אלה מסעי בנ״י כו׳ ויכתב משה את מוצאיהם…

The maamar opens with Numbers 33:1–2, which introduces the list of Israel’s encampments in the desert. In the first half of verse 2 the order is “goings-forth,” then “journeys”; in the second half it is reversed, “journeys,” then “goings-forth.” The maamar asks why.

A second question: why does the verse stress that Moshe wrote this list, when Moshe wrote the whole Torah? The Talmud (Bava Basra 15a) describes how the Torah was written: “the Holy One, blessed be He, says, and Moshe says and writes.”

The answer begins with the journeys themselves. Israel traveled and camped forty-two times in the desert, and the Ark went with them, as the Torah describes in the verses “When the Ark set out” and “when it rested” (Numbers 10:35–36).

The Ark was built only later, so the earliest journeys, before Israel reached Sinai, were made without it. Still, all forty-two journeys correspond to the Name of forty-two letters, the Kabbalistic Name formed by the initials of the forty-two words of the prayer Ana Bekoach (“We beseech You, by the great power of Your right hand…”).

One might object that the forty years of wandering were simply a punishment for the sin of the spies, not a planned spiritual pattern. The Alter Rebbe answers that G‑d is “the Cause of causes”: even an event with a visible cause has Him as its ultimate cause, so the journeys carry a purpose of their own.

Even on the plain level of the Torah there is a reason for the forty years. The Midrash says that the Canaanites hid their treasures in their houses, and that all the years Israel was in the desert the people of the land were building houses and planting vineyards, so that Israel would find the land full of blessing and the promise of “houses full of all good things” (Deuteronomy 6:11) would be fulfilled.

On the inner, Kabbalistic level, the books explain that the forty-two journeys were meant to subdue “the great and awesome desert” (Deuteronomy 1:19), the spiritual force the desert stands for. The journeys could do this because they correspond to the forty-two-letter Name.

The question: how can one speak of subduing a desert, an empty place where nobody lives? The answer that follows treats the desert as a spiritual reality, not only a landscape.

The prophet calls it “the desert of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:35), and the Alter Rebbe explains that the desert is the source from which all the kelipos, the forces that conceal holiness, draw their sustenance. It is the counterpart of Jerusalem, the source of holy blessing for the whole world, the place Yaakov called “the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17), through which G‑d’s flow comes down.

Jerusalem is where “Havayah commanded the blessing” (Psalms 133:3), and from there all other lands received their share. The Alter Rebbe cites the Zohar, which describes all the goodness and sustenance of the inhabited world as coming down from there.

Because Jerusalem is the source of blessing, it stands at the center of the inhabited world, as the Midrash also says. And since “G‑d has made this opposite that” (Ecclesiastes 7:14), holiness has a counterpart: the desert, the source of all the kelipos.

This is why the desert is barren, a land of salt that yields no fruit. Holiness by its nature gives and does not take back, as the Talmud says, and G‑d “gives life to them all” (Nehemiah 9:6) constantly; a land that produces nothing is the opposite of holiness.

Kelipah is the reverse of holiness: like the leech whose daughters cry “Give, give!” (Proverbs 30:15), it takes everything for itself and gives nothing to others. The Alter Rebbe lists several places in the Zohar where this “give, give” is discussed.

Jewish law reflects this: desert earth may not be used for covering the blood of a slaughtered bird or wild animal, because the Mishnah allows covering only with earth that can grow plants. When Israel traveled through the desert they subdued the kelipos there, and what those fathers did has its effect on their descendants.

Because that generation subdued the source of kelipah, every later Jew can subdue his own body, which comes from kelipah and is called “the serpent’s skin.” As David says, “I was formed in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalms 51:7): a person’s physical existence begins in physical desire.

The Midrash on Tazria explains David’s verse: his father did not intend to bring him into being but acted for his own pleasure. The body’s agreement to serve G‑d, to the point of “You shall love Havayah your G‑d” (Deuteronomy 6:5), is possible only because the source of the kelipos was already subdued in the desert.

Without this, no one could overcome his body and animal soul. Since the root has already been subdued, the branches, each person’s body and animal soul, can be subdued as well; the Alter Rebbe calls this a relationship of “general and particular,” in which what was done to the general source reaches each particular.

