עוד ביאור הדברים ע״פ יונתי בחגוי הסלע וגו׳

The heading: this is a further explanation (biur) of Song of Songs 2:14, “My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the hidden place of the step: show me your appearance, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your appearance is comely.” It follows the discourse on this verse (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 15) and its first explanation (Shir HaShirim 16); the Kehot editors give a comparison (hashva’ah) for it in their supplements.

The maamar opens with the Sages’ saying that the Torah is the “novlos” of the wisdom above: novlos are fruit that fall from the tree before they ripen, a lesser offshoot of the real thing. The revealed Torah, the Alter Rebbe explains, is only a glow of divine wisdom (Chochmah) as it has come down and clothed itself in G‑d’s emotive attributes.

The sign of this is the structure of the Mishnah: its six orders correspond to the six emotive Sefiros, beginning with Zera’im (Seeds), which comes from Chesed. Every halachic verdict, fit or unfit, pure or impure, liable or innocent, flows from these attributes; in Tanya’s Kuntres Acharon (the essay “David, You called them songs”) the Alter Rebbe explains that all the worlds rise or fail to rise with one such detail, yet calls this only the “back” of the supernal thought.

A favorable ruling (fit, permitted, pure) is Chesed, “the right hand brings near” (the Talmud’s phrase, Sotah 47a): it lets the object rise and be included in the Infinite Light. An unfavorable ruling (unfit, forbidden, impure) is Gevurah, “the left hand pushes away”: it keeps the object from rising.

The rulings follow G‑d’s own wisdom, of which Eliyahu’s prayer in the Tikkunei Zohar (Patach Eliyahu) says, “You are wise, but not with a known wisdom,” but only as it comes down and clothes itself in His attributes. That is why the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 17) calls the Torah no more than the “unripe fruit” of that wisdom.

Wisdom that has entered the attributes is a mere offshoot compared with the essence of the higher Chochmah, G‑d’s own wisdom, which towers above the attributes. The Torah as it is revealed comes from that lower, outward reach of wisdom.

Jeremiah calls Israel “holy to Havayah, the first of His produce.” The maamar reads “first” as saying that Israel come before the Torah and are its source, because, as the Midrash teaches (Bereishis Rabbah 1:4), Israel “arose in [G‑d’s] thought” before the world was created.

“Thought” here means Chochmah, and Israel arose in its very highest point. The Alter Rebbe compares the words of the Shabbos hymn Lecha Dodi, “last in deed, first in thought”: Israel stand at the very beginning of the divine thought.

To explain this he states a general rule of the chain of descent: every cause has an inner dimension, which stays bound to its own cause above, and an outer dimension, which is what it passes on to its effect. The effect never receives the cause’s core, only its outward expression.

So the whole chain descends: the outer dimension of each higher level becomes the inner dimension of the level below it. The text refers to a fuller treatment in the Likkutei Torah discourse on the libations, in Parshas Shelach.

Applied to Chochmah: Chochmah receives from Keser, as Job says, “Chochmah is found from ayin,” the “nothing” of Keser, which is beyond grasp. By the rule just stated, only the highest, inner point of Chochmah stays attached to the supernal Keser.

A parenthetical list of Kabbalistic sources: the Pardes (Pardes Rimonim of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero) on the three aspects to be found in each Sefirah, and on the first of the paths of wisdom, the “Wondrous Intellect,” which is united with Keser and resembles the Emanator. It also points to the Zohar, Parshas Pinchas (III 256b).

What spreads down from Chochmah into the attributes, and so into the Torah, comes only from Chochmah’s outer dimension: that is the “unripe fruit.” The souls of Israel, by contrast, arose in the highest point of the divine thought.

That is why Israel are called G‑d’s “children” and His “firstborn son.” A child comes from a drop drawn from the very essence of the father’s brain, so he carries the father’s inmost wisdom and not merely its outward expressions; Tanya, chapter 2, uses the same verses and the same analogy for the G‑dly soul, drawn from G‑d’s thought and wisdom.

Like the child in the analogy, the souls of Israel are rooted in the very essence and inner core of the higher Chochmah, above the “unripe fruit” and outer level from which the Torah comes. The text points to its discourse on “There are sixty queens” (Song of Songs 6:8): in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 31:1, the Congregation of Israel is the configuration of Malchus within the inner dimension of Z’eir Anpin, where she is as great as he is.

It also points to the discourse on “I am asleep” (Song of Songs 5:2): in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 26:19, “arose in thought” is “thought within thought,” the highest of three kinds of thought (thought, speech and action within thought), the supernal thought.

The same holds here: the souls are rooted in the highest point of the higher Chochmah. That is why they are called “the first of His produce,” and why they are the source and foundation of the Torah, which is only Chochmah’s “unripe fruit.”

For the same reason the Torah bears the name “the Torah of Moshe”: Moshe’s soul is rooted in the essence of the higher Chochmah, which is the Torah’s source, so the Torah is “his.” In the discourse on the double bread (lechem mishneh) in Torah Ohr, Beshalach (66b), the Alter Rebbe explains that Moshe’s root was in the inner dimension of Abba as it is in itself, above the glow of intellect that enters the Torah’s rulings of fit and unfit.

That is why Moshe called himself “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” (Exodus 4:10): his soul stood so high that he could not lower himself to become the channel through which the Oral and Written Torah, the “unripe fruit” of wisdom, would flow. The Zohar’s Raaya Mehemna (III 28a) reads the two phrases this way, and the text points also to the Torah Ohr discourse on “Moshe would speak” (Exodus 19:19), where Moshe draws the Torah down through his self-nullification.

