ביאור ע״פ את קרבני לחמי

This is the heading of the maamar: an explanation of the verse that opens the daily offerings in Parshas Pinchas, “Command the children of Israel and say to them: My offering, My bread for My fire-offerings, My pleasing fragrance, you shall take care to offer to Me in its appointed time.” The maamar reads each phrase of that verse as a stage in man’s service of drawing G‑dliness down.

Adam was placed in Gan Eden “to work it and to guard it” (Genesis 2:15). The Alter Rebbe reads this to mean that man’s service makes Gan Eden: through his work he draws a revelation of G‑dliness from the Infinite Light, and that revealed G‑dliness is what Gan Eden is.

The Talmud (Menachos 29b) teaches that this world was created with the letter hei and the World to Come with the letter yud. The yud, the smallest letter and no more than a point, stands for a tzimtzum: the light of the Infinite One, which has no end and which no thought can grasp, contracted into a tiny point.

No created mind can grasp the Infinite as it is, so the souls’ delight cannot come from the Infinite itself. The Sages describe the World to Come as the righteous “enjoying the radiance of the Shechinah” (Berachos 17a): a radiance, not the source. Just so, one cannot look straight at the sun or a torch because it is too bright.

The analogy applies to the mind: the Infinite Light itself is too bright for any comprehension at all. The problem is not that there is too little light, but that there is too much.

“He made darkness His hiding place” (Psalms 18:12) describes this concealment: the light becomes graspable only when it is contracted into a small point, the yud. The parenthesis points to the maamar “I am black, yet comely” in Likkutei Torah on Shir HaShirim, which compares this to the Torah written in black fire on white fire.

This is why the World to Come in particular is created with the yud: it is G‑dliness revealed in a form a created mind can grasp and enjoy. Because that requires contraction and limitation, the World to Come is said to be built on the harsh attribute of judgment, while of this world it is said, “The world is built with kindness” (Psalms 89:3).

The proof that this world runs on kindness is that the Talmud (Berachos 5a) calls its sufferings “sufferings of love,” and says that suffering scours away a person’s sins. They are a kindness because they spare him harsher judgment later.

The Talmud (Arachin 16b) counts even small losses and annoyances as suffering, yet every suffering of this world is nothing next to Gehinnom. As the Talmud says (Berachos 57b), the fire we know is only one-sixtieth of the fire of Gehinnom.

This is why this world’s suffering is a kindness: its light sufferings are counted against what a person would otherwise have had to suffer in Gehinnom. In the World to Come, by contrast, the punishment is Gehinnom itself.

The World to Come is built on the full force of strict judgment, which repays the wicked exactly for their deeds. The underlying reason is that the souls’ comprehension and delight there come through gevuros, the powers that restrain and contract the light so that it can be grasped. Here a bracketed gloss begins.

The gloss adds that even Chochmah, the yud with which the World to Come was created, came into being from the Infinite Light through gevuros and contractions. In the language of Kabbalah, the light reaches it only through “hairs,” a narrow and restricted channel.

The gloss continues: these gevuros are rooted in the Gevurah of Atik Yomin, the inner level of Keser, which is enclothed in Mocha Stima’ah, the “hidden brain.” Two maamarim are cited: the one on “I am” in Parshas Shelach, about the hair on the left side, and the explanation of “But Havayah your G‑d was not willing to listen to Bilam” (Deuteronomy 23:6).

The second of these maamarim explains that what arouses this divine contraction from below is a person’s own self-contraction: setting aside his will, as the Mishnah says, “Nullify your will before His will” (Avos 2:4). That is also the meaning of “to work it”: man’s service of restraining himself draws down the contracted light that makes Gan Eden.

Tanya, chapter 15, explains “one who serves G‑d” (Malachi 3:18) as one who is still in the midst of the battle with his evil inclination, working to overcome it. In the same light, “How great is Your goodness, which You have hidden away for those who fear You” (Psalms 31:20) is read as follows: the “hiding away” is the gevuros, the contraction through which the delight of Gan Eden is revealed, and it is kept “for those who fear You.” Reishis Chochmah discusses this verse in its Gate of Love.

