[נמשך לדרוש דלעיל]

These bracketed words tell the reader that what follows is not a new discourse but the continuation of the one before it in Likkutei Torah, Shelach, the explanation of the tzitzis passage that begins “It shall be for you as tzitzis.”

The discourse takes up the verse that closes the passage of tzitzis, “I am Havayah your G‑d, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” To explain it, the Alter Rebbe cites the Midrash on “You shall be holy”: one might think Israel can be holy as G‑d is holy, so the verse adds that His holiness is above theirs.

The Midrash speaks of two kinds of divine response. The first is called forth by human effort: when Israel sanctify themselves, as in “you shall be holy to your G‑d,” they draw down from above the holiness that the angels proclaim three times, “Holy, holy, holy,” as the preceding discourse explained.

The second arousal from above comes first, before any human effort, and it is what enables a person to rise upward at all. It stands far higher than the response that man’s service evokes, which can never reach it.

The Mishnah says that a heavenly voice (bas kol) goes out every day and proclaims; the Baal Shem Tov taught that it reaches people as sudden thoughts of teshuvah. Such thoughts come from above and not from a person’s own effort, just as the world was created without any prior merit on the part of creatures.

Micah’s words “for He desires kindness” describe giving that nothing has earned, as at the beginning of creation. The Alter Rebbe identifies this unprompted flow with “My holiness is above your holiness”; read literally, the Midrash would be stating the obvious, that G‑d’s holiness is above man’s.

The first half of the verse, “I am Havayah… who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” speaks of this preceding arousal from above. The Exodus came from G‑d alone, before Israel had done anything, and its purpose was to make an arousal from below possible.

The verse’s closing words, “I am Havayah your G‑d,” speak of the arousal from above that answers man’s service: studying Torah draws a revelation of the Infinite One into it, and every mitzvah serves the union of “the Holy One, blessed be He” (Z’eir Anpin, the divine emotive attributes) with “His Shechinah” (Malchus). The text speaks of Z’eir Anpin as “from the worlds of Ein Sof,” in contrast to the “separate worlds” of the next part: it belongs to the realm still united with the Infinite, while Malchus dwells within the lower worlds and is the source of Jewish souls.

Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are “separate worlds,” whose creatures sense themselves as existing in their own right, so the higher union cannot be revealed there. What reaches them is the union at the level of Malchus: self-nullification, in which the yesh, a creature’s sense of being something of its own, sets itself aside before G‑d.

Section 4 of the discourse begins. The Sages relate that Korach asked Moshe whether a tallis made entirely of techeles, the blue-dyed wool required in the tzitzis, still needs tzitzis or is exempt; Moshe answered that it needs them.

Korach’s reasoning, explained in the later discourse on “Korach took,” was that the garment stands for the encompassing light itself. The threads are only a narrow, contracted extension of it, like hairs growing from the head, and bear no comparison to the essence of what encompasses.

Korach’s argument: if the tallis of techeles is itself the encompassing light, how can the mitzvah rest not in it but in a few threads? His real aim was to turn the same reasoning against Aharon’s priesthood, which, as the end of the discourse explains, serves like the threads as a channel to Israel.

In truth, the essence of the mitzvah lies in the thread of techeles, because it brings the light inward into the person as inner light (or pnimi), so that he comes to love and fear G‑d. The garment alone remains an encompassing light that does not reach him inwardly.

What has just been said about the thread of techeles sheds further light on the preceding discourse, which explained that techeles comes from the intellect (mochin) of Abba. Abba is the Kabbalistic configuration (partzuf) of Chochmah, the first flash of divine wisdom.

Abba’s role is to bring self-nullification down into Malchus, so that created being, the yesh, becomes nullified before G‑d; this is the “blue light,” the image the preceding discourse drew from the blue part of a flame that clings to the wick and consumes it. More precisely, techeles comes from the Gevuros of Abba, its powers of restraint.

Only from the Gevuros comes the power to produce the nullification of the yesh, as was also cited from the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah on “Come to Cheshbon.” Gevurah, the power to contract and limit, is what can carry self-nullification down into the very place of the yesh, where things feel themselves to exist.

The discourse on “The voice of my beloved” in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim explains this: the flow that comes from the Gevuros enters inwardly, as inner light, the way life-force enters a limb and animates it from within.

So the verse says “for the blood is the soul”: life reaches each limb through the blood. The Chasadim, by contrast, produce only an encompassing light, as in “his right hand embraces me”: an embrace surrounds a person from outside.

For self-nullification to reach the yesh fully, it must enter not only from outside but inwardly, touching its very core, what the verse calls “the inward part of man and the deep heart.” This, again, comes specifically from the Gevuros of Abba.

The Gevuros of Abba have their root in the hidden Chochmah (Chochmah Stima’ah), the concealed wisdom of Arich Anpin, also called the hidden brain (Mocha Stima’ah), in which the Gevurah of Atik is enclothed; Atik (Atik Yomin) is the inner dimension of Keser. The Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto), a Kabbalist and commentator on the Zohar, writes this at the beginning of Parshas Pinchas on “Hear, my son, the discipline of your father,” a verse that speaks of discipline, a form of restraint, coming from a father.