A further pointer, to the end of the Torah Ohr discourse “And you shall make holy garments” (Tetzaveh, 82d): there the Torah is called a bride, betrothed to the congregation of Yaakov, and Israel the bridegroom who gives to her, for by studying Torah for its own sake they draw the Infinite Light into its Chochmah. The one who gives stands above the one who receives, so here too Israel are above the Torah.

Moshe’s soul is rooted in the essence of the higher Chochmah, but he is not alone in this. There are other very lofty souls that carry something of Moshe’s level. In the Gemara (Shabbos 101b), when Rava offered an explanation of a Mishnah about boats tied together on Shabbos, Rav Safra challenged it and addressed him as “Moshe”: “Moshe, have you spoken well?” The maamar reads that form of address as a sign that Rava was such a soul, one that held something of Moshe’s level.

That is why Rav Safra could address Rava as “Moshe” (Shabbos 101b): Rava had something of Moshe’s quality. These are the souls called G‑d’s “brothers and friends,” after the verse “For the sake of my brothers and my friends.”

The Zohar teaches that such “brothers” rank even above “children”: G‑d first called Israel servants, then children, then brothers. These souls are drawn from the union of Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah) of Atzilus, the source from which Z’eir Anpin itself comes.

Since they come from Abba and Imma, as Z’eir Anpin does, they are Z’eir Anpin’s “brothers,” and they stand above the level of the Torah. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 31:4 (40a), the Alter Rebbe explains that the early pious ones (chassidim harishonim), who spent nine hours a day in prayer and whose Torah was preserved because they were pious, had the boundless longing of the heart, the level of Keser above the Torah.

Most souls, by contrast, come from the union (zivug) of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus. Such a soul passes from ayin to yesh: coming out of Atzilus, it becomes an actual created being of Beriah.

A soul of Atzilus proper, however, is actual G‑dliness: Atzilus as it is in Atzilus itself, infinitely above Beriah, where things are created as something from nothing.

Yet even souls of Atzilus come only from Atzilus’s vessels (kelim), the element of limit that exists even there. In the explanation of “I am black, yet comely” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 8:12) the Alter Rebbe teaches that the lights of Atzilus are infinite but its vessels are limited, which is what the Sages’ “measure of the stature” (shiur komah) expresses with its vast but finite figure of “236 thousand myriads of parasangs.”

A soul drawn from those vessels is like a single drop compared with the vessels themselves, and still it is G‑dliness. This is explained elsewhere on the Zohar in Parshas Pinchas (III 249a), on the verse “And in the first month,” where the Zohar asks, “What is ‘the hind of the dawn’?”

The souls drawn from the union of Abba and Imma are called “brothers and friends” of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva because, like the vessels of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva themselves, they were emanated from Abba and Imma.

They share the same source as those vessels, but they are only a very small glow compared with them, for the vessels of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva are the Ten Sefiros themselves.

Souls born from the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, by contrast, are born into the World of Beriah, as Etz Chaim explains: they become created beings, something from nothing. Of these the Zohar says that “Israel are bound to the Torah,” for the Torah is above them.

The Alter Rebbe grants that, as explained elsewhere, even the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva sometimes produces very lofty souls that are true souls of Atzilus, as the Zohar implies in Vayikra (24b) and Mishpatim (94b). In Likkutei Torah, Shemini (19a), he notes that the Zohar on Vayikra clearly implies that some souls born of that union are called an actual nefesh of Atzilus.

Even so, because they come from that union they are called G‑d’s “children,” and so they are only one drop drawn from the intellect (mochin) of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva. The Torah, on the other hand, is the very essence of the Chochmah, Binah and Daas of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, so it stands above them.

Souls of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are lower still, and of them it is said that Israel are “bound to the Torah,” beneath it. Yet even these souls, every one of them, have their root in the supernal Atzilus; in the first discourse on this verse (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 15:4) the Alter Rebbe distinguished the part of the soul clothed in the body, which is bound to the Torah, from the soul above, the surrounding light, which is the Torah’s source.

These souls too “arose in thought.” The text points to the Torah Ohr discourse on “And these are the ordinances” (Mishpatim, 75c–d), which explains, on the Hebrew servant, that since Israel arose in thought even the souls called “seed of beast” are from the level of thought, the World of Beriah, though as they are clothed in bodies they stand at the level of Asiyah.

This raises a question: if every soul is rooted in Atzilus and arose in thought, why is it said that only the early tzaddikim had souls of Atzilus, while all the others are souls of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah?

The answer: in the early tzaddikim, the soul that was actually clothed in the body was itself of Atzilus. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, for example, had a soul of Atzilus clothed in his very body, here below.

Tanya’s Iggeres HaKodesh, in the letter on “He and His life-forces” (section 20), says something similar: even after the nefesh, ruach and neshamah of Atzilus came down into this world in the early tzaddikim, their essence may not have changed into something separate from G‑dliness, so that they would depart when the person wished to sin, before he sinned.

The rest of the souls of Israel, the righteous and the intermediates (beinonim) alike, are different: they are called souls of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Every soul’s root is in Atzilus, but that root does not enter or shine in the body at all: the light of Atzilus stays above, hidden, as a surrounding light (makif) over the soul in the body.

What actually enters the body is only a nefesh, ruach or neshamah of Beriah, Yetzirah or Asiyah.

So the soul is named after the world it enters. Yet every Jew has the “root of the root,” his mazal (the Gemara’s word for the part of a person that “sees” what he himself does not), the higher part of the soul that stays above as a surrounding light, from the level that arose in thought.

Because of that root it is said of every Jew, “Israel is holy to Havayah, the first of His produce”: they are the source and foundation of the Torah. Because of the soul in the body, they are “bound to the Torah,” beneath it.

