שיר השירים אשר לשלמה ישקנו מנשיקות פיהו כי…

The maamar opens with the first two verses of the Song of Songs, which it will explain phrase by phrase. It begins from a familiar idea: the Song is a love song between G‑d, the groom, and the Jewish people, His bride.

¶12 “Better than wine” is explained from paragraph 12 on.

The Jewish people as a whole is called G‑d’s bride, and the wedding is the Giving of the Torah at Sinai. The Sages read the verse “on the day of his wedding” as that day: Israel is called the bride because the Torah is drawn down and given to them.

The Talmud says that one who brings joy to a groom merits the Torah, which was given with five “voices.” The word chassan (groom) is read as chas darga, “coming down a level,” after the Talmud’s “go down a step (nechis darga) and take a wife” (Yevamos 63a): a groom is one who descends toward his bride. The Tzemach Tzedek (Or HaTorah, Shemos) remarks that here the groom is the Infinite Light’s descent into Chochmah, while elsewhere chas darga is the descent from the three upper Sefiros to the seven lower ones.

G‑d as groom means the Infinite Light coming down and clothing itself in the Torah so that it can be given to us. The bride is Knesses Yisrael, the collective root of all Jewish souls, and each individual Jew, a “spark” of that root, is also a bride in this sense.

The Alter Rebbe now gives the word kallah (bride) two meanings, which will organize the whole maamar. The first comes from kilayon, “being consumed, used up”: Asaf’s “my flesh is consumed (kalah)” is rendered by the Targum “my body is spent.” Rashi, as the Kehot note points out, reads that same verse in the second sense, as longing.

The same sense of coming to an end appears in Isaiah (16:4, “the plunderer is ended,” kalah). The Alter Rebbe suggests that kallah with a patach, the word for bride, can carry it too, as the Zohar (3:72a) shows: it renders Yehudah’s words about Tamar, “for she was his daughter-in-law (kallaso),” as “for she is the consuming (shetzisa) of the world,” with the same Aramaic root as the Targum’s “spent.”

Grammatically, kallah is built like rakkah, zakkah and dakkah (“soft,” “pure,” “fine”), a form that describes something by the quality or action it has. So the bride is named for what she does: she consumes, bringing everything to its end.

The Midrash also uses this root for being consumed. The second meaning is from “my soul yearns (kalsah)”: the soul’s longing to cleave to G‑d and be absorbed in His light.

The Targum’s rendering “my soul longs” confirms that kalsah means longing, the same word the Targum uses for Chavah’s desire for her husband. The Alter Rebbe then turns to the Shema, where he finds two kinds of self-sacrifice (mesirus nefesh) that match the two meanings of kallah.

The first self-sacrifice is at the word “One” (Echad) of the Shema, where one resolves to give up one’s life for G‑d’s unity. In Likkutei Torah, Re’eh (25a), the Alter Rebbe explains that this is not only picturing martyrdom but a real nullification of the soul at its innermost level (yechidah) into G‑d’s light, as in “Whom do I have in heaven.” The second is “You shall love G‑d… with all your soul,” which the Mishnah explains as loving Him even if He takes your life; the maamar will ask how the two differ.

A second question: love belongs to a living, feeling person, as the Torah says “to love… for He is your life.” How can love come after a self-sacrifice that has already given up life itself?

Self-sacrifice at “One” means casting one’s life aside, a nullification of one’s very existence before G‑d. The parenthesis sends the reader to two discourses in Torah Ohr: on “For your love is better than wine” (Shemos, 53a), where a love born of the reason “for He is your life” is not yet the self-sacrifice of “with all your soul,” and the Purim discourse (99b), where the Torah gives a reason only for love, while self-sacrifice, casting one’s life away, comes from above all reason.

The difficulty is stated sharply: after total self-nullification, how can there be “You shall love,” which assumes someone who exists and loves?

¶3 Hold this question: paragraph 3 answers it.

The answer begins: the self-sacrifice at “One” comes from “Hear, O Israel,” since “hear” here means “understand.” It comes from contemplating G‑d’s greatness: that He is One now exactly as He was before creation, without any change.

Two verses and a line from the morning prayers say this: creation made no change in G‑d. The last, “besides Me there is no Elokim,” leads into the point about the Name Elokim that follows.

Elokim is the Name of G‑d associated with concealment, the power that hides G‑d so a world can seem to exist. But from G‑d’s own perspective nothing hides Him at all, since everything before Him is as nothing.