The link between awe and gevurah: “if there is no awe, there is no wisdom” (Avos 3:17), the word yirah (awe) equals gevurah in numerical value (216), and the Mishnah calls mighty “one who conquers [his inclination]” (Avos 4:1). The gloss ends here, and the main text reads “to make known to the sons of man His gevuros” (Psalms 145:12) to mean that the radiance of the Shechinah, which the souls enjoy, is itself His gevuros: it reaches them only through contractions, step by step down the chain of worlds.

Because of these contractions, every created being receives in its own particular way, and no angel or soul is like another. Michael’s camp of angels serves with love and Gavriel’s with awe; even the love found among Gavriel’s angels is a different kind of love, not Michael’s.

Although every angel and soul receives from the same Infinite Light, they differ, just as the soul’s powers differ in the body’s limbs. The soul itself is undivided, yet the eye receives from it the power of sight and the ear the power of hearing.

Each limb receives only its own share: the eye has sight but no intellect, while intellect resides only in the brain, which does not see. So one undivided source appears differently in each receiver.

So it is with every limb: no two are alike. The bracket points to the explanation of “And it shall be tzitzis for you” (Numbers 15:39) in Parshas Shelach, which discusses the “separate intellects,” the philosophers’ name for the angels.

Section 2 begins with a general principle: every step of the chain of descent has two kinds of light, the encompassing (makif) and the inner (pnimi). The encompassing light is what the vessel cannot hold because it cannot grasp it, and in every descent the encompassing light comes first and the inner light after it.

The inner light is only a slight glimmer of the encompassing light, the part that manages to enter the vessel. The inner light of each higher level then becomes the encompassing light of the level below, and only a glimmer of it enters as that level’s inner light; so it goes from Imma (Binah) to Z’eir Anpin and on down.

Speech and thought are an everyday example: a person can put only a small fraction of his thought into words. The thought stays above the speech, which holds only a trace of it.

The same is true from intellect to emotion, and in contemplation during prayer: the heart is never moved in full proportion to what the mind grasps. The feeling holds only a reduced portion of the understanding.

In Kabbalah this is the distinction between iggulim (circles) and yosher (uprightness). The circles come first; afterward comes the upright configuration, which has the form of “man,” with each power in its own organ, like sight in the eye.

The upright form has 248 different limbs and goes through stages of growth: gestation, nursing and the entry of intellect, in a small state and a great one. The circles, by contrast, are the same on every side and have no distinct parts.

The two kinds of light now receive their Kabbalistic names: the flow from the highest level downward is called by two spellings of the Name Havayah, Mah (numerical value 45) and Ban (52). Mah is encompassing relative to Ban, although in itself it too is an inner light.

Mah encompasses Ban because its root is in the Mitzcha (forehead) of Adam Kadmon, the first and highest configuration. The forehead always stands for will, as in the verse about the high priest’s golden plate, “It shall be on his forehead … for favor (leratzon)” (Exodus 28:38), where ratzon means will.

The Zohar calls this level “the will of all wills,” the will that underlies every other will. A long bracket of cross-references begins here, with the explanation on “And you shall make a tzitz” (the golden plate worn on the forehead) and the discourse “For the conductor, on the eighth.”

The list continues with the explanation on “Who has counted the dust of Yaakov” (Numbers 23:10) and with what is written elsewhere on a passage of the Zohar in Parshas Nasso, 128b.

That Zohar passage speaks of “good wine that is settled and rests on its lees,” and the explanation cited discusses it in terms of Mah and Ban in Mocha Stima’ah, the hidden brain. Further references follow: the explanation on “Moshe would speak” (Exodus 19:19), about the Name Mah, and the discourse “The matter of ‘The Patriarchs are themselves the chariot.’”

The last references are the explanation on “My dove,” on the phrase “within, it is the Name Mah,” and the explanation on “And the kohen shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits” (Leviticus 23:20). Here the bracket closes.