The second section turns to the verse in the Song of Songs, “Arise for yourself, my beloved (ra’yasi), my fair one.” Ra’yasi plainly means “my beloved,” from re’us, friendship, and the Midrash also reads it from ro’eh, “to feed,” as “my sustainer”: Israel “sustain their Father in heaven” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 12:1 gives both readings). This is needed because Atzilus is infinitely farther from the Infinite One than Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are from Atzilus.

So the Infinite Light must be drawn down into Atzilus itself, as the discourse “To my mare” explains on “The world is built by kindness” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 9–10): through the Torah and mitzvos Israel draw the Infinite Light from the head of all levels, like food that draws the soul’s life from the brain into the limbs. That is how Israel “sustain” their Father: they draw down the light by which “the world is built by kindness.”

“Heaven” (shamayim) is read, as the Talmud reads it, as “fire and water” (esh u-mayim), opposites joined together, which here stand for the supernal attributes. “Their Father in heaven” is then the light of Abba (Chochmah) drawn into Z’eir Anpin, the attributes, and from there the Torah comes too.

Because Israel arose in thought, the essence of the light of Abba, they can draw the Infinite Light that is clothed in the higher Chochmah down into Z’eir Anpin. This adds new lights to the vessels, and that is the “sustenance” Israel give.

On “And you shall do them” the Sages say, “[It is] as though they had made Me”: va’asisem means both “do” and “make,” and the Zohar (III 113a) reads it so, adding that “them” is spelled אתם, which can also be read “you.” Whoever keeps the mitzvos, it is as though he “made” G‑d above, bringing about His drawing-down and revelation. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 18 (21d), the Alter Rebbe explains that Israel, as it were, make a “head” for the Holy One, blessed be He, drawing the higher Chochmah into the Torah and the Infinite Light into that Chochmah, through “Lift up your hands in holiness and bless Havayah.”

So too “May He make His face shine with us”: G‑d’s “face” shines when the higher Chochmah is drawn into Z’eir Anpin, as in “A man’s wisdom makes his face shine.” This happens “with us,” through Israel, because their souls arose in the divine thought.

“With us” also refers to the soul as it is in the body. That soul is bound to the Torah, so when the Infinite Light is drawn down and clothed in the Torah, it reaches the soul as well.

Then the light is drawn specifically “with us,” to the side of holiness, and not to the forces opposed to it. The text refers to the Torah Ohr discourse on “For with You is the source of life” (Miketz, 34d), where “Look down from Your holy dwelling, from heaven (min hashamayim)” is read as sham mayim, “there is water,” the Torah, through which Israel are blessed and seen before Him as something of worth.

Before any of this, though, there must be “Arise for yourself”: prayer, which is called a “ladder,” through which the soul cleaves to its root, the root that arose in thought. That cleaving comes through self-sacrifice (mesirus nefesh) at the word “One” in the Shema.

Through it the light of the Infinite One, of whom the Shabbos morning prayer says, “There is none comparable to You,” is drawn into the higher Chochmah, and only then can Israel “sustain their Father in heaven,” as will be explained below.

¶11 "It will be explained below": paragraph 11 explains it.

“My beloved” is the drawing of the Infinite Light into Atzilus, through the Torah; “my fair one” (yafasi) is the mitzvos, which bring it down further, into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. For that further descent the light must first be clothed in Malchus, the last Sefirah of Atzilus.

Malchus of Atzilus first clothes itself in the screen (masach) and partition (parsa) that stands between Atzilus and Beriah, then breaks through that screen and descends into Beriah; only then can the light reach Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Without the screen, which holds back and contracts the light, Beriah could not receive it at all.

This is why Malchus (kingship) is called a garment: Scripture speaks of G‑d’s reign as clothing (“Havayah reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty”), of “royal apparel,” and of Esther “clothing herself in royalty.” Kingship is not the king’s essence but a garment through which he appears to others.

“My fair one” is the drawing-down of this royal garment, which comes about through the mitzvos. That is why they are called “the commandments of the King”: they draw down G‑d’s kingship. (The printed Hebrew’s שהמכת בחנית is a misprint for שהמשכת בחינת, “that the drawing-down of the level of.”)

So in the blessing over every mitzvah we say “King of the universe.” The mitzvos are beautiful garments, and through them Israel become the people of whom G‑d says, “Israel, in you I glory.”

This parallels what was said of the Torah and “May He make His face shine with us.” Just as the Torah draws the light “with us,” the mitzvos, “my fair one,” make G‑d glory “in you,” in Israel specifically.

But before this garment can be drawn down, there must first be “Arise for yourself,” the soul’s rising to its root.

The reason is that the holy royal garment, which is the partition, has a counterpart: “I clothe the heavens in blackness,” a dark garment that conceals. It is the kingship spoken of in “G‑d reigns over the nations,” the nations who worship idols, over whom G‑d’s kingship is clothed in concealment.

This is understood from the World of Tohu (chaos), of which it is said, “These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the children of Israel.” The Kabbalah reads these kings, each of whom reigned and died, as the Sefiros of Tohu, which broke.

The World of Tikkun (rectification) is defined by the light’s being clothed in vessels and garments. The Aramaic Targum renders “a man shall not put on (yilbash) [a woman’s garment]” as “a man shall not array himself (yesakein),” from the same root as tikkun: so to be clothed is to be rectified.

In Tohu the Ten Sefiros were separate “points” (nekudos); in Tikkun they became “configurations” (partzufim), whole structures in which each includes the others (Etz Chaim, Sha’ar HaKelalim, chapters 1–2, as the Kehot note gives it). What makes a partzuf is precisely its arrayed garments and vessels.

