כי המצוה הזאת אשר אנכי מצוך היום לא…

The maamar opens with Deuteronomy 30:11, from Moshe’s last address to the people in Parshas Nitzavim. The verse speaks of one particular commandment and says that it is close at hand; the maamar will ask which commandment this is and why it is introduced with the word Anochi (“I”).

Two questions are posed. “This commandment,” in the singular, cannot mean the whole Torah, for then the verse would have said “all the commandments”; and the verse’s choice of the word Anochi, “which I command you,” also needs explaining.

The answer starts from a principle: every mitzvah is called a “commandment of Havayah,” as in the verse “and you shall remember all the commandments of Havayah” (Numbers 15:39). The Tikkunei Zohar calls the 248 positive commandments the 248 “limbs of the King,” and the King is Havayah, so the mitzvos as a whole belong to the level of the Name Havayah.

To understand the word Anochi, the maamar turns to the first of the Ten Commandments, “I (Anochi) am Havayah your G‑d” (Exodus 20:2). Why would G‑d need to announce who He is, as if introducing Himself? Such an introduction makes sense only for a human being.

A person has a body and a definite form, so one can point and say, “This is he.” G‑d has no form at all: in the words of the Tikkunei Zohar, “no thought can grasp Him,” and at Sinai Israel “did not see any image” (Deuteronomy 4:15), so the words “I am Havayah” could not have pointed to anything that can be seen.

The answer begins with the knowledge that G‑d created everything from nothing and keeps on creating it. The words “in His goodness renews each day, continually, the work of Creation” are from the blessing before the morning Shema (the Yotzer blessing).

Every Jew knew this even before the Giving of the Torah, since the Talmud (Shabbos 97a) calls Israel “believers, the children of believers.” This knowledge is not only a conclusion of reasoning; it is felt in the soul, so it did not need to be announced at Sinai.

This felt knowledge is compared to sight: we see heaven and earth and know that nothing brings itself into being. Job’s words “from my flesh I behold G‑d” (Job 19:26) express that a person can perceive G‑d from what he sees in himself.

We sense a person’s soul when we see that his body is alive and keeps existing; in the same way we sense G‑d as the life of the world. The text refers to its fuller treatment in Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, in the discourse on “And you shall know this day.”

So the declaration at Sinai must have meant something more, and the first step is the meaning of the Name Havayah. As the Pardes Rimonim explains, it means “the One who brings all existences into being”: the Name and the word for “existence” come from the same root.

Havayah is built on hoveh, “being,” and its opening yud, the prefix of an ongoing or future action, shows that the action never stops, just as ya’aseh in “Thus would Job do all the days” (Job 1:5) describes Job’s regular practice. Havayah therefore means that G‑d brings the world into being from nothing at every moment.

Scripture says that G‑d’s greatness cannot be searched out (Psalms 145:3), yet the worlds He creates are bounded and can be counted. Even the angels in Daniel’s vision, “a thousand thousands” serving Him (Daniel 7:10), are a number.

The Talmud (Chagigah 13a) says the distance from the earth to the firmament is a journey of five hundred years: vast, but finite. Yet G‑d, who gives life to these finite worlds, says “I, Havayah, have not changed” (Malachi 3:6); He is not like a soul, which is affected by what happens to its body.

G‑d is not changed by the worlds because He Himself does not enter them. It is not the Infinite Light itself that is clothed in the worlds to give them life and existence.

What enters the worlds is only a ray from His Name. The verse “His Name alone is exalted; His splendor is upon the earth” (Psalms 148:13) is read this way: His Name is exalted above, and only His “splendor,” a radiance, reaches the earth.

Even that radiance reaches only the “earth,” the lower realms, and even the highest levels, from the “head of all levels” down, come into being from no more than a radiance. Job’s question “wisdom, from where (me’ayin) shall it be found?” (Job 28:12) is read as “Chochmah is found from ayin,” from a level so nullified that it is called “nothing.”

This radiance takes up no place of its own, being wholly nullified to its source. The text refers to two discourses that develop this: the one on “And Israel saw the great hand” (Exodus 14:31), and the explanation of “After Havayah your G‑d shall you walk” (Deuteronomy 13:5) in Likkutei Torah, Re’eh.