The Name Ban is the feminine, receiving side, the Nukva. The two forms of the Shabbos command are paired with them, “Shamor (Guard)” with the feminine and “Zachor (Remember)” with the masculine; and since the Tikkunei Zohar says of Malchus, “the Oral Torah we call her,” Malchus and the Oral Torah are Ban.

Mah corresponds to the Written Torah. The Kabbalists teach that the sparks are refined through Chochmah, and the purpose of that refinement is to make Gan Eden: to bring the Infinite Light, which is encompassing, into an inner revelation.

The parenthesis points to two maamarim: “And Korach took,” on Chochmah as the level in which the Infinite Light rests, and “And you shall love”; it adds that chochmah is ko’ach mah, “the power of Mah.” The main text then states the key condition: the light is drawn down through self-nullification.

The Infinite Light rests only where there is bittul, and Mah is complete bittul, as in Moshe’s words, “And what (mah) are we?” The Name Mah is thus the light of self-nullification.

The refinement proceeds in stages. First the World of Atzilus is refined, since only what is fully nullified can hold the revelation of the Infinite Light; what is not nullified enough for Atzilus is pushed down to Beriah, where it still counts as nullification, because the angels and souls there are self-effacing.

Their bittul is real, but it is the bittul of created beings, not the complete bittul of Atzilus that allows a great revelation. The process continues down to Yetzirah, and the refinement reaches its final end in the lowest levels of Asiyah.

Bowing at Modim, the blessing of thanksgiving in the Amidah, expresses this bittul: a bowing of acknowledgment. The Talmud (Bava Kamma 16a) says that a man’s spine, seven years after death, becomes a snake if he did not bow at Modim.

The Alter Rebbe reads this as being pushed away entirely into the kelipah symbolized by the snake, where no good remains to be refined. The Zohar passages cited add that such a person will not rise at the Resurrection of the Dead.

This explains why a person cannot change his “taste,” his inner character, in the World to Come: what he has there is what he drew down in this world. The World to Come comes after the refinement is finished.

There, the encompassing light of Mah has already become inner, revealed as comprehension and delight for created minds. Good and evil are already separated, and the evil, set apart on its own, has become the destroying angels and harmful forces.

This world, by contrast, is the world of refinement, where the Name Mah shines and refines through Torah and mitzvos, so a person here can still change himself and turn from evil to good. The bracket points to the maamar on “And now, I pray, let the power be great” (Numbers 14:17).

This power of Mah to refine Ban comes from the Supreme Will, “the will of all wills.” The saying “there is no reason for will” applies to it, because it is above all comprehension.

This is the meaning of the Sages’ phrase about the offerings, “a satisfaction of spirit before Me, that I spoke and My will was done”: through the mitzvah, the Supreme Will, which has no reason, is carried out and drawn down. A bracket then offers a reason for the word “spirit.”

Ruach, spirit, is also air, avir; and the word avir is or, light, with an added yud, the source of the Torah’s letters. The Torah Ohr maamar on “The mezuzah on the right” is cited for this.

Two Zohar passages are added, and the bracket closes. The main text then says that the Written Torah, like the will, is above comprehension, because in essence it is only its letters.

The Written Torah is the letters as they stand, while the laws in their precise details cannot be learned from it. “And you shall bind them as a sign” (Deuteronomy 6:8) is the example.

From the verse alone one would not know what tefillin are, until the Sages explained: four sections (derived from the word totafos, “tat in Katfi means two”), four compartments, square at the seams and the diagonal. So too, the Mishnah (Sukkah 1:1) sets twenty cubits as the limit of a sukkah’s height.

These measures are the will made graspable: the Sages’ exact definitions form the vessel that receives the Supreme Will. When a mitzvah is done according to its law, “what is to be done” (Esther 1:15), the Supreme Will rests in it and is revealed; otherwise it does not.