The text cites Etz Chaim and Kol BeRamah, Rabbi Yaakov Tzemach’s commentary on the Idra Rabba (the “Great Assembly” section of the Zohar). These holy garments and vessels are what make it possible to bear the light.

They also make sure that the light goes only where it belongs. The garment protects by contracting the light, so that it is drawn only as much as is needed.

Several Torah Ohr discourses are cited for this protective role of the garments; in the one on “Shield of Avraham” (Lech Lecha, 12a) a shield (magen) is a covering, like the sheath of the sun, without which its great light could not be borne. That is why the garments of Tikkun are the beautiful garments of “You have clothed Yourself in glory and splendor.”

In Tohu the lights were not clothed in partzufim, so they had no royal garment that united them with divine holiness; instead, foreign garments clothed them.

That is, the flow from the supernal attributes of Tohu reached the external forces (chitzonim) as well. These are the seven kings of Tohu, “the kings who reigned in the land of Edom.”

A parenthetical explanation: the holy royal garment is the acceptance of the yoke of Heaven’s kingship, a self-nullification before G‑d’s kingship, for He alone is the true existence and “all before Him is considered as nothing.” The text points to its explanation of the techeles of tzitzis (Likkutei Torah, Shelach, 45b), where Malchus of Atzilus is the blue light at the base of a flame, which consumes the wick, for Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are nullified and included in it.

The royal garment of the sitra achra, by contrast, is self-assertion: taking existence for oneself, without self-nullification before G‑d, like Pharaoh’s “My river is mine, and I made myself.” Even so, as the Talmud says, they call Him “the G‑d of gods,” acknowledging Him only as One far above their own powers.

Once Tikkun was established and the light clothed in its garments and vessels, the light no longer spread to the sitra achra and the idolaters. This is “There was no king in Edom.”

Yet something like Tohu recurs even after Tikkun, in the exiles of Egypt, Babylon and Edom. For in exile, as the Zohar says, “the Holy One, blessed be He, ascends higher and higher,” withdrawing from below.

This withdrawal is called “sleep,” and because of it the lights are no longer clothed in the garments and vessels of Tikkun. Pri Etz Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Vital’s book of the Arizal’s meditations for prayers and festivals, says (Gate of the Festival of Matzos, chapter 1) that in Egypt Z’eir Anpin was in a state of “gestation” (ibbur) in the womb of Imma.

In gestation the lights and intellect of Z’eir Anpin leave their vessels and rise back into the higher Imma (Binah) and higher still, to the level of which it is said, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?”, beyond the reach of human deeds.

As a result, Malchus of Atzilus is clothed in the kelipos, in the foreign garments of blackness. The one depends on the other.

When Z’eir Anpin “sleeps” and withdraws upward from its vessels and garments, there follows “I clothe the heavens in blackness.” It is like Tohu, where the lights withdrew upward and the vessels fell.

To repair this and draw down the royal garment, the intellect (mochin) must first be drawn back to Z’eir Anpin. From its state of “ascending higher and higher,” it must be clothed again in the vessels and garments of the partzuf of Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus.

Then, as a matter of course, the mitzvos people do will draw the light into the royal garment of Atzilus, and there will be no “clothing the heavens in blackness.” The text points to the discourse “For the mountains may move,” on “If Israel do teshuvah, they are redeemed.”

Etz Chaim teaches that the intellect of Z’eir Anpin comes from the union of Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah), who “give birth” to the intellect of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva.

Abba and Imma themselves must receive the power for this union from higher still, from the light of Keser, which joins the Emanator to the emanated. Pri Etz Chaim (Gate of the Shema, chapter 11) asks where Abba and Imma get the power of union, and answers that they first receive it from the hidden supernal union above them (Sefaria’s text reads “of Arich Anpin,” the configuration of Keser; the Kehot note quotes it “of Ein Sof”).

Hence the union of Abba and Imma comes about only through self-sacrifice (mesirus nefesh), while the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva comes about through Torah and mitzvos.

The union of Abba and Imma draws a new light from the Source of all, the Emanator, who bears no comparison at all to what He emanates.

Only self-sacrifice can draw that light down, because self-sacrifice reaches truly higher and higher, to the essence of the Emanator. In its explanation of “And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel” (Likkutei Torah, Emor, 33c), the Alter Rebbe brings Etz Chaim: the union of Abba and Imma needs the raising of feminine waters through actual self-sacrifice in the Shema, while for Z’eir Anpin and Nukva the raising through Torah and mitzvos suffices.

That is why the Maggid, the heavenly teacher of the Beis Yosef (Rabbi Yosef Karo), promised him, as recorded in Maggid Meisharim, that he would merit to give his life for the sanctification of G‑d’s Name. The implication is that this merit outweighs a long life of Torah and mitzvos.

This is also why one gives oneself over at “One” in the Shema. The Shema is the union of Abba and Imma, the drawing of a new light from the Infinite One.

Only self-sacrifice achieves this, just as teshuvah draws “with greater strength” (the Zohar’s words for those who return), so that “one may acquire his world in a single hour.” The first verse of the Shema is therefore the union of Abba and Imma.

Then comes “And these words, which I command you,” about Torah and mitzvos: these carry the light onward from Abba and Imma into Z’eir Anpin and Nukva.

This is Torah study “for its own sake” (lishmah), read literally as “for the sake of the Torah itself”: to draw the light of the Torah into Z’eir Anpin from the inner dimension of the higher Chochmah, above the “unripe fruit.”

That inner light comes only after the self-sacrifice at the outset, which brings about the union of Abba and Imma, a new light; from there it reaches Z’eir Anpin as well.

From this it follows that the mitzvos produce “my fair one,” the garment of “glory and splendor,” and not the dark garment of “I clothe the heavens in blackness” that prevailed in Tohu.

