ולהבין ענין מדלג על ההרים מקפץ על הגבעות…

The maamar sets out to explain thoroughly the verse “Leaping over the mountains, skipping over the hills” (Song of Songs 2:8). It begins with the law of the eglah arufah: when a murdered person is found and the killer is unknown, the elders break a calf’s neck at a nachal eisan, a rugged valley (Deuteronomy 21:4).

¶12 Hold this verse: paragraph 12 explains leaping and skipping.

The Mishnah and Gemara in the ninth chapter of Sotah explain that eisan means “hard”: ground that bears no fruit. Rabbi Yochanan ben Shaul gives the reason for the law in G‑d’s words: let a calf, which has produced no fruit, have its neck broken in a place that produces no fruit, and atone for the victim, whom the murderer kept from producing fruit.

The Gemara asks what these fruits are. They cannot be children, for then no calf would be brought for a murdered old man or eunuch, who could not have had children anyway, and one is brought; the fruits are mitzvos, which any living person can still do.

The Gemara has just called the mitzvos “fruits,” and the maamar takes up this name.

To understand the comparison, the maamar looks at how fruit comes about. A seed is put into the ground and rots there; then a tree grows from it and bears fruit of the same kind as the seed, so that an apple seed yields apples.

Yet the growth itself does not come from the seed. It comes from the power of growth in the earth, placed there by G‑d’s word “Let the earth sprout vegetation” (Genesis 1:11); this power is spiritual and can bring forth without limit.

Even the different tastes of fruits, sweet or sour, come from that same power of growth, not from the seed.

The tastes differ according to how the power of growth is blended: kindness (Chasadim) mixed into restraint (Gevuros), or restraint into kindness. In Torah Ohr, Vayera, in the discourse “Eliyahu opened” that the text cites, the Alter Rebbe explains that a fruit’s sweetness is drawn from Chesed and its bitterness from Gevurah, spiritual qualities that became physical through the descent of the levels. If everything comes from the earth’s power, why is a seed needed at all?

The answer: sowing the seed is a raising of mayin nukvin, “feminine waters,” the Kabbalistic term for an arousal from below that calls forth a flow from above. The spiritual power of growth cannot clothe and contract itself in a particular form unless a vessel is there first; once the seed is there as its vessel, the power rests in it, is revealed, and brings forth specifically the seed’s own kind. In Iggeres HaKodesh 20, which the Kehot note cites, the Alter Rebbe adds that fruits grown through sowing, the raising of mayin nukvin, are far finer than what grows from the earth by itself.

Experience shows it: what grows depends on what was sown (the printed word is הרע, hara, “the evil,” read as הזרע, hazera, “the seed”).

This explains why mitzvos are called fruits. Psalms 97:11 says “Light is sown for the tzaddik,” the righteous one: the Infinite Light that is drawn and emanated from G‑d is called “sowing,” in keeping with the analogy above. The text points to the Zohar on Terumah (166b), which says that the Holy One, blessed be He, sowed this light in His garden through the tzaddik, the gardener, and that it grew and bore fruit.

In truth, measured against His very essence, G‑d is “not of any of these attributes at all,” as the Tikkunei Zohar says in Eliyahu’s opening prayer (Patach Eliyahu).

Even Chochmah, the highest of the attributes, counts before G‑d’s essence as no more than physical action. Etz Chaim, the teachings of the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the sixteenth-century Kabbalist of Safed) as recorded by his disciple Rabbi Chaim Vital, explains this on the Zohar’s words “When it arose in the will to create the world.” It reads that phrase as the start of the whole order of emanation, which begins with a contraction of the Infinite Light. From this it teaches that before the Ein Sof even Atzilus, the highest world, and its Chochmah count as no more than Asiyah, the world of action.

The Zohar’s salik, “arose,” is read here in its other sense, histalkus, “withdrawal”: G‑d’s will to create was a tzimtzum, a withdrawal of His essence, so that the ten Sefiros of Atzilus could be emanated as lights clothed in vessels.

Etz Chaim describes this at length as the kav (the line of light), the chut (the thread) and the chalal (the vacated space): many great contractions, needed for even the World of Atzilus to come into being.

At the beginning of creation all this came from G‑d alone, as “The world is built by kindness” (Psalms 89:3): freely given, with nothing from below. Now, after creation, everything depends on the deeds of the lower beings, according to the order of the chain of descent; above all, drawing down a new light requires mayin nukvin, an arousal from below: the “seed” that people sow.

“Light is sown for the tzaddik” means the actual performance of mitzvos. Through it the Infinite Light rests and is revealed within a vessel and within comprehension, so that souls in the Garden of Eden can enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah, each according to his rank and his service in Torah and mitzvos in this world.