The verse “you shall not profane (sechalelu) My holy Name” is read as “do not make a chalal, an empty space” where something could exist apart from G‑d. Whoever truly grasps that G‑d is One has no room left for his own desires, ego or living for himself.

This is the first meaning of kallah, consumption: the self that lives for itself is used up. All personal wishes fall away, and only the will for G‑d remains.

The second meaning, yearning, is a different nullification: the person still exists as a self, but that self longs to be absorbed in G‑d. Here the ego is not erased; it gives itself over.

That is why “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever,” the line said quietly after “Hear, O Israel,” comes between it and “You shall love.” It is the lower unity: G‑d’s kingship (Malchus, the “kingdom” of that line) is what brings creatures into existence, since there is no king without a people, and so it makes room for a self that can love.

“Besides Me there is no Elokim” means there is no concealing power outside of G‑d. The concealment, Elokim, is itself Havayah: G‑d Himself is the one who hides.

G‑d Himself contracts and conceals His infinite light so that created beings can appear as existing things (yesh).

The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 21:5) has the image of the kamtza, a small creature (a snail, or by another reading a locust), whose covering grows out of its own body: so the concealment is part of G‑d Himself, not something apart. From this lower unity, “Blessed be the name,” comes the love of “You shall love,” in which a real self loves; the higher unity at “One” is total self-nullification.

This answers the opening question: love can follow the self-sacrifice at “One” because “Blessed be the name” is said in between, re-establishing a self that can love. In the Chanukah discourse in Torah Ohr (Vayeishev, 29b) he explains it somewhat differently: “with all your soul” is the self-sacrifice in which even the animal soul is subdued and transformed, and it belongs not to “One” but to “Blessed be the name”; the two explanations, he says, agree.

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

In Kabbalah these two levels are called the Higher Shechinah and the Lower Shechinah, the Divine Presence as it is above and as it dwells below.

They are the two “brides” of the Song of Songs, which speaks entirely of these two levels. The evidence: the love between groom and bride is described twice in the Song, once for each bride.

Section 2 begins. Just as there are two kinds of bride, there are two kinds of groom, two ways G‑d “descends a level” toward us; the wedding blessing’s plural, “the jubilation of grooms,” hints at this, since a plural means at least two. To explain them, the Alter Rebbe turns to a phrase from the morning prayer Baruch She’amar: “King, praised and glorified forever is His great Name.”

¶9 Two grooms: the first is explained in 5–8, the second in paragraph 9.

The phrase “His great Name” raises two questions: what can a great or small name mean for G‑d? And the Sages say that before creation “there was He and His Name alone”: but a name is how others call someone, and before creation there was no one to call Him.

The Sages usually call G‑d “the Holy One, blessed be He” rather than names like “Compassionate” that describe His dealings with the world. “Holy” (kadosh) means set apart: the name itself says that G‑d is beyond everything. In Likkutei Torah, Tazria (22c), the Alter Rebbe explains that kadosh is Keser, set apart above the chain of worlds, and baruch is Chochmah, its beginning, so the name says that He both encompasses and fills the worlds.

Even the first light G‑d draws down at the very top of the chain of worlds is like a drop compared to the ocean when measured against Him. The parenthesis points to two discourses on this name: in Torah Ohr, Miketz (35c), on two meanings of “the Holy One, blessed be He,” and later in this book (21c), where kadosh is the holiness drawn into the worlds and is “blessed” from a supernal holiness above them.

The Sages’ image of G‑d “sitting” and studying Torah means that He lowers Himself, as a person who sits makes himself shorter, to clothe Himself in the Torah. What comes down in this way is only an illumination, and it is called His “name.”

A name, like a ray of light, is not the essence but a radiance from it. “He and His Name” before creation means the capacity within G‑d to radiate such light, from which worlds would come into being once He willed it.

The analogy is sunlight still contained within the sun. But the sun shines automatically, without choosing to, while G‑d’s radiance comes forth only when it arises in His will.

So the radiance “contained in Him” is a capacity, not an automatic outflow, and this capacity to shine is what is called His Name: the “power” of which Moshe speaks in “Let the power of Ado-nai be great.” A name is needed because G‑d’s essence itself is not defined by giving or radiating at all; the discourse on “You are standing” (Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim) adds that even His Name is “alone,” beyond all thought.

So the power and source of all that flows out of G‑d is only His “Name.” Even “the source of life” is called “with You”: something secondary to G‑d, which counts as nothing before Him.

