צאינה וראינה בנות ציון במלך שלמה בעטרה שעטרה…

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 3:11, where the daughters of Zion are called to go out and see King Shlomo wearing the crown his mother set on him on his wedding day; the Sages read the Song as a parable of G‑d and the Jewish people. The Mishnah at the end of Taanis explains “the day of his wedding” as the day the Torah was given at Sinai, when G‑d and Israel were joined as groom and bride.

¶13 Who the "daughters of Zion" are is explained in paragraph 13.

Two questions frame everything that follows: what does “go out” mean, and where are the daughters of Zion to go out from? The Alter Rebbe then brings the Midrash in which G‑d’s love for Israel grew until He called her not only “My daughter” and “My sister” but “My mother,” the mother who crowns the King in the verse.

¶14 Hold this question about "go out": paragraph 14 answers it.

¶6 Why G‑d calls Israel "My mother" is explained in paragraph 6.

Before answering, the Alter Rebbe raises a prior question: why do the Sages of the Mishnah and Talmud usually call G‑d “the Holy One, blessed be He” rather than by any of His other names? The answer will lead to why G‑d calls Israel “My mother.”

The word “kadosh” (holy) is spelled with a vav, and the vav signifies drawing down. So “kadosh” names G‑d’s holiness as it is drawn down to become the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them, which is only a radiance and bears no comparison to G‑d Himself.

The reason: G‑d is simple oneness, while every creature has limits.

Even the angels, “a thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand” in Daniel’s vision, of whom Bildad asks in the book of Job, “Is there any number to His troops?”, are countless and yet made of separate parts. Their “endlessness” is only endless addition and multiplication of divided things, a different kind of thing from the true oneness of G‑d.

None of these categories, number or division, applies to the Infinite One Himself. He is utterly simple, without parts.

What reaches the worlds is a contracted radiance, measured so that each creature can receive it at its own level. Yet even this radiance is called “holy,” meaning set apart from the worlds it sustains.

To show what “set apart” means, the Alter Rebbe contrasts the soul. The soul gives the body life by being enclothed in it, and so it is affected by whatever happens to the body.

A sign of this enclothing: when the mind is caught up in one thought, it cannot think another at the same moment. Whatever is truly inside something is limited by it.

G‑d’s radiance, by contrast, gives life to countless worlds and creatures at every level, whose minds and thoughts all differ from one another.

Yet no single creature’s thought captures the divine life-force within it so as to keep it from being in all the others at once.

The reason is that this radiance is only providence, a watching over the creatures, and not an enclothing within them, as a soul is enclothed in a body.

So the divine radiance is not held within creation but surveys all generations to the end of time “in a single glance.” The words “looks and gazes to the end of all generations” come from the Zichronos blessing of the Rosh Hashanah prayer, and the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 18a) reads “He who fashions their hearts together” as G‑d seeing all their hearts together, at once.

This is why the radiance, though it gives life, is called holy and set apart. But it is “kadosh” with a vav: a holiness that is drawn down, as providence and the single glance.

This explains the angels’ song in Yeshayahu’s vision: they say “Holy” three times and only then “Havayah Tzevaos.” The Sages read Tzevaos as “a sign (os) in His host (tzava)”; in Likkutei Torah, Ha’azinu, the Alter Rebbe explains that all the countless hosts come into being and receive their life from a single letter (os), so the holiness, drawn down, becomes G‑d’s presence among His hosts.

Chanah’s prayer says “There is none holy like Havayah,” and the Zohar explains that there are many holy ones, yet none are holy as Havayah is. The Alter Rebbe now explains what makes G‑d’s holiness unique.

The Name Havayah comes from the same root as mehaveh, “brings into being”: G‑d gives existence to everything. Yet He remains holy and set apart from what He creates, as the light that encompasses the worlds, unlike a soul caught up in its body.

Every other “holy” level in the spiritual worlds is holy only in being removed from something lower, and such a level does not also reach into and take hold of the thing it is removed from. Separation and involvement normally exclude each other.