Section 2 gives an example of a mitzvah that works like sowing: counting the omer, the forty-nine days counted from the day after Pesach, when the omer, an offering of barley, was brought. The first night of Pesach was a “leap” (dilug), like the verse’s “leaping”: a revelation from the very essence of the Infinite One, the Emanator, that passed over the “doorway,” Malchus of Atzilus, the lowest level of the divine world. Pesach itself means “passing over,” as G‑d “passed over the doorway” (Exodus 12:23).

From then on the light must be drawn down by doing the mitzvah: the counting, in which we say “Today is day one,” and so on. (The print opens a square bracket here that it does not close.)

The word yom, “day,” equals 57 with the kolel (one added for the word itself), the same as Kel (31) and Havayah (26) together. So each “day” of the count alludes to light drawn from the Infinite One into Malchus, which is called the omer.

The omer is Malchus, and Malchus has several levels. In Atzilus it is called “man” (adam), as in Yechezkel’s vision of the chariot, where the creatures had the face of a man and “upon the likeness of the throne” was a likeness like a man.

¶8 Malchus as “man” and “animal”: paragraph 8 shows her rise to “man.”

Clothed in the World of Beriah, Malchus is called “animal” (behemah), as in “He makes grass grow for the animal” and “the beasts on a thousand mountains.” This is Malchus of Malchus, the lowest level, which descends and hides in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah to give them life, as the woman of valor “gives food to her household.”

This is why the omer meal-offering is of barley, animal food. As a man’s food strengthens his life-force and spreads it through his limbs, so the barley offering nourishes the “animal,” Malchus in the lower worlds; the Zohar reads se’orah, “barley,” as shiur hei, “the measure of hei,” the hei standing for Malchus. In Likkutei Torah, Emor, the Alter Rebbe likewise calls the refinements that Malchus performs se’orah, shiur hei, “the food of that animal.”

For Malchus to be clothed in creatures and give them life, since they are limited and finite, a radiance must be drawn into it from above.

That radiance comes through the offering on the altar, done exactly according to G‑d’s wisdom and will as the Torah prescribes it: “an unblemished lamb,” the lamb brought with the omer.

The lamb brought with the omer had a meal-offering of two tenths of an ephah of fine flour (Leviticus 23:13), while other offerings have “one tenth for each lamb” (Numbers 29:4). Yet its libation was the usual one for a lamb, “and its libation, wine, a quarter of the hin,” in the words of the same verse in Leviticus, which the Kehot note gives as Numbers 28:14, the general rule for a lamb’s wine. (The print has היין, “the wine,” for ההין, “the hin,” here and in the next part.)

Even the oil mixed into the doubled meal-offering was only a quarter of a hin, as for any lamb: the meal-offering was doubled, but the libations were not. The section goes on to ask why.

Back to the main point: when the kohen offered the sacrifice on the altar according to its law, with the proper intent, fire from above rested and appeared on the altar.

That fire is the Infinite Light drawn down to rest in Malchus through this mitzvah.

The same holds for the other mitzvos, tzitzis and tefillin: they are just like a seed sown in the earth, which is swallowed up and rots there. Through them the power of growth rests and is revealed in a vessel, Malchus, as the rotting seed brings out the power hidden in the ground.

The forty-nine days of the count draw radiance into Malchus until Shavuos, the fiftieth, which is Keser. Then Malchus rises to be equal in stature with what is above it, and is called “man” instead of “animal.”

¶5 This completes the “animal” and “man” levels from paragraph 5.

So on Shavuos the two loaves were offered from wheat, human food, in place of the barley of the omer, animal food. Chitah, “wheat,” has the numerical value 22, the twenty-two letters of the Torah, and Shavuos is the time of the giving of the Torah.

Why does this mitzvah draw down light from above? Because mitzvos are done specifically with physical things.

Offerings are of sheep and goats, tzitzis of wool, tefillin of parchment. The root of these physical things is the 288 sparks that fell from the World of Tohu, alluded to in “And these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom” (Genesis 36:31), the kings who died in the shattering of the vessels.

Doing the mitzvah raises and refines the good in these things back to its place. Its root is Ban of Sag, which is higher than the Name Mah, even though Mah is the Name that refines Ban (Mah, Ban and Sag are the Name Havayah spelled out in three ways, adding up to 45, 52 and 63). In Likkutei Torah, Bechukosai, which the Kehot note cites, the Alter Rebbe brings from Etz Chaim that the shattering took place in Sag, in its Ban, and that when Ban is refined “a woman of valor” will be “the crown of her husband.”

The whole Torah follows this order: “And Havayah spoke to Moshe, saying.” Moshe is Chochmah, the Name Mah, the revelation of the Infinite Light in Chochmah; “Speak to the children of Israel” is Netzach and Hod, the channels through which the flow comes down step by step from above to below.