So first there must be “Arise for yourself,” the rising to the root of the soul. This comes through self-sacrifice at “One,” which brings about the union of Abba and Imma.

¶9 This explains the "below" from paragraph 9.

Lach, “for yourself,” ends in the letter kaf. Pri Etz Chaim (Gate of Nefilas Apayim, end of chapter 5) teaches that those who give their lives for the sanctification of G‑d’s Name rise as “feminine waters” up to Binah, and that the feminine and masculine waters together are the secret of kaf, twenty, a yud from above and a yud from below: the bent kaf is the lower union, the final kaf the higher union of Imma, which is why G‑d told Moshe of Rabbi Akiva, “Thus (kach) it arose in thought.” Afterwards come “my beloved,” drawing the intellect into Z’eir Anpin, and “my fair one,” drawing it into Malchus: the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva.

All this refers to the Exodus from Egypt, of which it says, “For behold, the winter has passed.” Then the World of Tikkun was revealed, and the winter and the rain were over.

The winter and the rain are the concealment of “I clothe the heavens in blackness,” which comes from Tohu and from the exile in Egypt. On why the verse doubles the image, the text refers to the Midrash Rabbah on the Song of Songs, which reads the winter as the four hundred years decreed in Egypt and the rain as the two hundred and ten years served, the rain being the main hardship; and to Zohar HaRakia, a Kabbalistic commentary on the Zohar, at the beginning of Vayechi.

At the Exodus it was said, “Arise for yourself, my beloved.” But in exile the Congregation of Israel is “my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hidden place of the step”: she is hidden away and cannot simply “arise” to her root.

The remedy is “Show me your appearance (mar’ayich),” read as mar’ah, “a mirror”: let a person grasp that the concealment is only like a mirror, which hides and yet reflects, and that he has fallen, in the Gemara’s words (Chagigah 5b), “from a high roof” to a deep pit. Then he will cry out to G‑d in his distress, as the Psalm says of those in trouble (Psalms 107:6).

¶16 Why is concealment "a mirror"? Paragraph 16 explains it.

The third section explains this through the Kabbalah’s “direct light” and “returning light.” There are Ten Sefiros of direct light (or yashar), descending from above to below, and Ten Sefiros of returning light (or chozer), rising from below to above, as Etz Chaim and the Pardes explain; in Likkutei Torah, Chukas (63c), the Alter Rebbe cites the Sefer HaBahir, brought in the Pardes: “From above to below we know; from below to above we do not know.”

Returning light arises at the partition (parsa) at the end of Atzilus: the lights strike it and rise back upward, and in this rising order the lowest levels become Keser, Chochmah and Binah, the highest. Tanya’s Iggeres HaKodesh discusses this in the letter on “He and His life-forces.”

In a person below, the counterpart is “And you shall love Havayah … with all your might (me’odecha).” Me’od means “very much,” a love without limit, and so it corresponds to the Infinite (Ein Sof).

The analogy above is the drawing-down of the light of Keser into Atzilus, and this was the very purpose of the soul’s descent into a body: a descent for the sake of ascent. To see why, consider that everything emanated belongs to an orderly chain of descent.

Human intellect as a whole comes from the Chochmah of Asiyah, through the soul of Asiyah. The Chochmah of Yetzirah is its source, though far more spiritual; above it is the Chochmah of Beriah, and above that the Chochmah of Atzilus.

So human intellect is linked, step by step, to the Chochmah of Atzilus. The text points to the Torah Ohr discourse “Eliyahu opened” (Vayeira, 14a), which shows how each world’s Chochmah is the source of the one below, as spiritual sweetness becomes physical sweetness through many descents.

That is why Scripture says, “You have made them all with wisdom”: the whole chain comes from Chochmah, while the Emanator Himself is “exalted alone” (in the words of the morning prayer), beyond comparison with Chochmah and Binah.

Atzilus consists only of attributes, as in the teaching that a person should cleave to G‑d’s attributes: “as He is merciful,” so should he be. The Emanator Himself is beyond attributes: one turns “to Him, and not to His attributes.”

The worlds come into being from the Emanator only through “names,” and a name bears no comparison to the essence it names: so Etz Chaim says the yud of the Name is the source of Atzilus and the hei is in Beriah. So too the verse says, “His Name alone is exalted; His splendor is upon earth and heaven”: only His splendor, not His essence, is in the worlds.

The intermediary that carries the flow from the Emanator to the emanated is the light of Keser (the Crown).

The Tikkunei Zohar, in Eliyahu’s prayer in its introduction (“Eliyahu opened”), says of “the supernal Keser” that within it is the Name of forty-five (Mah), “the path of Atzilus,” and that it is “the watering of the tree,” like water that waters a tree and makes it grow: the source of life for all of Atzilus. So the verse says, “For with You is the source of life”: Atzilus lives through Keser.

The Torah Ohr discourse “Eliyahu opened,” cited above, applies to Keser the words “You are One, but not in number”: it is beyond comparison, the ayin from which “Chochmah is found,” outside the ordered chain of Atzilus, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Drawing that light down is what “descent for the sake of ascent” means.

This is the difference between angels and souls. Angels stand above, with nothing hiding the light from them, but they belong to the ordered chain of descent; a new light is not of their essence, so they cannot draw it down, and they are called “standing” (as in Zechariah 3:7, “I will give you places to walk among these who stand”), fixed in place.

The text refers to the Likkutei Torah discourse “And now, let it be great, I pray” (Numbers 14:17), in Parshas Shelach, for this difference between angels and souls.

Souls, by contrast, have been lowered into a body that hides the holiness of the soul, along with other hindrances; and precisely because this concealment does not let the light spread below, a returning light rises from the point of the heart. Then “From the depths I have called You, Havayah” comes true: “called” means drawing in, as one calls a person to come, so the call from the depths draws Havayah into the Ten Sefiros of Atzilus.