The encompassing light of the Infinite is the exception: it is holy and set apart, yet it is precisely what brings the worlds into being.

For the worlds’ main life and existence come from the encompassing light (makif): Tanya (ends of chapters 23 and 48) teaches that G‑d encompasses the worlds and gives them their essential life without being enclothed in them, and Etz Chaim that the encompassing light refines the vessel from outside. In Torah Ohr, Megillas Esther (“Let them bring royal apparel”), the Alter Rebbe adds that the physical world comes into being from the “royal garment” of the Infinite Light itself, which encompasses all levels equally. That is why “There is none holy like Havayah.”

The Zohar says both things together: He “grasps all worlds,” encompassing them and bringing them into being from nothing, yet “there is none who grasps Him.” He gives existence to everything and remains holy and apart.

A new section begins with Psalm 134, where the psalmist calls on those who serve in G‑d’s house at night: “Lift up your hands [to] Kodesh and bless Havayah.” In the plain sense kodesh is the Sanctuary; the maamar reads it as the supernal Kodesh. The drawing down of holiness into the worlds, “kadosh” becoming “Havayah Tzevaos,” must be renewed and “blessed” in every generation, or an unworthy generation could cause the life-force to withdraw.

The renewal comes from a higher source, the supernal Kodesh, far above “kadosh” with a vav, which is holiness already turned toward the worlds as the light that fills them and the light that encompasses them. The Zohar on Vayikra (13a), to which the text refers below, reads the kodesh of this verse as “a supernal place,” Eden, which is called “the supernal Kodesh.”

“Kodesh” without the vav is holiness that has no relation to worlds at all, beyond both the filling and the encompassing light. Of this level Elihu says to Job, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” and “If your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him?”: nothing a person does, good or bad, reaches it.

Because sins do not blemish it at all, it can send down blessing that draws the Infinite Light into creation even when the creatures’ deeds do not merit it.

Now the Sages’ name for G‑d becomes clear. “The Holy One” (kadosh with a vav, the holiness that creates and sustains) is “blessed” (baruch), meaning drawn down and renewed from the supernal Kodesh in every generation: “blessing” here is a drawing down.

What sets this blessing in motion is Israel, by “lifting up their hands [to] Kodesh.” The following paragraphs explain what these two hands are.

The two “hands” are the first two verses of the Shema, “Hear, O Israel…” and the response “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever,” and they correspond to the higher unity and the lower unity. Without the heart’s intent in these two the obligation is not fulfilled: the Gemara (Berachos 13b) requires intent up to the end of the first verse, and the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 63:5) rules the same for “Blessed be the Name…,” since it too is the acceptance of G‑d’s kingship. Torah Ohr (115b ff.) explains the two at length through “For Havayah Elokim is a sun and a shield”: the higher unity is the true self-nullification of Atzilus, like the sun’s light within the sun, while the lower unity, “Blessed be the Name…,” is the nullification of a “something” that still exists, like sunlight seen on the earth through the shield of Elokim.

The higher unity, in the word “One” of the Shema, is a total giving over of the soul: it pours itself out to be absorbed in the Infinite Light and united with its source, as it was before it came down into a body. “To give over one’s soul in ‘One’” is the Arizal’s phrase; in Likkutei Torah, Vayikra, the Alter Rebbe explains it as the self-nullification of the G‑dly soul’s very essence, above intellect, and in Torah Ohr, Miketz, as giving over one’s will, for nefesh also means will.

Contemplating that G‑d is truly One, that He alone is and “there is nothing else besides Him,” the soul longs to leave its “sheath,” the body that holds it captive. This yearning to dissolve into G‑d is the higher unity.

The lower unity is expressed by the Mishnah’s “against your will you live”: once G‑d’s kingship has brought a physical world into being from nothing, physical existence is a given. The task is not to escape it but to make that “something,” too, nullified and included in the Infinite Light.