From the Gevurah of Atik, enclothed in the hidden Chochmah, comes the power of birurim, the refining that sifts good from evil, and this refining is itself the nullification of the yesh. Since the goal is for self-nullification to reach truly within, the mitzvah must be done through a thread of techeles.

A thread is narrow and drawn out, so it carries the light inward as truly inner light. The same holds in Kabbalah for the “locks of hair” drawn from Arich Anpin, the narrow channels through which that lofty level reaches the levels below it.

The tallis itself, though entirely techeles, remains an encompassing light. From it alone self-nullification does not penetrate the inner being; it does so only through the threads.

The discourse “It shall be for you as tzitzis,” earlier in Likkutei Torah, Shelach, explains that love and awe, represented by the techeles and white threads, are called “the Torah of man” because they become part of the person himself. The tallis, the encompassing garment, stands for Torah study and the practical mitzvos, called “the mitzvos of Havayah”: they remain G‑d’s commands above the person rather than becoming his inner self.

The Sages say that one who claims to have “nothing but Torah” does not have even Torah. Study alone is not enough; there must be “threads,” the love and awe that draw the Torah inward into the person.

Through the threads a person also remembers the greatness of the garment itself, the encompassing light of the Torah and the mitzvos. A related discussion appears in the discourse “Israel is holy” in Likkutei Torah, Pinchas, on the verse “And I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them upon His arms.”

The Talmud says that when a person comes to judgment he is asked whether he set fixed times for Torah, studied with keen analysis and the like; yet all of it counts only if “the fear of Havayah is his treasure.” The phrase comes from Isaiah.

In the Talmud’s parable, an agent carried a kor, a large measure, of wheat up to his master’s loft without mixing in a kav, a small measure, of chomtin, and the master said it would have been better not to bring it up at all. Rashi explains that chomtin protects stored produce from worms, so without it the wheat would spoil.

The Alter Rebbe explains the parable: wheat stands for the Torah, for the Zohar calls chitah (wheat) the inclusion of the twenty-two letters, and the numerical value of חטה is indeed twenty-two. That is why the Torah was given on Shavuos, the festival of “the first fruits of the wheat harvest”; Rashi’s definition of chomtin as salty earth leads into the discussion of salt that follows.

The Torah requires salt on every offering: “You shall not omit the salt of the covenant of your G‑d from your meal-offering.” The writings of the Arizal (the Kehot note points to his Likkutei Torah on Parshas Vayikra) explain that salt is three Gevuros that have been sweetened, that melach (salt) has the same letters as lechem (bread), and that its numerical value, 78, equals that of mazla, the flow from the highest levels from which Abba draws.

That is, salt has its root in the Gevuros of Abba, the same source as techeles. The Alter Rebbe touched on this briefly in the explanation on “Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes” in Likkutei Torah, Matos.

Salting meat, as halachah requires, draws out its blood and impurities; the Alter Rebbe connects this to salt’s root in Chochmah, which, in the Kabbalistic phrase, “refines”: it sifts the good from the waste. That is why the Torah, the “wheat,” must be mixed with salt: the power for the nullification of the yesh comes from the Gevuros of Abba, as explained above.

Precisely through the Gevuros of Abba comes the power for self-nullification to reach even the yesh, and from there, too, comes awe. So the salt mixed into the wheat stands for the fear of G‑d joined to Torah study.

The master’s words “Did you mix into it for me” contain an extra word, “for me” (li), since the wheat was obviously his. The Alter Rebbe reads it as a hint about what the fear of G‑d does to a person’s Torah, as the next part explains.

When the fear of G‑d is present, the Torah and the “wheat” become “Mine,” G‑d’s own, and the Torah is called “the Torah of Havayah,” just as Israel are called His in “You shall be Mine” and “For unto Me the children of Israel.” Torah studied without awe does not reach this.

The parable is now applied: a large measure of wheat, however precious, is worthless without the small measure of salty earth that preserves it, and so a tallis entirely of techeles is lacking without the tzitzis threads. Korach’s question is answered: the garment needs its threads.

One might wonder how techeles and salt, two different things, can both come from the Gevuros of Abba. The answer is that the Gevuros of Abba contain many levels and gradations; similarly, both the tefillin of the hand and the outer altar are associated with Malchus.

Yet these two are plainly not one level, since the altar is not in use today while the mitzvah of tefillin remains in force. So each Sefirah must contain many levels and gradations.

Still, techeles and salt are connected. That is why Aharon’s priesthood is called “an everlasting covenant of salt”: G‑d made His covenant with Aharon over the priesthood by means of salt.

Salt is the refining power of Chochmah, as with the kav of chomtin above. In the same way Aharon’s priesthood, alluded to in “the beard of Aharon,” draws self-nullification down to the souls of Israel, as the techeles and white threads of tzitzis do; the beard, like hair and threads, is a channel drawn from the head.

The Sages relate that when Aharon was pained at having no share in the princes’ dedication offerings, G‑d told him, “By your life, yours is greater,” for he would kindle the lamps. The discourse on “When you raise up the lamps” explains that Aharon draws down the power of elevation, so that the soul of man, “the lamp of Havayah,” rises upward; the Zohar (Vayechi 241b) and its commentary Mikdash Melech discuss “the salt of the covenant of your G‑d.”