This is the “depth of the heart,” the higher teshuvah (teshuvah ila’ah), in which, as the Zohar says of those who return, they draw G‑d down “with greater strength.” Through it “a new light will shine upon Zion,” in the words of the morning prayer in Nusach Ashkenaz, just before the blessing “Who forms the lights.”

It is reached through “with all your might,” love without limit. A long parenthesis now explains what “a new light” means, quoting Pri Etz Chaim, Gate of the Shema, chapter 11.

Pri Etz Chaim says that the union that sustains the worlds comes from the intellect of Abba and Imma themselves, without their needing to receive from above. Everything below them came from them, so they hold the power for all of it.

But a union that brings forth new souls requires Abba and Imma to receive a new light from above. Pri Etz Chaim calls this a principle to keep in hand.

The Alter Rebbe asks how Abba and Imma could be “without receiving from above,” when Chochmah is always “found from ayin” and, were the flow from the Emanator to stop, the Sefiros would cease to exist. The Maharnash, as the Alter Rebbe calls the author of the introduction to Pri Etz Chaim, says the same there: the Sefiros draw in influence “through that service” for their very existence.

His answer: Pri Etz Chaim means that this influence is not itself drawn from above Chochmah. In the “inner” union, by contrast, the influence itself is an actual new light from above Chochmah, bringing truly new lights and souls.

The “outer” union only strengthens what already exists; there is nothing new in it. The difference may resemble what Etz Chaim describes in the Gate of the Rectification of Nukva.

Moreover, even the constant flow by which “Chochmah is found from ayin” bears no comparison to the new light. The Maharnash’s introduction says the same: the fixed allotment the Creator gives the Sefiros cannot be compared to that addition.

As explained elsewhere, this new influence is a real revelation from beyond the order of the chain of descent, above even the constant flow by which “Chochmah is found from ayin.”

An example of the two kinds of influence: the Talmud says that the curses in Deuteronomy (Mishneh Torah) “Moshe said from his own mouth,” and Tosafos adds, “with the holy spirit.”

The curses in Leviticus (Toras Kohanim), by contrast, Moshe said “from the mouth of the Almighty,” as an emissary saying, “Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, said to me,” as Rashi explains. What “from his own mouth” means is explained in the Zohar on Parshas Va’eschanan (III 261a): Mishneh Torah unites the Written and the Oral Torah in “the place called the Tree of Life.”

The Mikdash Melech, Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo’s commentary on the Zohar, says there that “from his own mouth” comes from Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus, the root of Moshe’s prophecy and understanding. That is why it counts as “his own.”

What was said to him “from the mouth of the Almighty” came from far above Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus, and Moshe was only its emissary.

The Zohar says the same: in Vayechi (I 246b) it speaks of “that voice” which “is sent from a deep place above” to lead speech, and in Balak (III 187a) of the angel, so called “when he is an emissary from above.”

An angel shows the same difference. On its own it says, “Holy, holy, holy is Havayah of hosts,” the Name Havayah being holy and separate from it; but as an emissary from above, the angel itself is called by the Name Havayah, as the Ramban explains on Parshas Vayeira.

So when an angel is sent from above, a supernal light shines in it far greater than what shines in it of itself, although it always has a lofty comprehension.

In the same way, Moshe speaking “from his own mouth,” with the holy spirit, bears no comparison to Moshe as the emissary of the Holy One, blessed be He.

The text points further to the Zohar, Parshas Vayikra (III 7a), which notes that it says not “from himself” but “from his own mouth,” from the voice joined to him; and to its discourse on the Ten Commandments, “And He spoke,” on the meaning of Mishneh Torah.

The same difference holds between the flow from the intellect of Abba and Imma themselves and a new light. Even what comes “from themselves” is rooted in what they received from above, but it is called “their own,” like Moshe’s “from his own mouth.”

A new light, by contrast, comes from far above the root of Chochmah and Binah themselves. As the Arizal’s Likkutei Torah (his teachings on the Torah, compiled by Rabbi Chaim Vital) says on Vayeira, it comes from the supernal Emanator Himself, who alone has the power to renew constantly.

It is only channeled through Abba and Imma. The text cites two further passages, in Acharei and Beshalach, and says that this new light is drawn by an arousal from below (isarusa dilesata).

That arousal is “with all your might”: because me’od is without limit, it draws down a revelation of a new light, the level of the Infinite itself.

This me’od, as the Midrash teaches on “very (me’od) good” (Bereishis Rabbah 9:7), is the evil inclination. The boundless “with all your might” comes from the concealment, which produces the returning light, the level of me’od.

The same happens above: at the partition that ends Atzilus (the print’s סים is read as סיום, “the conclusion”), which does not let the light spread downward, a returning light is made from the inner “point of the heart.” This is how Malchus, the lowest Sefirah, becomes Keser, the highest.

Water rushing against a board that blocks it gathers strength and surges with greater force than it had while flowing freely. The text refers to its discussion of “Then Israel sang … Spring up, O well.”

So too a mirror: its backing conceals, and that very concealment sends the light back from below to above, letting one see what lies behind. For this reason Malchus is called a “mirror” (mar’ah), the key to “Show me your appearance (mar’ayich).”

¶12 This explains the mirror from paragraph 12.

The fourth section turns to “Let me hear your voice”: the voice of Torah study, which draws the Infinite Light into the Torah, the Chochmah of Atzilus. So the Psalm says, “He placed a Torah in Israel”: through Israel the light is set into the Torah.

