‑d above.” Unlike the animal soul it comes to a person directly from G‑d, with no intermediaries, and the Alter Rebbe reads the verse “G‑d made man yashar” in that sense: yashar means upright, and also straight, that is, direct.

The parenthesis gives the verse’s place, the end of chapter 7 of Ecclesiastes. Two more texts show that the soul comes directly from G‑d: the morning blessing “You breathed it into me,” where “You” means G‑d Himself, and the verse in Genesis in which G‑d “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”

Breath is the analogy: a person’s breath comes from deep within him, and yet as it goes out it remains connected to him. So the G‑dly soul, though it has come out from G‑d, stays united with Him without a break, because, as Tanya (chapter 21) explains, G‑d’s speech never becomes separate from Him, for there is nothing outside Him.

Since the G‑dly soul is always united with G‑d, its source (its “Emanator”), there is no room in it for sin. If a person had only this soul, sinning and going against G‑d’s will would simply not be possible.

Sin becomes possible only because the animal soul “clothes” the G‑dly soul and hides the Infinite Light from it, as a garment hides what it covers. The Alter Rebbe refers to Likkutei Amarim, the first part of the Tanya, where this is explained at length.

The two souls are also hinted at in the verse “Let us make man in Our image (tzelem), after Our likeness (demus).” The G‑dly soul corresponds to the “image” and the vital soul to the “likeness.”

Here is the purpose of it all: the G‑dly soul came down into the world to enter the animal soul, fight it and refine it, separating its good from its evil and raising it to G‑d. The goal, in the Zohar’s phrase, is “to turn darkness into light”: not only to defeat the darkness but to transform it. This is why the soul bears the name Yisrael.

When Yaakov’s name was changed to Yisrael, he was told “you have striven (sarisa) with Elokim and with men, and have prevailed,” and the Alter Rebbe reads sarisa as “ruled over”: the G‑dly soul must rule the animal soul and turn its thoughts and emotions, which are not directed to G‑d, from evil to good. “Elokim” here means the emotions, as the verse about the “sons of Elokim” shows. The text as printed here has the word ויראו (“saw”) twice, evidently a doubling; the Kehot edition reads ויבאו (“came”) in the first place, a phrase it traces to Job 1:6, “and the sons of Elokim came.”

Onkelos, the classic Aramaic translation of the Torah, renders “sons of Elokim” as “sons of the great ones,” showing that elohim can mean powers; so the “Elokim” with which Yisrael strives are the soul’s powerful emotions. “Men” stands for the faculty of action, the level of enosh, ordinary mortal man. All of these are to be turned to good by the G‑dly soul, which is never hidden from its source.

The G‑dly soul refines the vital soul and raises it until it too is nullified and absorbed in G‑d’s light. The name Yisrael is read as two words, yashar El: yashar, “upright,” and El, a name that denotes strength and rule, the strength the G‑dly soul needs to win its war with the vital soul.

The war is fought every day. Psalms says “The days of our years, in them, are seventy years,” and the Alter Rebbe stresses the extra word “in them”: our days are lived in the two souls, and each day brings a new battle between them. This explains why people’s lifespans differ.

How long a person lives depends on the war he must wage: the more evil there is in his animal soul, the more years he needs to fight it until it has been turned to good.

The verse “And now, Yisrael” is read with the stress on “now.” It is in the present era, when good and evil are mixed, that the soul is called Yisrael, the name of the one who rules and prevails, because it must defeat the animal soul and transform it.

In the Time to Come, as Zechariah promises, G‑d will remove the spirit of impurity from the world. With no evil left, there will be no battle to fight.

Then the soul will no longer be called Yisrael, a name that speaks of struggle. The Alter Rebbe suggests, with a “perhaps,” a link to the Talmud’s teaching (Bava Basra 75b) that in the future the righteous will be called by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He; the Rashbam there explains that their name will be G‑d’s Name.

Now a question. Before it came down, the vital soul too was nullified in G‑d’s light in its source; why, then, did it have to fall so low that the G‑dly soul had to follow it down to refine it?