This is done by practical discipline: shutting one’s eyes from seeing evil, guarding one’s thoughts from what is not for G‑d, and not straying after the heart. In the first discourse of this section (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 1), the Alter Rebbe contrasts the soul’s complete dissolution (“My flesh and my heart pine away”) with the yearning of one who remains a “something” yet nullifies himself, and ties “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom,” the lower unity, to G‑d’s kingship, from which all creatures come into being.

These two unities are the two hands. The right arm is the embrace of “and His right hand embraces me,” as the beloved says in the Song: one hugs a friend to hold him close and keep him from moving away.

So the higher unity is a true embrace, union with the Emanator Himself, in which, as the psalmist Asaf says, “my flesh and my heart pine away.”

The lower unity is the left arm, the side of Gevurah, strength and restraint; the self-mastery it calls for, hisgabrus, comes from the same root as gevuros. Because a person sees the world as a separate “something,” he must master himself greatly, both to turn away from evil, shutting his eyes from it, and to “do good” beyond his nature and habit, which Tanya, chapter 15, describes as true service of G‑d.

Both hands, the higher and the lower unity, are raised toward the supernal Kodesh, to be nullified in the Infinite Light itself, which is beyond the worlds altogether, above both the filling and the encompassing light.

Raising the hands to that level brings about “and bless Havayah”: blessing, a drawing down, flows back down and reveals the Infinite Light from above to below.

The verse is Elihu’s, in the book of Job: plainly, if G‑d set His heart upon man, He would gather man’s spirit and breath back to Himself, and man would die. The maamar reads it the other way: when a person sets his heart to G‑d, G‑d gathers to him “His spirit and His breath,” the light of the Infinite at the level of “kadosh,” so that the ascent below brings G‑d’s revelation down.

Now the Midrash about “My mother” is explained. As a mother blesses her child, so Israel, “as it were,” bless their Father in heaven.

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

Israel bless G‑d in the sense that they draw “kadosh” down from the supernal Kodesh, so that it becomes “Havayah Tzevaos,” G‑d present among His hosts. They do it with their two raised hands, the higher and the lower unity.

So when the Sages say that G‑d called Israel “My mother,” it is “kadosh” with a vav, the holiness that is drawn down, that calls them so, because they are the ones who draw it down. The Zohar on Vayikra (13a), to which the text refers, says that whoever blesses the Holy One from the place called the supernal Kodesh is blessed by Him in turn “from Zion.”

The general way Israel draw G‑d down is through Torah: “these words which I command you.” The words of Torah come from Anochi, “I,” G‑d’s own self, and metzavecha (“command you”) is read as a term of bonding, as in tzavta, “joining.”

This is a drawing down of the higher Chochmah, G‑d’s own wisdom: for “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah,” and Chochmah is the yud, the first letter of the Name Havayah, in which the Infinite Light itself is enclothed. Torah therefore carries G‑d’s own light into the world.

In detail, the Arizal’s kavanos (Kabbalistic intentions) for the Shema teach that its 248 words draw down the 248 “limbs” of the supernal Man, the figure Yechezkel saw on the throne, “a likeness like the appearance of a man.” The supernal Man is the ten Sefiros pictured as a single figure.

The Alter Rebbe guards against a misunderstanding: G‑d has no body, as the Yigdal hymn says, “He has no bodily form,” so the comparison of the Sefiros to limbs cannot be spelled out in detail as if it were literal. Still, since the Torah itself speaks of G‑d in parable and figure, we may use its language.

So he sets out to grasp at least “the edge” of the parable, borrowing Shlomo’s words “to understand a parable and a figure” and Balak’s “the edge of it.” What follows explains the limbs of the supernal Man one by one.

Another bold saying of the Sages, “as though you had made Me,” is explained through the name Israel: its letters spell li rosh, “a head for Me.” Israel, as it were, make a “head” for the Holy One; in Likkutei Torah, Shelach, the Alter Rebbe gives the same reading and refers to this discourse for how a “head” can be spoken of above.