“For your voice is sweet (arev)”: sweetness and pleasantness (arevus) mean delight (taanug). Through their study Israel draw the supernal delight into the Torah, the drawing of Keser, the source of delights, into Chochmah; then “you shall delight” (Isaiah 58:14).

So the Psalmist says, “I delight in Your Torah,” the supernal delights, and the Torah says of itself in Proverbs, “I was a delight day by day,” the two “days” being Abba and Imma. The text points to the discourse “And I was with Him as a nursling” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar, 17d), which reads amon with the Midrash as a nurse who carries and sustains a child.

This is the difference between study before prayer and study after it. Keser is drawn into Chochmah through the Torah chiefly when the level of “and with all your might,” the drawing of Keser, has come first, in prayer.

Study before prayer draws only from Chochmah, the Torah’s own root, for “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah.” That is “my beloved,” Israel sustaining their Father.

So Abba Binyamin was careful that his prayer be “close to his bed,” the first thing on rising, before anything else, even study, as Rashi explains (in Likkutei Torah, V’Zos HaBerachah, 96b, the Alter Rebbe brings this Rashi and the question Tosafos raise on it). Torah should come after prayer, so that Keser is drawn into Chochmah.

“And your appearance is comely” refers to the mitzvos. Yet the Talmud says that even “the transgressors of Israel are full of mitzvos,” so what distinguishes the mitzvos of the righteous from those of the wicked?

The answer is the Talmud’s parable of two who roasted their Paschal offerings, one eating for the mitzvah and the other gorging: the same act can draw down very different levels. So too with sukkah, esrog and every mitzvah, though the mitzvah is one and the same.

“Comely” and “my fair one” are Tiferes (beauty). In the Kabbalah the Tiferes of Imma becomes the Keser of Z’eir Anpin, and the lower third of the Tiferes of Z’eir Anpin becomes the Keser of Nukva (Etz Chaim, Gate of the Diminution of the Moon, chapter 1, as the Kehot note gives it).

Tiferes and Keser are one matter: both belong to the middle line and are the power of joining. As Keser joins the Emanator, the Infinite One, to the emanated, so Tiferes is the intermediary that joins one level to the next, Imma to Z’eir Anpin and Z’eir Anpin to Nukva.

Netzach, Hod and Yesod are the influence itself, but the middle that carries it down is Tiferes.

So through “Show me your appearance,” the drawing-down of Keser by means of “with all your might,” there then comes “your appearance is comely,” at the level of Tiferes, which becomes Keser.

This is the pairing “teshuvah and good deeds”: through teshuvah, “with all your might,” the deeds become good and shine. So “G‑d saw the light, that it was good”: the light of the deeds is seen as good.

Cross-references on Tiferes. In Torah Ohr, Noach (10b, “Behold, they are one people”), the Alter Rebbe explains that in Tiferes even the vessel shines with the Name Havayah, since the inter-inclusion of Tikkun comes through the middle line, Tiferes, which joins Chesed and Gevurah; and in Likkutei Torah, Tazria (22c, on whether “the bright spot came first”), that Tiferes is called “holy,” a name of Keser, because it is of the middle line, so that the Tiferes of Imma becomes Keser for Z’eir Anpin and the Tiferes of Z’eir Anpin Keser for Nukva. A third reference is to an explanation of the Zohar in Chayei Sarah (133a) on “the evening prayer is optional.”

See also the discourse on “As an eagle stirs up its nest.” “And your appearance is comely” may mean that through this the Keser of Nukva is drawn from a higher level than usual.

So the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, a commentator on the Zohar) writes on the Zohar (Vayeira, 97b) that Nukva’s Keser is rectified and shines from the upper third of Tiferes, in the mystery of “I will make your pinnacles of rubies (kadkod).”

This is the meaning of “when Israel do (osin) the will of the Omnipresent”: osin also means “make,” and through “with all your might” they make and draw down the Keser of Nukva, which is called “the will of the Omnipresent,” from its highest level.

The text points to the discourse on “And they found a man gathering wood” (Numbers 15:32) in Parshas Shelach.

The reason: “with all your might” is the level of Keser within the Ten Sefiros of returning light, where the lowest becomes the highest. So it is a raising of the feminine waters (mayin nukvin), the arousal from below that awakens and draws down a new light from the Keser of direct light, from the Emanator Himself, until it reaches the Keser of Nukva, so that “your appearance is comely”: her Keser comes from a higher level than it ever does otherwise.

Etz Chaim, in the Gate of the Diminution of the Moon (the print’s מיעוט הריח is a slip for מיעוט הירח), describes several levels from which Nukva receives her Keser, one above the other, up to receiving it from the Tiferes of Imma.

This explains why the ascent through “Show me your appearance” is greater than the ascent through “Arise for yourself (kumi lachi).” In the first discourse on this verse (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 15:15) the Alter Rebbe already set “Arise for yourself,” the ascent in the order of the levels, the grade of the righteous, against the returning light of “the hidden place of the step.”

As the end of the Torah Ohr discourse “And Havayah went before them by day” explains (Beshalach, 64d), the ascent of Malchus of Atzilus, the Congregation of Israel, through an arousal from below reaches only as high as Chochmah, because the souls’ source is there.

That source is what is meant by “Israel arose in thought” (Bereishis Rabbah 1:4): the highest point of Chochmah.

So the ascent of “Arise for yourself” is to the level of Chochmah, and it comes about through the Chochmah within the soul, which Tanya (chapters 18–19) describes as the seat of the soul’s hidden love and readiness for self-sacrifice.

But this arousal of the righteous, rising step by step, cannot reach Keser, above the Chochmah of Atzilus, for Keser is above their root. At the end of the discourse “I am asleep” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 26) the Alter Rebbe explains that the chain of descent begins from Chochmah, and that the arousal from above that comes from beyond it, the supernal will, is not reached by the arousal from below.