The radiance comes down in two stages that follow the letters of the Name. The yud and the first hei are tzimtzum, contraction and concealment, so that only a radiance shows; the vav and the final hei are the drawing-forth and expansion that come after.

So the Name Havayah describes the whole chain of worlds as a whole, and also every single step within it, where each cause gives rise to the next by contracting and then expanding. Wherever there is creation, there is the pattern of Havayah.

But Havayah itself has a cause. Scripture says “I am Havayah; that is My Name” (Isaiah 42:8), and a name exists only so that others can call a person by it; it does not express what he is in himself.

What brings about the tzimtzum and the Name Havayah is Anochi, G‑d’s own Essence, “I who am I”: not His Name but His very Self, which has no name at all. The question now becomes how Anochi comes to be Havayah.

Anochi becoming Havayah means that the Name Havayah, the light that fills all worlds and gives each of them life according to its measure, is drawn forth to create the worlds level below level.

This Havayah is drawn from Anochi, which no world can grasp, which is holy and set apart and has no name. The text is about to give the reason this happens.

The reason lies in the word Elokecha, “your G‑d”: when a Jew draws G‑dliness into himself and makes G‑d his own, he thereby causes Havayah to come forth from Anochi. This is the principle that what happens above “depends on an arousal from below.”

The arousal from below is the mitzvos, each of which is rooted in a particular letter of the Name Havayah, some in the yud, some in the hei. By performing a mitzvah below, a person arouses the matching letter above.

Doing the mitzvos draws Havayah forth from above. The text refers to the Torah Ohr discourse “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion,” which explains “Havayah is your shade” (Psalms 121:5): as a shadow turns after the person who casts it, so what is drawn down above follows what a person does below. In “and do them (osam)” (Numbers 15:39) the word osam is written without a vav and can be read atem, “you,” which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 99b) reads as though one makes oneself, and the Zohar as though one “makes” G‑d above.

Likewise, the Zohar reads “And David made a name” (II Samuel 8:13) to mean that by keeping the Torah’s commandments David, as it were, “made” the holy Name above. The text also points to Iggeres HaKodesh, which explains this verse, and to another discussion of “And you shall remember.”

The second chapter begins with Deuteronomy 18:13, “You shall be wholehearted (tamim) with Havayah your G‑d.” The maamar reads it in the light of chapter 1: when Havayah is drawn down to become “your G‑d,” which happens through the mitzvos, a person becomes tamim, whole.

To be whole is to be complete in every limb of the soul, for the soul has spiritual limbs as the body has physical ones; the bracket points to Zohar passages on this verse. One who omits even one mitzvah, or blemishes it, is like a person missing a limb.

Each mitzvah is one of the “limbs of the King,” and drawing it down gives life to the matching limb of the soul. Without the mitzvos, the limbs of the soul have no existence and no life.

The maamar now asks what happens after a sin, whether by doing what the Torah forbids or by failing to do what it commands. Either way a mitzvah has been blemished and a limb of the soul damaged.

A blemish and a lack call for a remedy, and “For this commandment” is that remedy: it refers to teshuvah, of which the verse just before it speaks. This answers the first question of chapter 1: “this commandment,” in the singular, is the one mitzvah that repairs the others.

The verse before ours is “When you return to Havayah your G‑d” (Deuteronomy 30:10). The word teshuvah is read as tashuv hei, “the hei returns,” and this hei is filled with a yud (spelled hei-yud), a detail that paragraph 9 explains; teshuvah is the commandment that comes from Anochi, “I who am I.”

The parenthesis adds support from Reishis Chochmah, which reports the Ramban’s view that “this commandment” is teshuvah. The Ramban’s reasoning, on Deuteronomy 30:11, is that the whole Torah would have been called “all the commandment,” so “this commandment” must mean teshuvah.

To show why teshuvah ranks above the other mitzvos, the maamar calls it healing, as in Hosea 14:5, “I will heal their waywardness,” where meshuvasam, “their waywardness,” comes from the same root as teshuvah. The text points to the Torah Ohr discourse “Go forth and see” for more on this.