Section 3 opens with the principle that no drop descends from above without two drops rising to meet it: every flow from above needs an arousal from below. These are Chesed, which descends, and Gevurah, which rises; and the five Gevuros are fire, as the word ishah (woman) shows: esh (fire) with hei, whose value is five, the fire of the receiving side rising upward.

As the Zohar says, “spirit brings spirit”: spirit rising from below draws spirit down from above. In “His left hand is under my head” (Song of Songs 2:6), the left is Gevurah, the face of the ox “on the left” (Ezekiel 1:10), which lifts up the Congregation of Israel, the source of Jewish souls.

In a person, the left is the soul’s fiery enthusiasm in serving G‑d. From that fire one comes to bittul, which is higher than enthusiasm, as the verse says in Eliyahu’s vision, “after the fire, a still, small voice” (I Kings 19:12).

The verse itself says “Havayah was not in the fire” (I Kings 19:12), which seems to deny fire any holiness. The Tikkunei Zohar answers that there are two kinds of fire and two kinds of quaking: one in which the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come and one in which He does.

Yet even the holy fire, in which G‑d is present, is lower than the still, small voice. A bracket explains why: fire belongs to the World of Beriah, home of the Seraphim (the “burning” angels), while the still, small voice comes from Atzilus.

The bracket closes with a refinement: Atzilus itself contains all four worlds, so “there is fire and there is fire” can also mean the Beriah within Atzilus. Even there, the still, small voice is higher, being Atzilus within Atzilus.

In man’s service, fire must come first, the ascent from below, and only afterward is bittul drawn down. The phrase “the kohanim, the Levites” (Ezekiel 44:15) is cited as a parallel for this pairing, and this is the meaning of “My bread for My fire-offerings” in the verse of the daily offering.

“My bread” alludes to the saying that Israel “provide sustenance” for their Father in Heaven: the offering nourishes as food restores the soul and lets it spread through the body. “For My fire-offerings,” le’ishai, is read as esh yud, the fire of the yud: the fire rising from below, the fire of the hei (as in ishah), calls forth a fire from above.

The opening words “es korbani” are read letter by letter: es, alef-tav, stands for all the letters from alef to tav, and korbani, “My offering,” for kerovim, “close.” The letters of the Torah become truly close to G‑d, so that G‑dliness and the Infinite Light itself rest in them.

This happens through “My bread for My fire-offerings”: the lower fire of the hei becomes the higher fire of the yud, and the Name Mah is drawn into it. It takes place in Malchus of Atzilus, the Name Ban, the root of Jewish souls, for “all Israel are children of kings” (Shabbos 67a).

Fragrance is what awakens: the offering’s “pleasing fragrance” rises from below and rouses the mochin of Abba, the divine intellect, which in exile are in a state of sleep and withdrawal.

Nichochi is read both as a term for bringing down and as a term for rest: the drawing-down of bittul. That is the still, small voice, higher even than the fire of the yud.

“You shall take care,” tishmeru, is read through the saying that “guarding” means Mishnah: the study of the Oral Torah becomes the vessel for the Infinite Light revealed as ishai. When a person studies, “the Holy One, blessed be He, studies opposite him,” and G‑d’s own words are “in his mouth” (Isaiah 59:21); this is how the letters become “es korbani,” close to G‑d.

The Patriarchs, who embodied Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, are called “the chariot” (Bereishis Rabbah 47:6), wholly given over to the One who rides it. Moshe is the level of bittul, “the likeness of a man upon the throne” (Ezekiel 1:26), the level of the Rider himself.

All of this flows from the level of Moshe, bittul, the “likeness of a man” who rides the chariot, which in Kabbalah is Yesod of Abba. Moshe’s words “And what are we?” express that bittul.

How does an ordinary person reach this bittul? Through the verse’s opening, “Command (tzav) the children of Israel,” where tzav is read as tzavsa, joining: the level of Moshe lowers itself and is drawn down to each of them.