Section 2 opens with a deeper question: why did G‑d create the kelipos at all, if they must later be subdued? It would seem better to have neither the kelipos nor the work of subduing them.

The answer begins with a verse and its Talmudic reading: “What (mah) does Havayah your G‑d ask of you” (Deuteronomy 10:12) is read as “a hundred” (me’ah), the hundred blessings a person must say each day (Menachos 43b). The word mah will become a key to the whole answer.

Every blessing combines two forms of speech: it addresses G‑d directly (“Blessed are You”) and then speaks of Him in the hidden third person (“who has sanctified us”); the Alter Rebbe refers to the Arizal’s teachings in Pri Etz Chaim on this. “Blessed are You” is the direct address.

Direct address fits the G‑dliness that gives life to all creation through the divine “letters,” from alef to tav, by which everything is made. With a single divine thought the whole world was created, with its endless multitude of creations, each level higher than the next.

The prayer “And holy ones praise You every day, selah” comes after the angels’ Kedushah of “Holy” and “Blessed”; the Alter Rebbe reads “holy ones” as the souls, whose praise is “selah,” without end. So the souls, too, rise without end, level beyond level.

The books usually speak of only two levels of Gan Eden, lower and higher. Yet even entry into the lower Gan Eden requires prior judgment, as Rabbi Meir said of Acher (Elisha ben Avuyah): “It is better that he be judged” and then enter the World to Come (Chagigah 15b).

If even the lower Gan Eden is so lofty, the higher one is all the more so; and in truth there are countless levels beyond it, which is why “Torah scholars have no rest” even in the World to Come (Berachos 64a). The angels too are beyond counting: “a thousand thousands” is only one troop (Chagigah 13b). And all of this came from a single divine thought.

Therefore all of creation is “as nothing” before G‑d. The analogy: in a person, a single thought is as nothing even compared to the power of thought alone.

The power of thought, made of the twenty-two letters in the human soul, can produce endless thoughts, so one thought is nothing beside it. All the more so beside the essence of the soul, for which even the whole power of thought is only a garment.

The Alter Rebbe now explains the two parts of a blessing. “Blessed” means drawing down and revealing the divine “letters of thought,” the creative power that brings the worlds into being; it says “You,” addressing G‑d directly, because this is the G‑dliness that fills all worlds (memalei kol almin), present within each creature and giving it life.

“Who has sanctified us” speaks of G‑d in the hidden third person, because it refers to the G‑dliness that encompasses all worlds (sovev kol almin), before whose essence even the creative “thought” is nullified. The human soul offers a parallel: a person’s thought is nullified before his intellect.

Thought is only a garment of the soul, while intellect belongs to the soul’s essence, and above intellect stand the higher powers and the essence itself. In the same way, G‑d’s creative thought is nullified before the Supreme Will, which is above thought, and there is something higher even than will.

The mitzvos are the Supreme Will itself, so by doing them a person draws down a revelation of the Infinite One: not only the creative thought, but the One who has the will and the thought.

In parentheses, the Alter Rebbe recalls why the Sages call G‑d “the Holy One, blessed be He”: “Holy” corresponds to the light that encompasses all worlds, and “Blessed” to the light that fills them. He developed this in his discourse on the Talmud’s story of the dispute in the Heavenly Academy (Bava Metzia 86a).

In that story the Heavenly Academy disputed a law of tzaraas until “the Holy One, blessed be He, says: pure.” Because a blessing must reach both levels, it combines direct address (“Blessed are You”) with the hidden third person (“who has sanctified us”), and together they are the meaning of the name “the Holy One, blessed be He.”

The mitzvos have this power because they descend into physical action, and as the hymn Lecha Dodi says, “last in action, first in thought”: what comes last in deed was first in G‑d’s intention. Sarah’s words “Elokim has made laughter for me” (Genesis 21:6) teach that the Name Elokim, which lets creation exist as a seemingly separate “something,” brings laughter and delight above when that “something” is afterwards nullified.

