ביאור ע״פ ועתה יגדל הנ״ל

The heading says this is a further explanation of a verse already discussed above: “And now, I pray, let the power of Ado-nai be great, as You have spoken, saying.” Moshe said these words when he pleaded for the people after the report of the spies.

The two phrases “with all your soul” and “with all your might” are tied to two kinds of beings, “those who stand” and “walkers.” “Those who stand” receive G‑dly light only as it is enclothed in the vessels of their own world, so each world grasps it in its own measure, Beriah in one way and Yetzirah in another. This is because that light comes from Malchus of memalei kol almin, the light that enters each world and is fitted to its capacity.

The souls of Israel in this world are “walkers,” because here there shines a light too great to enter any vessel: sovev kol almin, the light that encompasses the worlds. It corresponds to “with all your might,” a love without limit, and to “beneath are the arms of the world,” the divine power that reaches down below everything. That is why all the work of refinement (birurim) belongs specifically to now, to life in this world: “today, to do them.”

Because sovev kol almin is revealed here, a thing can be changed in its very nature, from one essence to another, as when darkness itself is turned into light. This power to move from one state to a wholly different one is what makes the souls “walkers.”

In the higher worlds there is no such transformation: each thing remains what it is and where it is. The text refers the reader to its discourse in Parshas Bechukosai, “It is explained in Etz Chaim,” for more on this.

The full revelation of sovev kol almin, which now shines in this world in a hidden way, will come in the Time to Come, called “rest for the life of the worlds.” The text reads “the life of the worlds” as Malchus, which gives the worlds their life-force, and says that it will then be raised to a state of rest. Now, by contrast, it goes through ascents and descents, which differ between Shabbos, Yom Tov and Yom Kippur.

The maamar turns to Torah and mitzvos and begins with the mitzvos: they are “garments” for the soul, and garments are encompassing lights (makifim), which surround a thing rather than enter it. To show how such an encompassing light is formed, it quotes a phrase of the prayers that calls G‑d “Master of our strength, Rock of our stronghold.”

Malchus of Atzilus, the lowest level of the highest world, becomes the Atik of Beriah: the hidden, highest level of the world below it; and the same holds for Yetzirah. That is why it is called “Rock”: like a rock that shelters from the rain, it covers the lower world from above, as an encompassing light.

The same pattern repeats inside Atzilus, which has its own Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah: Abba and Imma are its Beriah, Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes its Yetzirah, and Netzach, Hod and Yesod its Asiyah. Over these too stand encompassing lights, formed from Malchus of the Infinite One, also called Malchus of Adam Kadmon, and they become Atik.

The name Atik means “removed”: this level is removed from the middos, which are called “days,” and exalted above them, as the same root is used in “Who removes mountains.” The phrase of the prayers “Who is uplifted from the days of the world” is read the same way: uplifted above the middos, and, in the words quoted next, “not of all these middos at all.”

The quoted phrase ends here, and the text notes that it was explained above. Corresponding to these three encompassing levels there are three kinds of mitzvos: those that depend on thought, such as the love of G‑d (“And you shall love”), those that depend on speech, and, as the “etc.” implies, those that depend on action.

The Zohar’s saying “the Torah issues from Chochmah” is made precise: from the hidden Chochmah, the Chochmah of Arich Anpin (the outer level of Keser). In the Kabbalistic image of a head, the Torah comes from the “hairs” of this hidden Chochmah, in which the Gevurah of Atik is enclothed, while the mitzvos come from the Gulgalta, the skull of Arich Anpin, the Keser within Keser, in which the Chesed of Atik is enclothed and which is called “whiteness.” From there come the “paths of Havayah.”

A path through a field is a strip left open, and so these “paths” are places on the head that are clear of hair. They are the thirteen paths that branch out from there into Z’eir Anpin.

The Zohar speaks of one path that divides into the 613 precepts of the Torah and cites “All the paths of Havayah are kindness and truth.” So the mitzvos come from the open “white” paths of Chesed, while the hairs are contractions brought about by the five Gevuros, the source of judgment and limitation.