Once Moshe is joined with the people, “say to them” follows: amirah, saying, is the level of Abba, so that “My words that I have put in your mouth” come true for them. The verse’s last words, “in its appointed time,” bemo’ado, are read through the related words ve’no’adti, “I will meet” (Exodus 25:22), and ye’adah, “designated her” (Exodus 21:8).

All three words share the sense of designation and union. Every such drawing-down comes from the level of Shabbos, which is called “holy” (kodesh), and kodesh is Abba, Chochmah.

But it comes through Yom Tov, called mikra kodesh, “a holy convocation” (literally, “called holy”), which is Imma, Binah; even there, Abba is enclothed within Imma. So the holiness of Abba reaches the festivals, the “appointed times,” through Imma.

The festivals and prayers are then matched to the Patriarchs: Pesach, an ascent from below, is the level of Avraham, who corresponds to the morning prayer. The morning prayer climbs through the worlds: the opening sections, up to Baruch She’amar, are Asiyah, and Pesukei deZimrah is Yetzirah.

The morning prayer continues: Yotzer Or, with the blessings of the Shema, is Beriah, and the Amidah is bittul and a drawing-down from above. Minchah, by contrast, whose name the text reads as menuchah, rest, has only the Amidah.

Maariv has the Shema and the Amidah, but they are not lengthened, because Yaakov, to whom it corresponds, includes both Avraham and Yitzchak. The morning prayer too includes the other side: the passage of the Binding of Yitzchak is recited within Avraham’s prayer.

Mo’ed, “appointed time,” is also linked to “as a bride adorns herself (ta’deh) with her ornaments” (Isaiah 61:10): adornment, the level of Keser, the crown. The maamar “These are the accounts of the Tabernacle” is cited, on the “Tabernacle of the Testimony (eidus),” a word of the same family.

A list of further sources begins: the Zohar in Vayetze on “es korbani,” and another Zohar passage that applies “My offering” to Netzach and Hod.

The explanation on “Go out and see” (Song of Songs 3:11) is cited for Netzach and Hod as the letters of the Torah, which links them to “es korbani,” the letters from alef to tav. The Zohar in Pekudei is cited on “My pleasing fragrance.”

Zohar passages are listed for the remaining phrases of the verse: in Shemos on “to offer to Me,” and in Lech Lecha, Shemos and Pinchas on “in its appointed time.”

The Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 2:2) teaches that wherever G‑d says li, “to Me,” as in “you shall take care to offer to Me,” the thing never moves, in this world or the next; the Midrash Shocher Tov is also cited. The same teaching is developed in the explanation on “And I will betroth you to Me.”

The list ends with a Zohar passage in Vayechi and the explanations on “My dove” and on “The Song of Songs.”

The maamar now sums up its reading of the verse. Tzav, “command,” is read as tzavsa, “togetherness”: the level of Moshe, bittul, is drawn down to be joined as one with every Jew, a point the discourse “And you shall command” develops.

Through this joining comes “and say to them”: the power of speech is drawn down to them, so that their own speech unites with G‑d’s word and is nullified in it. Two further maamarim are cited, on “saying: This is the thing” and on “Moshe would speak.”

That speech is the meaning of “es korbani”: es, alef-tav, is all the letters, and the letters themselves become “close” to G‑d and bring Him close. When a person studies, G‑d’s words are in his mouth, and “the Holy One, blessed be He, reads and studies opposite him.”

The parenthesis lists maamarim that develop these points. Then comes the next phrase of the verse: through this union of speech there will also be “My bread for My fire-offerings.”

Ishai is esh yud, the fire of the yud, a fire that descends from above, from the light that encompasses all worlds. It comes to lift up the element of fire in the person’s animal soul, which is ishah, esh hei, the fire of the hei that rises from below.

This parenthesis lists maamarim that discuss the two fires, such as the higher fire of “the flame of Yah” (Song of Songs 8:6) and “Havayah your G‑d is a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), along with related themes like “the cleft of the rock.”

