ביאור על שובה ישראל

This section is a biur, a further explanation, of the preceding maamar in Likkutei Torah on Hosea’s call “Return, O Israel, unto Havayah your G‑d.” It takes up that maamar’s two interpretations of “Havayah is Elokim” and explains them through the Kabbalah of the Divine Names, through Yaakov’s prayer and through Chanah’s weeping.

Mishnas Chassidim is a Kabbalistic work that sets out the Arizal’s system in the form of Mishnah tractates; in its tractate on Yom Kippur (at its end, as the Kehot note specifies) it explains “Havayah is Elokim,” the verse said seven times at the close of Ne’ilah. In its reading, “Havayah” is Z’eir Anpin, the configuration of the emotive attributes, and “Elokim” is Nukva, the feminine configuration (Malchus). Yet Z’eir Anpin itself counts as “Elokim” when it rises to Atika, the inner dimension of Keser, because next to that level it is only a contracted, limited light.

The letters of the Names Havayah and Ado-nai can be interwoven in two orders: beginning with the yud of Havayah, or beginning with the alef of Ado-nai. These are the higher unity (yichuda ila’ah), in which the world is as nothing before G‑d, and the lower unity (yichuda tata’ah), in which G‑d is present within the world’s existence, as Tanya, Part II (Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah) explains. The rule invoked is that the first letter of a combined Name shows which Name prevails; the Kehot note finds this rule in Mishnas Chassidim and says it was not found in Pri Etz Chaim.

With the yud first, the Name Havayah leads and Ado-nai is absorbed into it. This is the higher unity: Ado-nai, the Name of kingship through which the worlds exist, is wholly included in Havayah, the Name of G‑d as He transcends the worlds.

With the alef first, Ado-nai leads and Havayah is drawn into it, so that G‑d’s transcendent light is present within the limited realm of kingship. This is the lower unity. The parenthesis sends the reader to the discourse on the verse “And you shall offer a burnt offering, a fire offering” for more on this.

Ado-nai and Elokim are treated here as one level: both are names of Malchus, the attribute of kingship, through which G‑d’s light is limited and the separate worlds come into being. This is why Mishnas Chassidim can call Elokim “Nukva”: Nukva, the feminine configuration, is Malchus.

Malchus is likened to speech. Speech is the soul’s outer garment: it leaves the speaker and stands apart from him, whereas thought, although also a garment of the soul, stays within.

Thought is an inner garment: the soul is always thinking and is never without it, like the locust of the Aramaic saying, whose “garment” grows out of its own body. Speech, by contrast, comes only at times.

Even speech depends on the soul’s will: it speaks only when it chooses. In the same way the supernal speech, Nukva or Malchus, is the source of all separate beings: its letters and their combinations divide one thing from another and bring forth countless worlds, “a thousand thousands,” as Daniel says of the angels who serve before G‑d.

From this source comes a vast multitude of separate creations, angels and souls without number. And no two of them are alike, echoing the Sages’ teaching that no two people’s faces or minds are the same.

Job’s words “from my flesh I behold G‑d” are a warrant for learning about the divine from the human body. Even a person’s two hands are not alike: one is right and one is left.

Even the flesh of a single body differs from place to place, higher in one spot and lower in another. The text notes that the Kabbalah gives reasons for this and that the researchers of nature reached the same conclusion: diversity is built into creation, down to a single body.

The same diversity runs through the angels and the souls. Michael’s camp serves G‑d with love and Gavriel’s with awe; among the patriarchs Avraham embodies love and Yitzchak awe, as the verses call Avraham “who loves Me” and G‑d “the Fear of Yitzchak.”

No two creations are alike, and the source of all this division is the supernal speech, Malchus. The reason, given in the next part, is that Malchus gives life to the creatures only in the manner of a king.

A king needs subjects who are separate from him: in the well-known saying “There is no king without a people (am),” the word am is read as related to omemos, “dimmed,” beings distant from the king. The Names Ado-nai, “Master,” and Elokim, “the Mighty One,” express this relation of ruler and ruled.