His “great Name” is this capacity, which stands above the whole chain of worlds. Because it is still within the Infinite, it is “praised and glorified forever” in an infinite way.

The same prayer calls G‑d “unique, the Life of the worlds, King.” The Alter Rebbe reads this as saying that what gives life to the worlds is only His aspect of King, not His essence.

The worlds do not flow from G‑d the way an effect flows from its cause. In a true cause-and-effect relation the cause itself is changed by what it produces, and G‑d does not change. Later in this book (40b) the Alter Rebbe explains that the nations’ sages hold that creation proceeds by cause and effect, though a cause is always changed by clothing itself in its effect.

A teacher is the example: while teaching, his mind is occupied with his student’s level and is no longer free for his own thinking. The act of giving changes the giver.

G‑d, by contrast, is exactly the same before and after creation, as the prayer “You were the same” declares. So creation cannot be a direct outflow from His essence.

The worlds draw their life only from His Name, His Malchus (kingship), not from His essence, and so He is unchanged. In Likkutei Torah, Shelach (48c), the Alter Rebbe explains that several holy Names are at the level of the light that fills the worlds, while “His great Name” is above even the light that encompasses them.

The verse “His Name alone is exalted” (Psalms 148:13) says that even His Name is beyond the worlds.

If the worlds flowed from His Name as effect from cause, they would themselves be infinite. Instead, light reaches the worlds through tzimtzum, a contraction, and a “leap” across a gap: only a thin line (the kav) is drawn from the Malchus of the Infinite, and countless further contractions and concealments follow.

Only after those contractions can there be an orderly chain of cause and effect among the worlds; this is the known distinction between the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev) and the light that fills them (memalei). The Tanya gloss he cites (Part II, chapter 9) speaks of the contractions of the Infinite Light and of Adam Kadmon, all of which contract the light so that it can clothe itself in the vessels of the ten Sefiros.

The first groom is His great Name coming down to clothe itself in the Torah, “sitting and studying.” This is called “the song of the Torah,” and it goes beyond the Zohar’s statement that the Torah comes from Chochmah (wisdom).

The Zohar says the Torah “comes forth” from Chochmah; “comes forth” refers only to the revealed Torah. There is a higher light, by which the Infinite clothes itself within supernal Chochmah.

That higher light, of G‑d who is “wise, but not with a knowable wisdom” (Tikkunei Zohar, Patach Eliyahu), is the cantillation notes (ta’amim) of the Torah, its “song,” with names like zarka and shofar. The notes, too, are a kind of letters: Kabbalah counts four layers of the Torah’s text, the notes, vowels, crowns and letters.

The notes are “letters” from G‑d’s supernal delight, the level of “For with You is the source of life,” higher than supernal Chochmah and certainly higher than the letters of speech, which come from Chochmah.

Just as a person has letters of speech and letters of thought, there are “letters” even within intellect and above it: these are the ta’amim, a word that also means “taste.” They express G‑d’s delight in Himself, as the Torah, speaking as Wisdom in Proverbs, says, “I was beside Him… a delight.”

This delight then clothes itself in supernal Chochmah, the Torah, as in “I delight in Your Torah.” The references point to other discourses on the song and notes of the Torah.

Further references, and a new point: “He was King in Yeshurun” can be read with Yeshurun as related to shir, “song.” In Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim (45a), the Alter Rebbe explains that this shir is of the level of circles, drawn from the light that encompasses all worlds, so the song of the Torah is bound up with G‑d as King.

A song is circular: in a melody the end is embedded in the beginning, and when it ends its beginning returns. So the Torah’s song draws down the very light that encompasses all worlds (sovev), and this comes through His kingship, as every blessing over a mitzvah says, “King of the world, who has sanctified us with His commandments.”

Section 3 returns to the opening verse, word by word. Song is described as “running and returning” (ratzo vashov), the soul’s surge upward and its return; above, its counterpart is “reaching and not reaching,” a light that touches its recipient without being contained by it.

“Song of Songs” means the one song from which all the lower songs receive. There are many songs rising from below to above, and they all draw from it.

The first rising song is that of Malchus of Atzilus, the source that brings creatures into being, as it rises and dissolves in its Emanator in “running and returning.”

Even after it enters the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, every ascent of the worlds is a “song,” like a melody whose notes rise and fall. There are countless such ascents, all of them songs.