Section 3 explains why the 248 positive mitzvos are called “the 248 limbs of the King.” In a body, the life-force spreads into each limb, according to its nature, by means of the blood. In Torah Ohr (Megillas Esther) and Likkutei Torah (Bechukosai), which the Kehot note cites, the Alter Rebbe explains that as a limb is a vessel for the life that comes from the brain, so a mitzvah is a vessel for the Infinite Light clothed in it.

“The blood is the soul” (Deuteronomy 12:23): the blood carries the body’s natural heat, and the soul’s life depends on that heat and on the warmth of the blood. Coldness, the opposite, is the life-force leaving the body.

So too the mitzvos carry life, and their root is Keser: the word keser equals 620, the 613 commandments of the Torah and the seven of the Sages, the “620 pillars of light.”

As a pillar carries something from above to below, so a mitzvah draws the Infinite Light down to be clothed in a vessel. This drawing-down comes chiefly from Gevurah, the power of restraint, yet not as harsh judgment: on the contrary, Gevurah is what chiefly spreads life.

Their root is the five Gevuros of Atik (Atik Yomin, the inner level of Keser), the botzina dekardunisa, the Zohar’s “lamp of darkness,” which is higher than the Chasadim, the kindnesses. In Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, which the Kehot note cites, the Alter Rebbe writes that this botzina dekardunisa, the supernal Gevurah of Atik Yomin, is the root of the five Gevuros. The text then names three discourses on this idea: on Yom Kippur, on “I will greatly rejoice,” and on drawing water on Sukkos.

Kindness by itself produces only an encompassing light, a makif, which surrounds a person without entering within. So the Song says, “and his right hand embraces me”: an embrace touches only from outside, the “back” (achorayim). In Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim, the discourse “I will greatly rejoice” just cited, the Alter Rebbe explains that the sukkah surrounds a person on every side like this embrace of the right.

Kindness does have the greater reach, spreading even to very low places, as Yishmael came forth from Avraham, the man of kindness. Even so, it remains only an encompassing light and does not enter within.

The flow of the Gevuros, by contrast, enters within, as life enters a limb.

That is why mitzvos are called fruits: fruit is food, which enters the body and is its main source of life.

Clothes do not keep a person alive, however many he wears; only eating strengthens the powers of the body.

Mitzvos are also called garments. The Zohar reads “Avraham was old, coming with days” (Genesis 24:1) as speaking of garments, and garments are encompassing light.

Without a garment the soul cannot receive or enjoy the light of the higher Garden of Eden, and its garments are the mitzvos. So “and the hills, through tzedakah” (Psalms 72:3) refers to doing mitzvos.

In general all mitzvos are called tzedakah, charity, as Likkutei Amarim (Tanya) explains, and one who keeps them is called tzaddik, a doer of tzedakah.

One who gives a poor man a coin gives him life; the mitzvos, too, are called tzedakah because they give life, as the next part explains.

In the saying “He is tzaddik and she is tzedakah,” she is Malchus, the source of the Gevuros, and as such she is called tzedek, strict justice. Through charity the letter hei is drawn into her, and tzedek becomes tzedakah. In the Kabbalistic usage behind this saying, “he,” the tzaddik, is Yesod, the attribute that channels the flow downward, and “she” is Malchus, which receives it. Here the mitzvos, given like charity, are what bring that added flow into Malchus.

Now the verse can be explained: “leaping over the mountains,” the mountains being the Patriarchs, is done with one foot; “skipping over the hills” is done with both feet together, left and right, as the Sages say, “the left pushes away and the right draws near.” The Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 11a) also reads the mountains as the Patriarchs and the hills as the Matriarchs.

¶1 This explains the verse raised in paragraph 1.

Mitzvos, as explained above, carry both kinds of light, inner and encompassing: the two feet.

The inner light is the left hand that pushes away: it holds the flow back, so that it is given only as far as the receiver can take it. The Chasadim, the root of the encompassing lights, by contrast come down from a high place to a very low one.

This is why the Matriarchs, who are the level of the mitzvos, are likened to “hills, through tzedakah.” They stood higher than the Patriarchs; the text gives this as the reason they were barren, for their souls were of the level of dechura, the masculine.

Now, in this world, the Name Mah refines the Name Ban. After the refinement is complete, “a woman of valor is the crown of her husband”: Ban will rise into Sag, which is above Mah. This comes through “with all your might” (me’odecha), love without limit.

“With all your soul” is still within a vessel, a measure, but me’od is above any vessel. It is reached through iskafya, subduing oneself, which comes from the Gevuros, as with the baal teshuvah, who comes “with greater strength.”