The maamar now explains why the Torah is from Chochmah and the mitzvos from the higher Gulgalta. The Torah as a whole explains and spells out the mitzvos: on tzitzis, for example, the Oral Torah has a whole chapter of tractate Menachos, the chapter “HaTecheiles.”

Shabbos, with its command and its prohibitions, fills an entire tractate. It is the Torah’s wisdom within each mitzvah that defines and narrows it, so that it must be done in exactly this way and no other; the mitzvah by itself does not do this.

As the written Torah states a mitzvah, nothing in it proves that it must take exactly this form. Correspondingly above, the Gulgalta, called the “620 pillars of light” (620 is the numerical value of כתר, Keser), is the drawing-down of G‑dliness into a mitzvah such as tefillin.

That drawing-down is simple will, with no reason behind it. Only afterwards, in the hidden Chochmah, the “brain” (Mocha), comes the wisdom of the mitzvos, and that wisdom narrows the will so that the mitzvah must be done in exactly this way.

Because the Torah is wisdom, every person can grasp it, though at very different depths. The distance between the understanding of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and ours is an example.

At whatever level, the Torah can be understood, because its root is the Mocha, which is Chochmah. The mitzvos themselves, which come from the will above wisdom, cannot be grasped at all: they are chukim, decrees beyond reason.

The maamar turns to Moshe’s request. When G‑d threatened to destroy the people after the report of the spies, Moshe prayed, “And now, I pray, let the power of Ado-nai be great, as You have spoken, saying: Havayah is slow to anger…”, and the maamar will explain these words in terms of Torah and mitzvos.

Man was placed in Gan Eden “to work it and to guard it”: to draw into Gan Eden a revelation of G‑dliness that the created beings there can grasp, as the Sages describe the righteous who “sit … and delight” in the radiance of the Shechinah. This drawing-down comes through the Torah, which is called “strength” (oz).

The parenthesis points to other places that treat the Torah as “strength”: the discourse on “In the third month” in Parshas Yisro, the Iggeres HaKodesh on “She girds with strength,” and the Ramaz on Parshas Emor. The Torah’s root is the hidden Chochmah, from which the middos flow, and so through the Torah G‑dliness is revealed in Gan Eden.

Here is how this comes about. Malchus of Atzilus becomes Atik, the hidden source, for Beriah: what is “speech” in Atzilus becomes, as it were, “thought” for the world below. This is the sense of “And G‑d spoke all these words, saying”: speech that becomes “saying,” a more hidden, inward level.

Becoming hidden in this way is what “Atik” means. There is an Atik in Beriah as well, as is known from the mystical intentions (kavanos) of the prayer Baruch She’amar: it comes before the Shemoneh Esreh, yet it is the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.

That level of the Thirteen Attributes, said before the Shemoneh Esreh, belongs to Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, while the Thirteen Attributes said after the Shemoneh Esreh, beginning “And Havayah passed,” are those of Atzilus. From the Thirteen Attributes of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah the light is drawn into Gan Eden, and this comes through the Torah, which turns “speech” into “saying.”

Moshe’s request is now explained in full. Through the Torah, divine speech becomes “saying,” the drawing-down into Gan Eden described above; through the mitzvos, “the power of Ado-nai” is made great. The one verse asks for both.

Ado-nai is the Name of Malchus, sovereignty, as in the rule “the law of the kingdom is law,” and the mitzvos, the decrees of the King, are drawn from it; yet their root is in the Gulgalta. When someone throws a stone, the power within him shows itself in the stone’s rising; so Moshe asked that the power behind Ado-nai, which is in the Keser of Arich Anpin, be revealed.

There are two aspects in the mitzvos. The first is the mitzvah’s own effect: through the esrog or the shofar a union is made above; but since that has a reason, it is not yet service in the full sense, just as taking a remedy or a segulah (something that works by its own hidden property) is not.