Medicine is more precious than food: food keeps a person alive, but medicine repairs the life-force itself when it has been damaged, so that he can live soundly again.

The mitzvos are like food, drawing life to the soul from the Name Havayah, and teshuvah is like medicine. A sin, by omitting a mitzvah bound up with one letter of the Name, blemishes Havayah itself, so the remedy must come from higher than Havayah, as the next paragraph explains.

Because the sin blemished Havayah itself, teshuvah must reach above Havayah, to Anochi, G‑d’s own Essence, and draw Havayah forth anew from there. Only a source higher than the damaged level can fill the blemish and the lack.

Psalm 130 opens, “From the depths I call You, Havayah,” and the Zohar explains “the depths” as “the depth of the well.” As with a spring whose water has dwindled, where one must dig down to the source, teshuvah reaches down to “the depth of the well” and “the source of all.”

That deepest source is Anochi, and from there a person “calls” Havayah, that is, draws the Name forth again. This brings about a fresh coming-into-being of the life-force that the sin had damaged.

This renewal is the level of Rosh HaShanah, which the prayers call “the beginning of Your works, a remembrance of the first day.” On it the general life-force of the whole year is renewed, and that is what teshuvah draws from Anochi.

Teshuvah is above all in the heart: “from the depths” means from the depth of the heart, crying out to G‑d in distress. Lamentations 2:18 says “their heart cried out,” stressing the heart, and the word tza’ak, “cry out,” also means “gather.”

In Judges 12:1 vayitza’ek means that the men of Ephraim were mustered, gathered together; so the cry of teshuvah gathers a person’s heart, spirit and soul to G‑d, in words drawn from Job 34:14 and Psalms 64:7. The plural mimaamakim, “from the depths,” shows that there are depths beneath depths, which “those who seek Havayah” (Proverbs 28:5) will understand.

When a person turns inward to the true point of his heart, the inner heart grows stronger and stronger, until, in the words of Ecclesiastes 8:8, the spirit can no longer be held back.

This is weeping that comes of itself, of which Jeremiah says that in the time to come “with weeping they will come.” Like the cows that went “lowing as they went” (I Samuel 6:12), the person weeps without deciding to; this is the level of “the hidden recesses of the heart.”

The Arizal’s saying that one who does not weep on the Days of Awe has an incomplete soul refers to this inner weeping. In tashuv hei, the hei is the higher teshuvah, from the depth of the heart, and the yud that fills the hei is the still deeper, hidden recesses of the heart.

The parenthesis gives further references: Sefer Hadras Melech on the two depths, the Ramaz on the Zohar’s comment on “Of You my heart has said” (Psalms 27:8), the source of the phrase “the hidden recesses of the heart” (Psalms 44:22), and the Likkutei Torah discourse “On the eighth day he sent the people away.”

Isaiah 43:25 says “I, I (Anochi Anochi) am He (Hu) who wipes away your transgressions”; the doubled Anochi matches the two depths of the heart. Through them G‑d’s very Self, as it were, is clothed in the level called Hu, “He,” to wipe away sin.

Here the text lists sources on the level called Hu, “He”: the Pardes, Etz Chaim, and Zohar passages on “And the Levite, he (hu), shall serve” (Numbers 18:23) and “He made us” (Psalms 100:3). In the Zohar’s words, Hu is what is hidden and is not called by any name.

The level of Hu is drawn down to wipe away sins through the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, which Micah 7:18 describes as G‑d “who bears iniquity and passes over transgression.” The text now explains where teshuvah gets this power.

Sefer Yetzirah says of the Sefiros that their end is wedged in their beginning and their beginning in their end. Teshuvah rises from below to above and joins the lowest to the highest (“their end in their beginning”), and this draws the highest down to the lowest (“their beginning in their end”).

The Zohar (Vayikra 16a) asks of “He will again (yashuv) have mercy on us” (Micah 7:19) “Who returns?” and answers that the Holy Ancient One returns to be revealed, revealing what was hidden before; all this is called teshuvah. The text also refers back to the discourse “Command… My offering” in Parshas Pinchas.