In its plain sense the Mishnah (Shabbos 5:1, 51b) says that animals that wear a shir, a neck-ring or collar, may go out wearing it on Shabbos and be led by it; the Alter Rebbe reads shir as “song”: all beings go out and are drawn along by song. In Torah Ohr, Bereishis (7c, on “his brother’s name was Yuval”), he explains that every ascent from one level to a higher one is through song, the nullification of the self.

The songs that rise from below are called shirah, the feminine form, as in “this song” at the Sea: they are the bride. The bride’s song brings the groom’s joy out from hiding into revelation, as the wedding blessing says, “who gladdens the groom with the bride.”

Through the bride’s song (shirah, feminine) the higher song (shir, masculine) comes down. The Zohar in Vayeilech (3:284b–285a) draws this distinction: shir is masculine and shirah feminine; Moshe’s shirah rises from below, the Queen’s praise of the King, while shir descends from above, the King’s praise of the Queen.

The higher, masculine song is the light that encompasses all worlds, drawn from His great Name. It is the “song” and notes of the Torah, G‑d’s delight, clothing itself in the Torah: the first groom of section 2.

The Alter Rebbe suggests that Yisrael can be read as shir Kel, “song of G‑d” (the same letters), since Jewish souls contain both the higher song and the lower songs; the Tikkunei Zohar makes the same reading. The paragraph closes with references to the discourses on Yeshurun and on “He has not seen iniquity in Israel” (Balak).

“Which is Shlomo’s” (liShlomo) is read as “of peace” (shalom). The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 12:8) says G‑d “makes peace in His heights” between Michael, the angel of water, and Gavriel, the angel of fire, two opposites.

In the same way, the Song brings together two opposites: the worlds rising from below and G‑d’s light descending from above. They are opposites because G‑d is utterly beyond the worlds, which are like a drop compared to the ocean.

The worlds feel themselves separate from G‑d, and to Him they are like a drop beside the ocean. For G‑d’s infinite light to enter something so small, He must take delight in doing so.

That delight is the “song,” and it produces “peace,” the bond between the giver above and the receiver below. This is “which is Shlomo’s (liShlomo)”: of peace.

The name Shlomo holds both masculine and feminine. Read with its cholam (the o vowel), it hints at “the King to whom peace belongs,” as the Talmud reads every Shlomo in the Song of Songs; that is the masculine drop, the flow from above.

Ending with a hei, the feminine ending, Shlomo also hints at the ascent from below. Together they form a union above, by which song is drawn down to the songs; the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a seventeenth-century Kabbalist who wrote a commentary on the Zohar) is cited on this.

What brings this about is “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” G‑d’s great Name coming down as song and notes is called a kiss: the revelation of inner love, like a father’s love for his only son.

Such love is so intense, like a burning fire (“his inside inlaid with love,” in the words of the Song), that it cannot come out openly except in a great contraction: into the breath of a kiss.

A kiss is a physical act, yet it reveals the innermost love precisely because that love does not fit into any other vessel, not even words. In Torah Ohr, on “If only you were as a brother to me… I would kiss you” (Terumah, 80d), the kiss is “the cleaving of spirit to spirit,” and the mitzvos draw down from the level of Akudim, above all enclothing in vessels.

In the same way, G‑d’s longing and delight to reveal His infinite light in the tiny “drop” of the worlds, and through the Torah, comes by a “skip and a leap.”

It does not come step by step through the chain of worlds but through a great contraction, G‑d “sitting” and occupying Himself with the Torah. This is “praised and glorified forever is His great Name.”

The verse “By day Havayah commands His kindness, and at night His song is with me” describes the two directions. By day, through the Jewish people’s Torah study, G‑d’s kindness flows down.

The Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3b) divides G‑d’s twelve-hour day into four spans of three hours, and the maamar quotes the first three: Torah study, judging the world, and sustaining it. Each is the Infinite Light clothed in some kind of giving.

The Zohar (Pinchas) explains “bread that sustains the heart of man” as the bread the shechakim grind; shechakim, a heaven named for grinding (shachak), are Netzach and Hod. In Iggeres HaKodesh (epistle 15) the Alter Rebbe explains why: like millstones that grind wheat fine, they break down the flow so that the receiver can take it in, as a father breaks an idea into small parts for his son.

“At night His song is with me” is the song of the angels, rising from below to above, and it comes after, and because of, what Israel drew down by day. The Talmud reads the verse this way: in the heaven called Ma’on, angels sing at night and are silent by day in honor of Israel (Chagigah 12b).

The verse’s written text has shirah (feminine) while it is read shiro (masculine), hinting at the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, masculine and feminine. Likewise “his mouth” in our verse is spelled pihu, with an extra hei, hinting at both.