The second aspect of the mitzvos is “the command of the King,” done without any reason. Even if no union were brought about above, one would still do it, just as one would carry out a king’s order to chop wood, an act with nothing in it to understand.

That is why it is called the King’s command: one looks for no reason at all and simply accepts the yoke (kabbalas ol). The ground for this follows: in His own essence G‑d is “exalted alone,” above any relation to the worlds.

This level is the Gulgalta, the “skull” that covers over the “brain”: the will that stands above wisdom. What chiefly connects Him with created beings is that He is their King, as in the words of the prayer, “the King Who is exalted alone.”

It follows that this level can be drawn down only through accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, the bond between a people and its King. And it is precisely this acceptance that also brings about the union above.

The Sages’ rule that “mitzvos require intention” is read here as the intention of accepting the yoke: doing the mitzvah because it is the King’s command. This leads back to “the power of Ado-nai,” for there are two levels: Ado-nai itself, and the “power” of Ado-nai.

Ado-nai is the Malchus of Atzilus, and its “power” is the Malchus of the Infinite One. On the verse “If You keep account of iniquities, Y-ah, Ado-nai, who will stand?” the Zohar finds a wonder: if the sins reach as high as the Name Y-ah, which is Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah), it asks how Ado-nai, a much lower level, can help.

The answer is that the Ado-nai of this verse is not the ordinary Malchus but the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah, above Atzilus. That is why it is joined to “who” (mi), a word that points to what is hidden and beyond grasp.

This is the sense of the next verse, “For with You is forgiveness, so that You may be held in awe”: forgiveness comes from the well-known “ten depths” of the Sefiros. Moshe asked that this higher Ado-nai, the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah, be drawn down and made great within the Ado-nai of Atzilus.

A long parenthesis now gathers related sources. The Zohar on Parshas Balak discusses “Ado-nai, who will stand,” and the Ramaz there explains Ado-nai as a level in the beard of Arich Anpin; the text begins to reconcile this with its own reading, that it is the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah.

The two readings meet, because the Malchus of the hidden Chochmah is the encompassing light of the first of the thirteen tikkunim of the beard, the thirteen “rectifications” of Arich Anpin’s beard, as Etz Chaim explains in Sha’ar Arich Anpin. It receives from the head, the Malchus of the Gulgalta, and this is the level of “From the straits I called Y-ah.”

That is why this level is drawn down specifically through accepting the yoke, as the text explains elsewhere on “And all the people saw.” The Ramaz there reads “who will stand” as the Binah of Atik, and he writes more on it in Parshas Vayikra.

The Ramaz’s remark in Vayikra is on page 15b. The text then points to the Zohar on the word “great” (Part I, 42a), suggesting that it speaks of this same “power of Ado-nai,” and to the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, at the start of Parshas Tzav, on “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.”

The text adds that on its own reading “Ado-nai” and “who” are not two levels, as in the Ramaz, but one, and that one is what the verse calls “the power of Ado-nai.” It then lists further places in the third part of the Zohar on the meaning of “the power of Ado-nai.”

These are pages 161b, 220a, 245a and 295b, with the end of 140a, and the Ramaz on 220a. On 161b the Zohar says that when the hidden Atik shines into the brain and the brain into the heart, this is “the power of Havayah,” the force that comes from the holy Atik.

The Zohar relates that King David was given seventy years of life by Avraham, Yaakov and Yosef, twenty-eight of them by Yaakov, who lived 147 years instead of 175. Twenty-eight is written כ״ח, the letters of koach, “power,” so this gift too is a drawing-down of “the power of Ado-nai” into David, the embodiment of kingship.

So too in “Blessed be the glory of Havayah from its place”: “glory” is Malchus, and the blessing is that it be blessed from its place, its root above, which is “let the power of Ado-nai be great.” The same idea lies in the angels “mighty in power, who do His word,” as explained elsewhere.