This answers the second question of chapter 1. The other mitzvos are “commandments of Havayah,” but teshuvah reaches Anochi, so of it the verse says “which I (Anochi) command you.”

The word metzavecha, “command you,” is read as related to tzavta, “joining”: through teshuvah Anochi binds itself to the person. This happens “today,” in this world of action, for as the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3a) says on the words “which I command you today,” today is for doing them, and the reward comes afterwards.

The reward belongs to the World to Come, which the Talmud (Menachos 29b) says was created with the letter yud, the yud of Havayah. There a person no longer has free choice; the revelation of Anochi, which is above Havayah, comes through what a person does in this world.

The third chapter turns to the verse’s next words, “It is not hidden from you.” A person might think that teshuvah, which reaches Anochi, G‑d’s very Essence, is too lofty for him ever to attain.

The answer reads nifleis, “hidden,” as related to yafli in “when he shall set apart to vow a vow” (Numbers 6:2), the vow of the nazir, a word of separation. The verse is saying that this level is not set apart from you at all, and “nor is it far off” adds that it is not remote from you in understanding either.

The next verses say the commandment is “not in heaven” and “not beyond the sea.” “Heaven” stands for a supernal makif, an encompassing light that remains above and is not revealed below, just as the heavens, set “for height” (Proverbs 25:3), are not actually seen from the earth.

The blue we see is the color of the air, not of the heavens themselves. The parenthesis points to the discourse on “On that very day Avraham was circumcised,” where “Who will go up to heaven for us” (Deuteronomy 30:12) is read, as in the Tikkunei Zohar, as spelling milah, circumcision, with its initial letters and Havayah with its final letters.

“The sea” is the sea of Chochmah, and “beyond the sea” is the makif above Chochmah. The maamar grants that Anochi is indeed an encompassing level, even the makif of the makif.

Yet Anochi is not distant like “heaven” and “beyond the sea,” for “the matter (hadavar) is near to you.” The hei of hadavar stands for the two heis, thought and speech, so hadavar is the divine word that creates the world (the Mishnah in Avos 5:1 says it could have been created with a single utterance), and “in your mouth” means through the Torah, as in “My words which I have placed in your mouth” (Isaiah 59:21).

Torah study below is answered above: as Tanna d’Vei Eliyahu teaches, when a person “reads and studies,” the Holy One, blessed be He, “reads and studies” opposite him. This draws the Infinite Light down into the Written Torah (“reads”), which is the higher Chochmah, and into the Oral Torah (“studies”), the lower Chochmah.

All these revelations from the Infinite One depend on the Torah study of the Jewish people below. The text refers to the discourse “Therefore say to the children of Israel” (Exodus 6:6) for a fuller treatment.

In Himself G‑d is so far above even the higher Chochmah that, compared with Him, Chochmah is like mere physical “making,” which is how “You have made them all with Chochmah” (Psalms 104:24) is read here. Without Israel’s Torah study, He would not be drawn down even into Chochmah.

So “My words which I have placed in your mouth” means that the matter depends on a person’s mouth. When he speaks words of Torah, G‑d too “reads and studies” with him.

“And in your heart” means that this drawing-down depends also on the heart’s longing, for “spirit brings spirit”: a person’s yearning below draws down spirit from above. The words “if he sets his heart to Him” are from Job 34:14.

The heart’s longing is teshuvah, whose essence is in the heart, and through it comes “to do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14): to “make” the davar, the divine word, described above. The text refers again to the discourse “Therefore say” for this.

“The matter is near to you” is explained by “those who do His word” (Psalms 103:20): through their deeds Israel make and draw forth the word of G‑d. This brings about “You have exalted Havayah this day to be your G‑d” (Deuteronomy 26:17).

The discourse referred to opens with the words of the Talmud (Shabbos 88a): when Israel said “we will do” before “we will hear,” they used the secret of the angels, “those who do His word, to hear the voice of His word.” The Zohar (Balak 191a) adds that “those who do His word” repair the davar and restore it to its original form.

“In your mouth” also alludes to the shofar of Rosh HaShanah, whose sounds are drawn forth by the mouth of the one who blows it. The text says this is explained elsewhere.