The creatures’ very life is to exist as distinct beings, each set apart from the other. Yet a measure of bittul is drawn down to them from above, so that even as separate beings they remain nullified before G‑d.

Nehemiah’s words “the host of the heavens bow down to You” describe this bittul of the heavenly beings, and it comes from the Name Havayah. The Midrash reads Job’s verse “Dominion and fear are with Him; He makes peace in His heights” as the peace between Michael, of water or snow, and Gavriel, of fire: the water does not put out the fire, and the fire does not consume the water.

Fire and water can stand together because both are nullified in their source, where “dominion and fear” are drawn down upon them from above. This descent of the higher into the lower is what is meant by the interweaving of Havayah within Ado-nai.

A general principle: an upper level and a lower level can be joined in only two ways. Either the lower is raised up to the upper, or the upper lowers itself to the lower.

The interweaving of Havayah within Ado-nai is the second way: the higher level descends, so that bittul is drawn into created beings while they remain separate. Its full form belongs to the Time to Come, of which Isaiah says “eye to eye they shall see” and “all flesh shall see”: physical flesh itself will see G‑dliness.

Then a supernal light will shine in the physical world itself. Amos’s lament “She has fallen; she shall no more rise” is read here in a new way: “rising” means ascent from below to above, like the ascent of the worlds on Shabbos and festivals.

Ascent from below is the interweaving of Ado-nai within Havayah, and in the Time to Come it will no longer be the way; instead light will be drawn down from above, so that the Infinite Light dwells in the very place of darkness. The Talmud, too, records a reading of this verse as consolation: “She has fallen and will fall no more; rise, maiden of Israel.”

The Sages describe the World to Come: there is no eating or drinking in it, “but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah.” Here the World to Come is taken to be the world of the Resurrection.

This cannot mean that the physical body will cease to exist. If it did, the Sages would be saying nothing new by stating that there is no eating, since a soul before it enters a body never ate and has nothing to do with worldly matters.

So there must be a body with physical limbs in the World to Come. The parenthesis follows the view, which the Kehot note identifies as the Ramban’s, that the “World to Come” is not Gan Eden, the world of souls, but the world after the Resurrection.

This raises a question: if the resurrected body neither eats nor drinks, its organs would seem to have been created for nothing.

The answer is that the physical body itself will be nourished by spirituality. The delight the righteous take in the radiance of the Shechinah will itself become food for the physical body and its organs.

There is a precedent: Moshe spent forty days on the mountain with a fully physical body, yet without eating, and the Midrash says he was nourished by the radiance of the Shechinah.

After Moshe came down, his body again needed physical food, because the world had not yet been refined. In the Time to Come, when the world’s coarse materiality is refined and “all flesh shall see,” this will no longer be so.

Then supernal nourishment will reach even the place of darkness, the physical limbs. This is what we ask for in the prayers of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur: “And You, He, Havayah our G‑d, will reign.”

“He” (Hu) and “Havayah our G‑d” are lofty levels of the Infinite Light. The prayer asks that they reign openly and conduct the world, which means that spiritual nourishment will flow even into the physical organs.

All of this, both interweavings, belongs to the first interpretation of “Havayah is Elokim”: the higher and the lower unity. The second interpretation, which follows, goes further.

Now comes the second interpretation of “Havayah is Elokim.” Isaiah’s “I am Havayah; that is My Name” teaches that Havayah, for all its height, is a name; and Havayah is Atzilus, the world of Emanation, which is G‑dliness, for there, in the words of the Tikkunei Zohar, “He and His life-forces are one, He and His vessels are one.”

Even so, Atzilus is nothing compared to the very essence of the Infinite One. It is like a person’s name, which lets others call him but is not his essence, or like the sun’s radiance compared with the sun itself.