The verse “Leviathan, which You formed to play with” (Psalms 104:26) says the same. The Alter Rebbe reads the name Leviathan as “joining” (as Leah named Levi, “this time my husband will be joined to me,” Genesis 29:34), the joining of the physical “something” with the divine “nothing,” and G‑d’s “play,” His laughter and joy, comes from this union.

The Sages said, “Let not the blessing of a commoner be light in your eyes” (Megillah 15a). The Alter Rebbe reads “the blessing of a commoner” as the elevation that comes from the physical, everyday matters of this world, which the Zohar calls “words of a commoner.”

This “blessing” must not be taken lightly, because the nullification of the physical “something” is precisely what brings down blessing from above. That is why it is called the blessing of a commoner.

A bracketed note sends the reader to the Raaya Mehemna on Naso, to the beginning of Parshas Teitzei and the Ramaz’s commentary on both, and to the discourse “And you shall draw water.” That discourse deals with the teaching that although fire came down from heaven onto the altar, there is still a mitzvah to bring ordinary fire.

This is the basis of all the mitzvos, and charity shows it most clearly: a person gives away money he worked hard for with his whole body, and so turns his “something” into “nothing.” That is why the Mishnah reads “with all your might” (me’odecha) as “with all your money.”

In truth, the Alter Rebbe says, “with all your me’od” means love without limit, since me’od means “very much,” beyond measure; yet the reading “with all your money” is also true. The link is the Sages’ teaching that in “very good” (Genesis 1:31), “good” is the good inclination and “very” is the evil inclination.

The reason is that the G‑dly soul, though it is “a part of G‑d above,” is still a limited, created being, so its own love has measure. By itself it cannot reach the boundless me’od or be included in the Infinite One, who has no beginning and no end.

Only the animal soul, when it too is transformed from bitter to sweet and comes to long for G‑d, produces love without limit. This is why the evil inclination is called me’od: once transformed, its force becomes boundless love.

An analogy: water held back by an obstruction gathers force, and when it breaks through, it rushes with tremendous power. So too the animal soul: when what concealed and held it back is broken through, its love for G‑d surges beyond limit.

This is the same principle explained earlier, that the Infinite One is aroused above specifically through the nullification of the physical “something.” In both cases, breaking through the barrier of the self is what releases something without limit.

This is why money belongs to “with all your might.” Proverbs says “Charity exalts a nation,” and the Alter Rebbe reads it as charity raising the animal soul to the level of boundless love.

All the mitzvos likewise turn the physical “something” into “nothing,” giving it over to G‑d. This is the exact opposite of the desert, the source of kelipah, which says “Give, give!” and gives nothing.

Here the Alter Rebbe returns to “what (mah) does Havayah your G‑d ask of you.” Mah means bittul: making oneself “nothing,” not regarding oneself as an independent entity with demands of its own.

Rather, a person should regard himself as “leftovers,” the Talmud’s image of the humble (Rosh Hashanah 17b), taking up no space at all, as though he were nothing. This is the level of Mah, the “what” that G‑d asks of a person.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the end of his discourse “How goodly.” To bring a person to bittul, the Sages instituted a hundred daily blessings; each one draws G‑dliness down into the soul from above, and this arousal from above gives a person the strength for his own arousal from below and self-nullification.

He also refers to the discourse “And I besought” on the blessings over mitzvos. Through the hundred blessings, mah (“what,” bittul) becomes me’ah (“a hundred”), the same letters with an alef added, because the source of this drawing down is the most hidden level.

The Zohar on Chayei Sarah (123a) connects the hundred daily blessings with “the supernal place, the most hidden of all hidden.” The Alter Rebbe also refers to the end of his explanation of “Many waters” in Parshas Toldos.

The letter alef, spelled out (alef-lamed-pei), has the same letters as pele, “wonder,” the hidden level beyond grasp; adding it to mah gives me’ah. Because this drawing down depends on bittul, which flows from the level of Mah, losing that bittul is foolishness, as the next part explains.

The Sages said a fool is “one who loses what is given to him” (Chagigah 4a); according to the Kehot note, the Maggid of Mezeritch explained this as one who loses the radiance of the Name Mah within him. Therefore every proud person, the opposite of Mah, is called a fool.