Section 4 names what has been described so far as the first groom: G‑d’s infinite light coming down into the Torah as it exists in supernal Chochmah. This Chochmah is still G‑d’s own, “wise, but not with a knowable wisdom.”

The second groom is a further descent: the light already in the Torah continues down into the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The verse “He set a Torah in Israel” describes the Torah placed below, among the people.

¶4 This is the second groom promised in paragraph 4.

The goal is that G‑d’s light be revealed below just as above, and that His delight dwell even in the Torah and mitzvos as they are practiced in the lower worlds. The parenthesis refers to the Likkutei Torah of the Arizal (a collection of his teachings arranged by the verses of Scripture, not this book) on Psalms 78.

The Midrash says the Torah existed “two thousand years” before the world. The Alter Rebbe reads alpayim, “two thousand,” as two forms of a’alefcha, “I will teach you” (from Elihu’s “I will teach you wisdom”): wisdom and understanding, Chochmah and Binah, the Torah’s first home.

The first groom brings the Torah into Chochmah and Binah; the second draws it from there into the emotive attributes (middos) of Z’eir Anpin, the level that relates to the world. This is the step toward the world.

Several discourses are cited, including one on the verse “as a groom adorns himself with splendor.” The point: the second groom is the Torah coming down into the lower worlds.

The blessing over a mitzvah says “who has sanctified us with His commandments.” It means that G‑d’s delight is drawn into the mitzvos and the Torah, since the Torah is essentially the explanation of the mitzvos.

The verse “which a person shall do, and live by them” has two stages. First the person “makes” the mitzvos: “and you shall do them” is spelled without a vav, so osam, “them,” can be read atem, “you,” as if the person makes them; then he “lives by them,” receiving life from them, because their root is higher than he is.

Every mitzvah uses a physical object: an esrog, a sukkah, tzitzis, or animals offered on the altar. The Alter Rebbe now explains why these physical things are actually rooted higher than man.

In Kabbalah, the world of Tohu (“chaos”) existed before the world of order and shattered; the Torah’s list of the kings of Edom “before a king reigned over the children of Israel” alludes to it. Animals are rooted in Tohu, higher than man (adam), as the Talmud says “even the gnat came before you,” but they fell low when Tohu shattered. The printed text reads “in song” (beshirah), evidently a slip for “in the shattering” (bishvirah), and the translation follows the sense.

When Tohu shattered, the fragments that could be refined became angels, like Michael and Gavriel. What could not be refined fell all the way down to become physical animals and everything in our physical world.

Man represents Tikkun (“rectification”), the world of order, and the divine Name Mah associated with Chochmah: adam, “man,” has the numerical value 45, the value of the Name Mah. When he offers an animal on the altar, he lifts it.

The phrase “this is the law of the animal” is read with words that echo the law of the burnt-offering, “it is the olah,” “that which rises”: the animal’s law is to rise back to its root in Tohu, which is higher than man. That is why man then receives life from the offerings and “lives by them.”

The same is true of all mitzvos, like tzitzis of wool and tefillin of parchment. Below, man turns the object into a mitzvah that carries G‑d’s light.

Above, however, the mitzvos stand far higher. The 613 Torah mitzvos and 7 Rabbinic ones make 620 “pillars” joining heaven and earth; in Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai (47b), these are the 620 pillars of light from Keser (whose numerical value is 620), drawn into the limbs of Z’eir Anpin and from there into the lower worlds. “Behind and before You formed me” hints at this two-way relationship. The Talmud (Berachos 61a) reads this verse of Tehillim either as Adam having been formed with two faces, front and back, or as man coming “behind,” last in the order of creation. Here “behind” and “before” hint at the mitzvos joining the lowest with the highest.

The two grooms, the two descents of G‑d, are brought about by the two brides. This is “who gladdens the groom with the bride”: the bride’s response is what calls the groom down.

The first bride, self-sacrifice that consumes the self, draws G‑d’s great Name down into the Torah as supernal Chochmah. The verse “wisdom comes from nothing (ayin)” links Chochmah to self-nullification: the first groom.

The second bride, the yearning of someone who still exists and loves, draws Chochmah further down into the Torah and mitzvos of the lower worlds: the second groom. Another discourse, on “You have captured my heart, my sister, bride,” is cited.

That is why the Shema continues, after “You shall love… with all your soul,” with “these words which I command you… and you shall speak of them.” Anochi, “I,” is read as G‑d’s own self: the love of the second bride brings G‑d’s own words into a person’s speech.