“Show me your appearance,” the teshuvah that draws “with greater strength,” is different: the concealment produces returning light, and in returning light Malchus becomes Keser. So it arouses and draws down from the very Keser of direct light, above Chochmah.

That is why the Torah Ohr passage (Beshalach, 64d) says that on Yom Kippur, at Ne’ilah, Malchus rises to Keser, above Chochmah. Yom Kippur is the day of teshuvah, and only teshuvah reaches that high.

So too, “In the place where penitents stand, the perfectly righteous cannot stand.”

Yet above it was said that the union of Abba and Imma, drawn down in the Shema through the service of the righteous (“Arise for yourself,” to your root, “Hear, O Israel”), is drawn from Keser. The answer is that part of Keser is clothed within Abba and Imma, and through that clothing the righteous can draw from it; the text points to Etz Chaim, the Gate of the Severance (nesirah), on the separation of Nukva from Z’eir Anpin.

But to draw from the Keser that is far above its clothing in Chochmah and Binah is possible only through teshuvah.

In the same way the discourse “Blow at the New Moon” (Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah, 54a–c) explains that the supernal will has two levels: one clothed in Chochmah, drawn down through Torah and mitzvos, and one far above it, drawn down through teshuvah from the depth of the heart.

Along the same lines one can read the prophet’s words, “She has fallen and will no more rise.” “Rise” (kum) is the “Arise for yourself” that climbs the levels (madregos) in order; now that she has fallen into “the hidden place of the step (madregah),” she will not rise that way again: her ascent comes not in the order of the levels but through teshuvah.

As the Sages say, “If Israel do teshuvah, they are redeemed,” and teshuvah does not follow the order of the chain of levels. That is “Show me your appearance”: through returning light Malchus becomes Keser.

So the very highest level, Keser, is revealed below in Malchus, the lowest, and that is not the order of the levels at all.

Returning light is like sunlight striking the earth: the air near the ground is hot, while the air higher up, nearer the sun, is not, because the heat comes back up from below.

Through this an arousal from above is drawn down as well, a revelation of the Infinite Light below specifically. The Zohar (Vayikra, III 6b) reads “She will no more rise” as: she will not rise by herself, as in other exiles; rather, “the King will come to her.”

This is “On the third day He will raise us up”: a “superior rising” (kimah me’alyasa), in which even below there is a rising brought about by G‑d Himself.

The text points to the discourses “When you go out” and “And the king extended to Esther,” and adds “For behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst”: G‑d Himself comes to dwell below. In the first (Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, 36c) the Alter Rebbe brings this Zohar: she will not rise from below upward, but, as in “On that day I will raise up,” the rising is drawn from above, so that even below she has a superior rising.

These two levels may also be the two parts of the Shema. “Hear, O Israel” is “Arise for yourself”: the soul rising to its root, to “Israel above.”

The Men of the Great Assembly, the sages who led Israel at the start of the Second Temple, instituted “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever” for when the Congregation of Israel has gone down into “the clefts of the rock.” It is “Show me your appearance,” returning light, from which comes “with all your might.”

The text points to its discourse on “Hear, O Israel” in Va’eschanan for “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom.”

A further reading comes from the Ramaz on the Zohar, Ki Sisa (188b), on the Talmud’s report that “in the West,” in the Land of Israel, they divided the prophet’s verse as “She will no more fall; rise, O virgin of Israel.” The Ramaz asks why it says kum, the masculine form, rather than kumi, and answers with the “masculine song” (shir) of the Future, as against the feminine shirah of the songs of this world.

So here: the returning light of “Show me your appearance” brings about kum, the “masculine song,” which is above the “Arise for yourself (kumi lach)” of the Exodus, like the feminine song (shirah).

This is “On the third day He will raise us up, and we will live before Him.” “Before Him” (lefanav, from panim, “face” and “inner”) means the inner dimension of Atik Yomin, which will be revealed in the Time to Come; now there is no power to draw from there.

Hence the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 17) calls Shabbos “the unripe fruit (novlos) of the World to Come,” a foretaste and lesser likeness of it.

Shabbos is the ascent of all the worlds: Z’eir Anpin (the emotive attributes of Atzilus) rises into the “beard” of Arich Anpin (the “Long Countenance,” the outer level of Keser, the supernal will), and Malchus into the light of Abba (the configuration of Chochmah), and “the dew that drips from Atika Kadisha” (the “Holy Ancient One,” the inner level of Keser) comes down. Yet all this comes only from the outer dimension of Atik.

So Shabbos is called “unripe fruit” relative to the World to Come, when the inner dimension of Atik Yomin will be revealed. The text refers to its explanation of “Set me as a seal.”

Now “My dove, in the clefts of the rock”: Malchus is called a dove, and she descends into “the clefts of the rock,” Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Malchus is “the end of all levels,” yet in Atzilus “He and His vessels are one” and the Infinite Light rests in them, so for her to descend into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah is a great contraction (tzimtzum): she becomes a mere “point” (the print’s הקודה is read as נקודה).

Even in the higher Gan Eden no one could receive the radiance of the Shechinah unless it were first contracted into the limit of a point.

A person’s service shows the same pattern: in prayer love and awe expand, afterward through the day they are contracted, and the next day they expand again.

“The clefts of the rock” are the descent into nogah (kelipas nogah), the shell in which good and evil are mixed, and “the hidden place of the step” is lower still. There are different descents, as by day or by night, as in “she gives food to her household,” the verse the Zohar (Pinchas, III 249a) applies to “the hind of the dawn,” who goes far to bring food and shares it out among all the creatures; the rest is left to the understanding reader.