As explained above, every mitzvah is an act of nullifying the physical “something,” and through it a revelation of the Infinite One is drawn into the mitzvos, from above to below.

This is why the 248 positive commandments are called “limbs” (the Tikkunei Zohar calls them the limbs of the King): a limb is a vessel for the soul’s life-force, and each mitzvah is a vessel for G‑dliness. Torah study, which “is equal to them all” (Mishnah Peah 1:1), is different: it is food, “Your Torah is within my innards” (Psalms 40:9), nourishing the soul from within.

The Sages (Jerusalem Talmud, Chagigah 1:7; Eichah Rabbah) say that G‑d overlooked even idolatry, forbidden relations and bloodshed, but not the neglect of Torah. The Alter Rebbe explains why: the practical mitzvos draw G‑dliness into the “external limbs.”

In physical terms, a person who loses an external limb can still live, only blemished; but Torah is like the internal organs, where, as in the laws of an animal’s fitness (treifos), a perforation of any size is fatal. So neglecting Torah cuts off the soul’s inner life.

Torah study, too, must be done with the bittul described above. That is why “and you shall speak of them” (Deuteronomy 6:7) comes right after “with all your soul and with all your might” (6:5): learning must follow self-nullification.

Studied with bittul, the Torah becomes a vessel into which the Infinite Light, which is above Chochmah, is drawn; this is the meaning of studying Torah lishmah. The Alter Rebbe reads lishmah as “for the sake of the Torah itself,” to draw G‑d’s light into it.

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 85b) says the land was lost “because they did not first bless in the Torah,” and it does not say “over the Torah.” Since a blessing (berachah) means drawing down, the Sages’ wording refers to drawing the Infinite Light into the Torah itself.

Section 3 applies the same pattern to the blessing said before a mitzvah. Its first words, “Blessed are You, Havayah, our G‑d,” first draw the Infinite One down into the person’s own soul.

“Our G‑d” means that G‑d becomes ours, revealed within us. This comes about through “with all your heart,” a revelation of G‑dliness in both chambers of the heart.

In the left chamber, full of blood and associated with gevuros (severities), the revelation takes the form of bitterness: a person reflects that his whole life is only “seventy years” (Psalms 90:10), and yet all his aims are physical, earning a living.

He asks himself whether his soul came down into this world only to earn money and leave it to his children, and the thought makes his heart very bitter. But this bitterness is in one chamber only, the left.

The right chamber, “full of the breath of life,” holds the soul’s joy in the mitzvos, which are G‑d’s will clothed in physical action. Of this it says, “Let Israel rejoice in its Maker” (Psalms 149:2).

This bitterness and joy belong to the beinonim, people who still have an evil inclination to contend with, and the Alter Rebbe says that through them something similar comes about in the tzaddikim. The tzaddikim, however, have no evil in them, so their service cannot take the form of physical bitterness.

For the tzaddikim, the left side is dread and awe before G‑d’s majesty, and their joy is “love with delights” (Song of Songs 7:7). It is the same two-sided service on a higher plane.

All this is “Havayah our G‑d,” G‑d revealed within the soul. Then “King of the world” draws G‑dliness into the outer dimension of the worlds, over which His name is called King.

Now the purpose of the soul’s descent into a body becomes clear: it is a descent for the sake of an ascent. The souls “arose in thought” (Bereshis Rabbah 1:4), yet that source is still only the level of the divine “letters of thought.”

Through their descent into the body and their nullification of the physical, through the “blessing of a commoner,” the souls draw down G‑dliness from beyond thought: both the light that fills and the light that encompasses all worlds, the Master of thought. This happens through subduing the animal soul (iskafya) and transforming it (is’hapcha).

This answers the question of section 2: G‑d created the kelipos so that by subduing and rectifying them there would be a great ascent. This is “These are the journeys of the children of Israel,” their ascents from below to above, and it leads back to “And Moshe wrote.”

Now the Alter Rebbe explains “And Moshe wrote.” The Sages say “the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth” (Shabbos 55a), and truth is Chochmah, because when a person grasps something with his intellect, he knows that it is so.