In Maggid Meisharim, Rabbi Yosef Karo records that the Mishnah, speaking as his heavenly mentor, told him, “I am the Mishnah that speaks in your mouth,” and Isaiah says “I have put My words in your mouth”: G‑d’s actual words.

The psalm title “A maskil of Eisan” is read through the Zohar (2:110b): eisanim, “the strong ones” (spelled here with the same letters as tanaim), are the Tannaim, the sages of the Mishnah. Through their Torah study they draw down maskil, supernal Chochmah, into the world by way of Chesed (kindness).

The next verse, “I will sing of the kindnesses of Havayah forever (olam),” is read as bringing the song and delight of the Torah into the world (olam). This is the ultimate purpose: making a dwelling place for G‑d among the lower realms.

Before the groom is revealed at a wedding, there is the chuppah, the canopy that surrounds the couple. So before G‑d’s light enters inwardly, there must first be an encompassing light, the light that surrounds all worlds (sovev).

“In the shadow of My hand I have covered you” describes this canopy, and the wedding blessing’s “jubilation from their canopies” says the groom’s joy comes from the encompassing light. Several discourses on the chuppah are cited.

The maamar now turns to the rest of the verse, “your love is better than wine.” The Sages say that the reward no eye has seen is the wine kept in its grapes since creation.

¶1 From here to paragraph 16: “better than wine,” from the verse in paragraph 1.

The Talmud learns from “My wine that gladdens Elokim” that the Levites’ song in the Temple is said only over wine. Wine hides within the grape and then comes out into the open: it is the power of bringing the hidden into revelation.

The Talmud says “when wine enters, the secret comes out,” and the psalm says “wine gladdens the heart”: wine brings the hidden into the open. In gematria, yayin, wine, and sod, secret, are both 70.

The deeper something was hidden, the stronger its revelation afterward; nothing is revealed that was not first concealed, as a child is first hidden in its mother’s womb.

A seed must be buried and decay in the ground before it sprouts. The more it is hidden and decays, the greater the harvest.

Exile, too, is concealment, when “we have not seen our signs.”

Because the revelation at Sinai, “face to face,” was to give the revealed Torah, an exile of 210 years in Egypt was enough to precede it. The present exile is far longer because the coming revelation is far greater: the inner dimension of the Torah and its ta’amim.

The blessing before the morning Shema calls G‑d the One who “sows charity (tzedakos) and causes salvations (yeshuos) to sprout”: charity given with physical money is “sown” like a seed. Yeshuos is read through vayisha in “Havayah turned (vayisha) to Hevel and his offering,” a turning of the gaze; both words hold shin-ayin, 370, the 370 lights that Z’eir Anpin receives when it “gazes” at Arich Anpin, as Likkutei Torah explains later (on “There are sixty queens”).

This explains “wine that gladdens Elokim”: Elokim is the Name of hiddenness and concealment, so when the hidden comes out, it is Elokim that is gladdened.

“For a sun and a shield is Havayah Elokim”: Elokim is like a shield or sheath that screens the sun (Havayah), so that the world can seem to exist on its own. When that concealment turns into revelation, the joy is specifically for Elokim, the one who concealed.

The “secret” that wine brings out is “the secret of Havayah,” the hidden G‑dliness. The wine kept in its grapes since creation is the deepest concealment, and so it holds the greatest revelation, the infinite revelation of the future that “no eye has seen.”

Another discourse on the preserved wine is cited, on the blessing of the zimun (in the Siddur, the Kehot note says). But wine, however deep its concealment and great its revelation, still belongs to the ordered chain of worlds, where hiding and revealing are two stages.

“Your love” (dodecha) is higher still: above the chain of worlds, above concealment itself, above both the encompassing and the indwelling light. Before G‑d “darkness is as light”: hiding and revealing make no difference to Him.

From our side, revelation after concealment is like coming from darkness into light. At first “darkness covers” the light.

Then “they have seen a great light,” and there is joy for Elokim, the Name of concealment.

But before His essence even this light and revelation is equal to the darkness that preceded it, for “all lights are darkened before Him,” and, as the Tikkunei Zohar says, even Keser, the highest and purest light, is “black” before Him.

“For your love is better” refers to the revelation of G‑d’s very essence, drawn down through Torah and mitzvos: the “Song of Songs,” His great Name, described earlier. This love is “better than wine,” better than even the greatest revelation within the worlds.