Before answering, the Alter Rebbe explains the war itself and when it is fought. The Zohar teaches that the time of battle is the time of prayer, and the Tikkunei Zohar says that whoever kills the serpent, the evil within, is given “the King’s daughter,” which is prayer.

The war begins in the morning prayers. In Pesukei deZimrah, the psalms and verses of praise that open the service, a person separates the evil in his animal soul from its good. Psalms pictures the faithful with “the high praises of G‑d in their throat and a two-edged sword in their hand”: the praise itself is the sword.

The sword’s “two edges” (piyos, literally “mouths”) are two actions: lifting the good upward and cutting the evil away downward. The Alter Rebbe refers the reader to the Raaya Mehemna, a part of the Zohar, at the beginning of Parshas Shoftim, and then explains how the praise does this: through contemplating G‑d’s greatness.

One contemplates how G‑d gives life to all creatures and constantly brings them into being, so that before Him they are nullified and, in the Zohar’s words, “all before Him is considered as nothing.” Even the supernal attributes listed in “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness …” are nullified before Him, as Elijah’s prayer in the Tikkunei Zohar says: G‑d is not any of these attributes at all.

G‑d Himself is infinitely above even the supernal attributes. When the angels in Isaiah’s vision call Him “Holy,” the word means set apart: above even the two ways His light relates to creation, memalei kol almin, the light that fills each world from within, and sovev kol almin, the light that encompasses all worlds from beyond. The Sages’ saying that His humility is found wherever His greatness is points the same way.

Though G‑d’s greatness is limitless, He is so far above it that greatness itself counts as humility and lowliness beside Him. When a person contemplates this deeply, the evil in his soul is “scattered” of itself, in the words of Psalms, without his having to fight it head-on.

This works because evil has no life of its own. Evil and the sitra achra, the “other side” opposed to holiness, draw their vitality only from the “back” of holiness, its outermost side rather than its “face,” and that vitality reaches them through the Torah’s 365 prohibitions.

Since evil depends on holiness, it vanishes before holiness as darkness vanishes before light. But separating the evil is only the first stage; it must also be wiped out entirely.

The Torah’s command “You shall utterly destroy them” and the Zohar’s “turn darkness into light” describe this second stage, and the Shema accomplishes it. The Shema is called a “spear” (romach), like the one Pinchas took in his hand: its 248 words (the number written רמ״ח, the letters of romach without the vav) together with the six words of “Shema Yisrael” (the value of vav) spell romach. The Alter Rebbe refers the reader to Me’orei Or, a lexicon of Kabbalistic terms.

A spear takes a person’s life entirely, and so the Shema does not merely push the evil aside: it destroys it completely.

To show how, the Alter Rebbe explains “Hear, O Israel, Havayah is our G‑d, Havayah is One.” The word echad, “One,” is read by its letters: the alef stands for the One G‑d, the ches, whose value is eight, for the seven heavens and the earth, and the dalet, whose value is four, for the four directions. In this sense “One” means that G‑d is the one reality throughout the created world, and so it applies only once there are worlds.

The same holds in the spiritual realms above: once the supernal attributes were emanated, they too are united in G‑d’s oneness. The ches corresponds to the seven attributes listed in “Yours is the greatness and the might …,” and the dalet to the four chayos, the holy creatures of Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot, with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle; He unites them all, because they are all nullified before Him.

But G‑d’s own Being and Essence, as He is before any creation, is above even the category of “One,” which describes unity among many; He is not within the bounds of worlds at all. Sefer Yetzirah asks, “Before one, what do you count?”: His Essence is infinitely beyond any counting.

This Essence is what the first “Havayah” of the Shema refers to: “Havayah our G‑d,” with the stress on “our.” Even the angels cannot grasp it; they can only call Him “Holy,” utterly removed, and ask “Where is the place of His glory?” Only the souls of Israel, which were drawn from that very level, are bound to it.

As the first paragraph explained, the souls of Israel come from G‑d with no concealment, and so they are called “a part of Havayah.” The Alter Rebbe connects this with the Talmud’s account of Sinai, where a heavenly voice asked, “Who revealed this secret to My children?”, and identifies it with the supernal secret of “He made darkness His hiding place,” hidden even from the angels.