He refers to the gloss in Tanya, chapter 35, which explains that the Infinite Light unites even with Atzilus only through Chochmah, because Ein Sof is the one true existence, and that is the level of Chochmah. Chochmah is called a seal, like a person’s name written in ink on paper as a signature.

A name is nothing compared to the person himself, and a name written in ink, a physical act, is even further removed. In the same way, Chochmah relative to Ein Sof is like a physical action.

As the verse says, “You have made them all with wisdom” (Psalms 104:24), so Chochmah is the level of “making.” G‑d’s will is the “name” (shemo, “His name,” has the numerical value of ratzon, “will,” 346), and Chochmah is the seal, the written act of that name.

Yet a seal has great force: a signature confirms any obligation, and once something has been sealed it cannot be changed.

So at Ne’ilah on Yom Kippur we ask, “Seal us in the book of life,” the book of livelihood, so that the judgment will not change. Likewise the Infinite One, far above Chochmah, rests and clothes Himself in Chochmah, which is His “seal.”

So “Moshe wrote” means that Moshe drew this seal down. According to the Zohar, Moshe is the escort of the King and Aharon the escort of the Queen, who brings her up to the Bridegroom; Aharon’s role of raising up is seen in his waving of the Levites (Numbers 8:11).

The souls of Israel as a whole are the “lamps” of Numbers 8:2, for “the soul of man is the lamp of Havayah” (Proverbs 20:27). Their ascent, which Aharon brings about, reaches up to “toward the face of the Menorah.”

Moshe’s role is the reverse: as the King’s escort he draws the Infinite One down from above. A king does not go about by himself, so Moshe leads the drawing down and revelation of G‑dliness into the worlds.

Moshe embodies Chochmah, as hinted in “he saw the beginning (reishis) for himself” (Deuteronomy 33:21), since “the beginning is wisdom.” So it was Moshe who “wrote” the seal of truth, the revelation of the Infinite Light within Chochmah.

Moshe drew this power down so that the souls could rise to G‑d from below, because on their own they could not have begun. As the Talmud says of a person’s struggle with his inclination, “were it not that the Holy One, blessed be He, helps him, he could not overcome it” (Kiddushin 30b).

The blessing over a mitzvah works the same way: it draws down an arousal from above that enables a person to elevate the physical object with which he does the mitzvah.

As explained above, the hundred blessings give the power to reach Mah and bittul. The Arizal’s teachings in Pri Etz Chaim add that the elevation achieved through the blessing over a mitzvah also comes through the Name of forty-two letters.

So too “And Moshe wrote” the forty-two journeys: Moshe drew down an arousal from above, through which the journeys, the souls’ ascents, could take place. This ties the forty-two journeys back to the forty-two-letter Name of the first section.

Today this drawing down comes through Torah study, as it says, “and the Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23): the Torah illuminates the soul.

The Torah’s light is an arousal from above that gives the soul the strength to rise through its own effort, an arousal from below. The Alter Rebbe refers to his discourses “And I besought” and “And you shall make a plate” (Exodus 28:36), whose verse speaks of “the engravings of a seal.”

This is why the Sages read “Me they forsook, and My Torah they did not keep” (Jeremiah 16:11) as “Would that they had forsaken Me and kept My Torah, for the light in it would have brought them back to the good” (Eichah Rabbah). The Torah’s light is the arousal from above that makes return possible.

Returning to the verse: “their goings-forth” (motza’eihem) refers to the source of the souls of Israel, as in Isaiah’s “like a source (motza) of water whose waters do not fail” (Isaiah 58:11). The verse first mentions this source, from which the power to journey is drawn down.

The souls’ source lies above the level of thought. When the Sages say that Israel “arose in thought,” they mean that the essence of the souls arose there, in G‑d’s thought.

But their source and root is higher still, in the One who has the thought and the will, the Master of thought and will. From there Moshe drew down a radiance that gives the souls the power to ascend from below.

So “according to their journeys” means the ascent from below, and “by the mouth of Havayah” is read as an ascent above “the mouth of Havayah,” the divine speech of “by the breath of His mouth all their host” (Psalms 33:6), which is the light that fills all worlds. Then “and these are their journeys according to their goings-forth” describes the ascent all the way up to their source.