ביאור ע״פ והיה לכם לציצית כו׳ הלב רואה כו׳

This short piece explains the verse of tzitzis, which goes on “and you shall see it … and you shall not stray after your heart and after your eyes,” together with the Sages’ saying “The heart sees.” Its subject is the heart: how the light of the intellect reaches the heart, and why what is fixed there lasts.

The maamar names its subject, the heart, and brings two teachings. The Sages say the heart understands and hears; and the Arizal teaches that the Yesod of Abba, the lowest point of Chochmah, reaches the chest of Z’eir Anpin, the place of the heart. The bracket sends the reader to the discourse “The eyes of all” in Parshas Matos, which brings a teaching of the Maggid of Mezritch, the Alter Rebbe’s teacher, about the chest.

To explain what Yesod is, the maamar gives a general rule: whatever gives life to a lower thing does so only through its own lowest level. The cause is so far above its effect that the effect could neither grasp it nor bear it as it is.

So the higher level must contract itself and connect to the lower one through its lowest point, and that point of contact is called Yesod, “foundation.” Among the Sefiros, the Yesod of Abba (Chochmah) is enclothed within the Yesod of Imma (Binah), and from the two of them the intellect of Z’eir Anpin, the configuration of the emotive attributes, is formed.

The Arizal’s writings explain that the two Yesods, of Abba and of Imma, extend equally down to the chest, and there all their lights gather in the heart. These lights are four divine Names, and their sum is thirty-two, written ל״ב, the letters of lev, “heart.” The text refers to the Ramaz’s commentary on the Zohar, Emor 93b, which the discourse “The eyes of all” also cites on the subject of the heart.

The maamar now gives an analogy from a person’s mind. A new idea that comes to him suddenly is, while still in the mind, so hidden and undeveloped that even he does not yet grasp it.

When the idea begins to move out of the mind and is revealed, it fills the person with fervor and can move him to act. But what makes it last is the heart: once a matter is firmly established in the heart, he will never move from it.

As long as the matter is only in his intellect, he can abandon it at once, because his heart is still rooted in bodily desires.

The heart is closer to the body than the mind is. So even when a person understands clearly that he must cleave to G‑d with all his soul, and that this is the purpose of everything, his heart can still pull him after physical desires.

The Sages describe the heart as the organ that covets. Therefore a person must always be diligent in the war of the intellect against the heart, using all the power of his contemplation of G‑d’s greatness to bend the heart too, until it also desires to cleave to Him.

The maamar applies this to two kinds of service, that of the tzaddik and that of the chassid. The Mishnah defines the mighty man as “he who conquers his inclination,” and the one called a tzaddik here is one who must always conquer his heart.

He has to subdue his heart with his intellect constantly, because his heart is still deeply rooted in this world’s concerns while only his intellect inclines to cleave to G‑d. Since his life is a continual battle, he is called a tzaddik.

The higher level belongs to one who trains himself in contemplation until the matter takes root in his heart as well. Then, of itself, he is utterly nullified, with nothing left in him that resists.

Such a person will never move from it, and he is called a chassid; the bracket names Rabbi Chaim Vital’s Sha’arei Kedushah as the source of these terms. It adds that Tanya (Sefer Shel Beinonim) uses other terms: the one who has reached this level is called a tzaddik, and the one who must keep fighting is called a beinoni, an “intermediate” person.

King David illustrates the higher level. When he saw those who hate G‑d he became their complete enemy, although they had bodily qualities that would ordinarily draw love.

Beauty and wisdom are the kind of things the body naturally loves. But David’s love of G‑d was rooted in his heart as well as his mind, so all his natural feelings were nullified before G‑d and the attraction had no hold on him; this is what he meant by “my heart is void within me.”

The heart’s strength comes from the idea’s having come out of the mind, where it was most hidden. The maamar now returns to Yesod: in anything that bestows downward, the level through which it bestows is called Yesod.

That is why, when we address G‑d (Havayah) in a blessing, we use the word Baruch, “Blessed,” which, as is known, corresponds to the Yesod of Abba; the Kehot note cites the Kabbalistic lexicon Me’orei Or for this.

We address Him at the level through which He is bound to us to give us life, and that is the very level at which we are able to take hold of Him.

We can grasp no more than that, because that is the level to which He contracts Himself in order to bestow below. So the verse says “You have made them all with wisdom”: all creation is joined to Him through Chochmah, and there we have our hold.

From the two Yesods, of Abba and of Imma, comes the intellect of Z’eir Anpin. Its name, from ze’eir, “small,” reflects that its intellect is smaller than the levels above it.

Z’eir Anpin is the life-force that spreads out to give life to the worlds; the bracket points to the discourses “I have come into My garden” and “Go out and see,” on “Lift up your hands in holiness,” which explain how that life is drawn down. When the light spreads down to the chest, many lights arise there, and from there the levels of Rachel and Leah, two feminine configurations that receive from Z’eir Anpin, are formed.

The maamar raises a point from the Arizal’s writings, which seem to say that Leah draws her nourishment from the levels above her, from Binah and Tevunah (the lower part of Binah), and that Rachel likewise draws from above.

For Rachel the Arizal brings “With wisdom He founded the earth,” which the Zohar reads as “Abba founded the daughter”: Chochmah, called Abba, founded Malchus, the “daughter” and the “earth,” for everything issues from Chochmah. The maamar grants that this is true.

Yet it proposes another way to see them: Rachel and Leah are called thought and speech. The bracket refers to three discourses where this is explained, in Shelach, Vayeitzei and Tazria.

Thought and speech are “the hidden world” and “the revealed world.” They are called the “back” (achorayim) of the intellect: not the intellect itself, but its outer extension as it spreads into thought and speech.

This is why Rachel and Leah are said to come from the “back” of the Yesod of Abba and Imma. To explain “hidden” and “revealed,” the maamar notes that thought already holds the very letters a person will later speak.

What a person thinks is what he speaks; the difference is that in thought the letters are covered and known to him alone, while once they are spoken even someone else can understand them.

Thought and speech come from the emotive attributes: a person thinks and speaks about what he loves. The emotions in turn come from the intellect’s contemplation: first an idea occurs to him, and then he dwells on it.

As he contemplates, the matter spreads into the heart, and there the emotions arise that make him want it or not want it. The heart is what gives a matter permanence; for sometimes the intellect says that one should love something, and the body’s nature does not let him.

When he binds his intellect so strongly that the resolve to act is fixed in his heart too, he becomes nullified as a matter of course, and his natural emotions no longer stand in the way.

That is why Yaakov could kiss Rachel: it was surely permitted to him, because his cleaving to G‑d left him void of every bodily desire. The maamar then returns to thought and speech: when the letters of thought spread into the letters of speech, they become more revealed.

Since the intellect goes out from the mind into the heart, and everything comes from Chochmah, the heart has all the intellect’s levels. The first is sight, as Koheles says: “my heart has seen much wisdom.”

The heart also hears and understands, as the Midrash on Koheles lists the heart’s powers on the verse “I spoke with my heart.” This means the heart has the level of Binah too, because the Yesods of Abba and Imma end there equally, and through them the light connects to give life to all the worlds.

The maamar closes with what it asks of a person: he must always be diligent and wholehearted, conquering his inclination and uprooting it from his thought, speech and action, so that he may cleave to G‑d.