Shema means “hear,” and also “understand.” The thoughtful person is to contemplate deeply and fix his mind firmly on how G‑d, as it were, set aside all the higher and lower beings in order to be, in truth, “Havayah our G‑d.”

He is also to consider how the soul, “a part of G‑d,” came down from so high a place to so low a place, clothed within the vital soul. Such thoughts should make his soul and spirit pine away for G‑d, longing to return to Him.

From this he reaches “You shall love Havayah your G‑d,” which the Alter Rebbe reads in two ways. As an intransitive verb it describes the person’s own state: wanting Havayah to be his G‑d. As a transitive verb it means “making” love, arousing G‑d’s love above, as Malachi says, “I have loved you, says Havayah.”

This love blazes like the “flashes of fire” of the Song of Songs, until the soul longs to be nullified and absorbed in G‑d’s light, helped by the love that comes from above (“Tell me, you whom my soul loves”). From here he rises to “with all your might” (me’odecha), from me’od, “very much”: a love without limit, beyond the grasp of reason.

Job’s verse describes this: “He reveals deep things out of darkness.” When a person reveals in his heart the deepest level, “Havayah our G‑d,” hidden in the darkness of “He made darkness His hiding place,” the darkness of the animal soul is turned to light, and its evil, the “shadow of death,” is turned to good.

In earlier generations evil was weaker, and the Shema alone was enough to nullify it completely. Now, in the “footsteps of Mashiach,” the era before the Redemption, evil has grown much stronger, and the Shema alone can no longer finish it.

Therefore the Sages instituted the Eighteen Blessings, the Amidah. Its blessings say “Blessed (baruch) are You,” and baruch is read as “drawing down”: we ask that G‑d, addressed directly as “You,” Havayah our G‑d, be drawn into us and revealed in our hearts, so that evil vanishes of itself, as darkness before light.

The blessing “Forgive us” is not a plea to escape punishment. It is like a person asking a friend’s forgiveness: what he wants above all is that the friend’s goodwill toward him be restored, and he asks for it by arousing the friend’s compassion.

In the same way we ask that G‑d’s will, His favor, be revealed through the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, called in the language of Kabbalah “thirteen rivers of pure balsam.” They cleanse Israel’s sins, so that no “screen” remains to separate us from the revelation of His will.

The days of Elul are set apart for arousing the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, and Yom Kippur brings the full revelation of G‑d’s will. So it was after the sin of the Golden Calf: Israel was told of G‑d’s forgiveness on Yom Kippur, because that is when the Will is revealed.

The Alter Rebbe returns to the great love of “with all your might” described above. It is greater and stronger, far higher, than the love the soul had before it came down into this world.

This love comes specifically through refining the vital soul and nullifying its evil: the deep things are revealed “out of darkness.” Ecclesiastes speaks of “the advantage of light from darkness”: light that emerges from darkness shines with an advantage that light alone does not have.

That is the purpose of the soul’s descent: to refine and cleanse the evil of the animal soul and so reach this great love, higher than anything it had in its source. This answers the question asked at the end of the first paragraph.

Why does the refined animal soul reach so high? Because its root is very high: it comes from “the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the children of Israel,” who in the Kabbalah are the lights that shattered in the breaking of the vessels. Falling through that breaking into many concealments and contractions, it now covers and hides G‑d’s unity.

Therefore, once the G‑dly soul has refined the vital soul and separated its evil out, the vital soul reaches, of itself, the great love described above.

That love has the greater eminence of the soul’s root, as it was before its descent. This is the meaning of the verse: the “firstborn son,” the first and highest, comes specifically from the animal soul, the “hated” wife, because its root is in the level of “before any king reigned.”

In the verse, “hated” is first spelled snu’ah, with a vav, but here lasniah, with a yud, which the Alter Rebbe reads as a different word. It recalls the Talmud’s reading of the name Sinai as the mountain from which hatred (sin’ah) descended to the idol-worshippers; the Alter Rebbe draws from it the soul’s utter loathing of evil, brought about by the revelation of G‑d’s will and of the love above reason.