This is what Mishnas Chassidim meant by “relative to Atika”: Atika here is the Malchus of the Infinite One, the source from which Atzilus issues, and next to it even Atzilus counts as Elokim. When the Infinite Light becomes the Ten Sefiros, such as Chochmah and Chesed, it must contract itself to be enclothed in Chochmah, and this is true not only of the vessels of the Sefiros.

Even the lights of Atzilus, not just its vessels, are a contraction and enclothement of the Infinite. The phrase “You are wise,” from Eliyahu’s prayer in the Tikkunei Zohar, means that “You,” the Infinite Light, lowers Himself to become “wise.”

The Talmud teaches that wherever one finds G‑d’s might, one finds His humility; here it appears as “greatness”: His very greatness is an act of self-lowering. Pri Etz Chaim reads the Amidah’s “the great, the mighty” as “hei-great, hei-mighty,” the added hei marking a contraction through which G‑d becomes “great” and “mighty,” while “and the awesome” (vehanora) adds two letters, vav and hei, for two contractions.

Yaakov’s vow on his way to Charan shows both interpretations. “If Elokim will be with me” is a drawing down from above to below, and “guard me on this way” refers to his task of refining (birurim) in Charan, whose name recalls charon af, divine wrath: the place of the kelipos and the sitra achra, the forces that conceal holiness.

“Then Havayah will be to me as Elokim” is the second, higher stage, after his return in peace. Read this way, Yaakov asks to reach a level so high that Havayah itself would be to him only Elokim, a contraction, compared with the very essence of the Infinite Light.

Yaakov can rise so high because his attribute has no limit. He is likened to the Mishkan’s middle bar that runs “from end to end,” and his is the “inheritance without bounds” that the Talmud promises to one who delights in Shabbos.

Avraham’s attribute, Chesed (kindness), has a limit: kindness can spread only so far before something holds it back.

Kindness flows from love and generosity, and these are measured: by how far the giver’s love reaches, and by the recipient, whether he is worthy and how worthy he is.

Yaakov’s attribute is compassion (rachmanus), which has no limit. It goes out even to one who is not worthy of it.

The verse of Shabbos Shuvah is read in this light: “Return, O Israel, unto Havayah your G‑d” means rising to the level called “Israel” until Havayah itself becomes as Elokim, a mere contraction, before the essence of G‑d. This is the return of the second interpretation.

Chanah’s prayer shows how this is reached. She prayed “upon” Havayah, which the text stresses: above the level of Havayah; and her bitter weeping is compassion. Weeping can also come from joy, but never from joy alone.

At the plain joy of a wedding no one weeps; tears come only with joy that grows out of pain, as light is most precious when it comes out of darkness, or when someone long separated from his father finally sees him.

Weeping, then, mixes two opposite feelings, and so does compassion. Such compassion draws down the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, which open with “Havayah, Havayah”: the first Havayah calls forth and draws down the second.

The first Havayah belongs to Arich Anpin, the outer dimension of Keser, where the Psalms say “Gracious and compassionate is Havayah,” with grace and compassion before the Name, for they are what bring Havayah forth. The second belongs to Z’eir Anpin, where the Torah says “Havayah, G‑d, compassionate and gracious,” with the Name first.

The Psalm says “For with You is forgiveness, so that You may be feared.” Forgiveness is a revelation of the supernal will, Arich Anpin; then comes awe, the yud of Havayah, which is the light of Abba (Chochmah), described in an Aramaic phrase as the yud resting upon His head, the seat of awe.

In Kabbalah, Abba draws its light from the eighth of the thirteen tikkunim of the beard of Arich Anpin, called the mazal, and Abba is the root of all of Atzilus. Through this, the Name Havayah is drawn down anew.

Havayah encompasses all of Atzilus, so its renewal restores the whole of Atzilus, even after a person has blemished the yud of the Name through sin. This is what the return of “Return, O Israel, unto Havayah your G‑d” achieves.