The higher fire is drawn down through “My bread,” Israel’s “sustaining” of G‑d. The parenthesis explains that bread turns into blood, which is warmth and the element of fire, so the offerings, which feed the fire, are called “My bread”; the lexicon Me’orei Or lists several levels that are called “bread.”

Another reading: the lower fire, ishah, is itself called “bread” for the higher fire. So Potiphar left everything to Yosef “except the bread which he ate” (Genesis 39:6), and Yisro said, “Call him, that he may eat bread” (Exodus 2:20): in both verses “bread” stands for a wife.

That is, ishah and ishai are a union of receiver and giver, like a marriage, as the Mishnah reads “the day of his wedding” as the Giving of the Torah. The yud is the giver (“with the yud the World to Come was created”) and the hei the receiver (“with the hei this world was created”), and “My pleasing fragrance” also expresses this union.

An alternative reading: the letters become “close” (es korbani) through “My bread for My fire-offerings,” because the arousal from below draws a higher level into the Torah. On this reading, “My pleasing fragrance” is the still, small voice, which is above even the fire of the yud.

Next comes “you shall take care” (tishmeru), read as Mishnah, the Oral Torah: it guards the fire of the yud in a person’s heart, so that what he received is not expelled and lost again. All of this, “es korbani” and “you shall take care,” is the level of speech, that is, Torah study.

Prayer is the level of thought, and of it the verse says “to offer to Me”: drawing down the Infinite Light that is in Chochmah, which is the holiness of Shabbos. “In its appointed time” refers to Yom Tov, the three pilgrimage festivals.

The festivals are “holy convocations,” and they draw holiness into the weekday prayers. The Sages’ phrase “ordinary food prepared in the purity of holy things” (Chagigah 19b) is the model: the ordinary is treated with the purity of the holy.

A further distinction: “es korbani” is the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, while “to offer to Me in its appointed time” is the higher union of Abba and Imma. The maamar on “These are the accounts of the Tabernacle” draws the same line: “the Tabernacle” is the union of the lower letters of the Name, vav and hei, and “the Tabernacle of the Testimony” that of the higher letters, yud and hei; this higher level is called li, “to Me.”

It is called li because the union of Abba and Imma is rooted in Atik and in the Infinite One itself. The Zohar is cited on “From the depths I called You” (Psalms 130:1) and on “That they take for Me (li) an offering” (Exodus 25:2).

An objection: Iggeres HaKodesh (section 28) says that the offering essentially draws down “masculine waters” from Z’eir Anpin, a lower level. Yet the verse says “And Havayah turned (vayisha) to Hevel” (Genesis 4:4), and vayisha alludes to the drawing-down of the 370 (shin-ayin) lights; the Ramaz on Parshas Tzav, on “the Holy of Holies, three heads,” is cited as well.

The paragraph ends with a list of Talmudic and Midrashic passages on the verse. The Talmud in Taanis (26a) derives the ma’amados, the delegations that stood by the daily offering, from “Command the children of Israel… My offering, My bread,” and Pesachim (96a) learns from “you shall take care to offer” that the daily lamb must be inspected for four days before it is slaughtered.

In Bereishis Rabbah (end of section 16), “to work it and to guard it” is read as the offerings: “you shall take care to offer to Me in its appointed time.” Further passages are listed in Bereishis Rabbah (Toldos), Vayikra Rabbah (Tzav and Emor) and Bamidbar Rabbah (sections 7 and 12).

More passages follow: the end of Behaalos’cha in Bamidbar Rabbah, on “Gather for Me” (Numbers 11:16); the beginning and end of Pinchas; and Shir HaShirim Rabbah on “Your neck with strings of beads,” where G‑d tells Moshe, “Before you command Me about My children, command My children about Me,” as it says, “Command the children of Israel.”

Last come the Pesichta of Eichah, on “But they, like Adam, transgressed the covenant” (Hosea 6:7), where G‑d recalls placing Adam in Gan Eden and commanding him, and Shir HaShirim Rabbah on “Your head upon you is like Carmel,” which ends with G‑d telling Moshe to decree upon Israel, “Command the children of Israel.”