אלה מסעי בני ישראל אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים…

The maamar opens with the first verse of Parshas Masei, which says that Israel’s journeys out of Egypt were “by the hand of Moshe and Aharon,” and sets beside it a verse from Psalms that uses the same words. The rest of the maamar explains what Moshe and Aharon stand for in a person’s own service of G‑d.

The Alter Rebbe lays down a basic rule for anyone who wants to cleave to G‑d, starting from Psalm 24. The psalm asks who is worthy to ascend G‑d’s mountain and stand in His holy place.

The psalm answers: one with clean hands and a pure heart, which the Alter Rebbe reads as a heart entirely free of any admixture. In the next phrase the written text has “his soul” while the traditional reading is “My soul,” and he brings a verse in which a person lifts up his soul to G‑d.

The Talmud’s saying that the Shechinah rests on every gathering of ten Jews suggests why the verse can read “My soul”: the Divine Presence rests within Jews, so the soul a person lifts up is, in a sense, G‑d’s as well. The demand, then, is that a person’s spiritual self-elevation must not be empty or false.

Such complete purity of heart is so far beyond ordinary reach that the Alter Rebbe applies to it the words of Ecclesiastes, “deep, deep; who can find it?” The way to it, he says, is through “Moshe and Aharon,” two modes of serving G‑d that the maamar goes on to explain. He begins with a Mishnah that seems to make any start impossible.

The Mishnah makes wisdom and fear of G‑d depend on each other. Since neither can exist without the other, it seems one could never begin with either.

Another Mishnah resolves the circle: fear of sin should come before wisdom, and then the wisdom will endure. The Alter Rebbe explains the resolution by distinguishing two kinds of evil.

The first kind is whatever is actually forbidden, and even a minor rabbinic prohibition (“the words of the Scribes”) counts as complete evil. Here fear of sin must come first, without waiting for understanding.

Such evil is utterly repugnant to G‑d, who is “too pure of eyes to look upon evil,” and Scripture calls it “an abomination.” Keeping away from it needs no wisdom, only simple fear of sin.

The second kind of evil lies within what is permitted. Rava’s teaching “Sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you” asks a person to hold back even from permitted indulgence, and the Ramban warns that without this one could be a scoundrel while breaking no explicit law.

Here wisdom must come first, since only understanding can show a person why to refrain from what is permitted. That wisdom comes through Moshe and Aharon, whom the Zohar calls the King’s groomsman and the Queen’s groomsman: a groomsman attends one side of a wedding and brings the couple together, Moshe on the side of G‑d, the King, and Aharon on the side of the Shechinah, the Queen.

Moshe, the King’s groomsman, brings G‑d’s transcendent light, sovev kol almin, down to dwell in this lowest world. This fulfills the Midrash that G‑d desired a dwelling place among the lower realms.

This drawing down happens through Torah and mitzvos. The Torah is made entirely of G‑d’s Names (as the Ramban writes in his introduction to the Torah, according to the Kehot note), and a name is expressed in letters, yet even so it is beyond our understanding.

Even what is merely a “name” in relation to G‑d, an outward designation rather than His essence, is still far above human intellect. The mitzvos likewise draw G‑dliness down; they are called “the limbs of the King,” a phrase the next paragraph explains.

Paragraph 3 called the mitzvos “the limbs of the King,” and here the comparison is explained. Just as each limb of the body carries the soul’s life-force, each mitzvah carries G‑dly life-force.

Wrapping oneself in the tallis draws the encompassing light, sovev kol almin, to surround and hover over a person, as the tallis itself surrounds him. Tefillin draw down G‑d’s oneness.

When G‑dliness is drawn down this way, evil separates from the person by itself, without a struggle, as wax melts before fire and as Mount Sinai smoked when G‑d descended on it in fire. Evil is like dry, cut thorns that catch fire at once.

Moshe’s way is the way of Daas, knowledge in the sense of a firm inner awareness: knowing that G‑d is One (a phrase from a piyut of the Days of Awe, as the Kehot note says). A person also reflects on the Talmud’s teaching that no one sins unless a “spirit of folly” enters him, so sin is never what a Jew truly wants.

As explained elsewhere (see Tanya, chapter 18), even the lowest Jew does not want to cast off G‑d’s yoke and would give up his life to sanctify G‑d’s Name. No long contemplation is needed, only the knowledge that a Jew is, in the verse’s words, “Havayah’s portion.”

One who knows this sees that thinking or speaking about bodily matters separates him from the One, and he will not want that. It is like a son, who by nature cannot be parted from his father.

The words “How beautiful is our inheritance,” from the prayers, express this bond. The verse “Even darkness does not darken from You” is read to mean that nothing can separate a Jew from G‑d: “darkness” here means fire, and even fire does not separate. With this the Alter Rebbe rereads “Sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you.”

A thing is permitted only “to you,” that is, to the body. The G‑dliness that dwells within a person has no such permission, so one who is aware of it will sanctify himself even in permitted matters.

The verse “You shall be holy, for I am holy” now reads as the reason to sanctify oneself even in permitted things: G‑d’s holiness dwells within a person. The formula said before a mitzvah, “for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah,” means the same: bringing the King to unite with His Presence below. The Alter Rebbe then turns to Aharon, the Queen’s groomsman, who awakens a person’s longing for G‑d.

Aharon’s work is an arousal from below, a longing that rises from the person toward G‑d, as in “My soul thirsts for You,” and it is awakened in prayer. It comes through contemplation during Pesukei deZimrah, the psalms of praise before the Shema, and becomes love when one reaches “And you shall love” in the Shema.

The soul already longs for G‑d, but its love is “in exile,” hidden. Just as the Sages taught that wherever Israel went into exile the Shechinah went with them, so even when a person acts like Edom the Shechinah is still with him; contemplation uncovers this love until his heart burns to be nullified before G‑d.

To show what being nullified means, the Alter Rebbe begins with something familiar: a physical deed counts for nothing beside thought, which is spiritual. He then cites the Talmud’s description of the holy Chayos, angels that it places above all the heavens, whose feet alone equal everything below them.

The Alter Rebbe reads “Chayos” as chayus, life-force: even the lowest level of life-force, which is spiritual, outweighs everything physical together. The physical and the spiritual have no common measure.

Even within the physical world, the earth is said to be like a mustard seed compared with the celestial spheres, which are physical too. How much more is everything physical as nothing beside the spiritual.

The same holds between spiritual levels: each is nullified before the one above it, as the Talmud says that each higher part of the Chayos equals all that is below it. Above them all, “before Him all is considered as nothing.”

The words “All shall exalt You, Selah,” from the Shabbos morning blessing before the Shema (as the Kehot note says), mean that the praise never ends, “Selah” meaning forever. However much G‑d is exalted, it is as nothing, for there is always more to exalt.

There is always more to exalt, and this “more” has no end, since G‑d is infinitely above any praise we can give. One might think that such exaltedness makes Him remote, but the Alter Rebbe rejects this.

Because everything is nullified before Him and counts as nothing, nothing can stand between Him and us; His very exaltedness means there is no barrier. This is Aharon’s way: to cleave to G‑d and become one with the One.

The Torah names “Aharon and Moshe” in one verse and “Moshe and Aharon” in the next, and the Alter Rebbe sees in this two orders of service. Sometimes one starts with Moshe’s path, Torah and mitzvos, which then makes it possible to pray with love.

At other times one starts with Aharon’s path, awakening love in prayer, and afterward can study and keep the mitzvos, as explained above. The Midrash cited in parentheses says that Scripture varies the order to teach that Moshe and Aharon are equal.