By analogy: a head has a brain, with its Chochmah, Binah and Daas, and a skull over it. Israel draw down the “brain,” Chochmah, through the Torah: G‑d’s wisdom clothed in physical matters, whose worth, as Job says of wisdom, no man knows.

Read plainly, most of Scripture is narrative. The Zohar on Beha’aloscha, which the text cites, teaches that these stories are only the Torah’s outer garment; earlier in this section (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 3c) the Alter Rebbe brings the same passages and adds that one who learns them should know they are divine words whose inner content is hidden from him.

The laws of the Oral Torah also have their roots in the higher Chochmah, a wisdom beyond human grasp, so human intellect does not grasp the true reasons of the Torah and its laws.

Even of the hidden wisdom of Kabbalah, received from teachers and from books, only a little has been written down, and even that little does not explain every detail in its full depth. The Mitteler Rebbe’s version of this maamar makes clear that “Kabbalah” here means the hidden wisdom, as in the Zohar and the writings of the Arizal.

The sentence names two drawings down: G‑d’s higher wisdom clothed in physical matters, such as terumos and maasros (the portions separated from produce for the kohen and the Levite) and the narratives of Scripture; and, higher still, the Infinite Light clothed in Chochmah itself.

The second drawing down is needed because even the higher Chochmah, the wisdom by which, in Eliyahu’s prayer, G‑d is wise “not with a known wisdom,” is still a kind of wisdom and comprehension, however wondrous and beyond created minds; so it is very far from the Infinite Light itself, exalted beyond all end.

Both drawings down depend on Israel below: first lifting their hands in the higher and lower unity of the Shema, then “these words which I command you,” the Torah. This reveals the Infinite Light itself within Chochmah.

The skull over the brain stands for will, which is above intellect: will reaches beyond anything reason can grasp and explain. In Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah (“Blow the shofar at the New Moon”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the supernal will, far above Chochmah, Binah and Daas, is revealed on Rosh Hashanah as “the skull (gulgalta) that covers the brain,” and that a person’s nullification of his own will arouses it.

Israel draw down the supernal will by nullifying their own will, as the Mishnah says, “Nullify your will before His will.” Every Jew has this power.

Even someone with no grasp of Torah, who cannot contemplate G‑d’s greatness in depth, can, by simply setting his own will aside, without reasons, draw down G‑d’s will.

This is the sense of the prayer phrase yehi ratzon, “may there be will,” and of the Sages’ phrase “they do the will of the Omnipresent”: osim, “do,” also means “make,” for by setting their own will aside Israel “make” G‑d’s will, causing it to flow as the light that fills and the light that encompasses the worlds.

Then come the arms: Chesed, the right arm, is drawn down through the charity and kindness Israel do below, and Gevurah, the left arm, through overcoming (hisgabrus) one’s own will and nature, which come from the animal soul. Tiferes, the torso, is compassion, as in G‑d’s words about Ephraim, “My innards stir for him.”

Compassion is a state of being moved, which is very far from the Infinite Light, the simple oneness. G‑d’s own compassion is “simple compassion,” not an emotion that moves or changes Him.

Yet Israel can bring the Infinite Light into the attribute of compassion through the praises of Pesukei deZimra in the morning prayers. The Or HaTorah version adds “as explained elsewhere concerning Hallel,” and in Torah Ohr, Vayeshev, the Alter Rebbe explains that praising a person for his qualities draws them out from concealment into revelation; so too with praise of G‑d.

Praise arouses G‑d’s attributes above, so that the Infinite Light comes down and clothes itself in compassion, “My innards stir for him.” Netzach and Hod, the two legs, are drawn down through nitzuach, the drive to prevail, that is in every Jew.

Netzach is acting even against one’s will and reason, by sheer subjugation of the self (iskafya). It is a person’s service all day long, even after prayer, when the love and desire kindled by contemplation have faded, yet an impression of them remains.

That impression is a settled resolve to walk in the good way and keep far from evil. It gives a person the strength to prevail even when he has no reason or understanding to support him.

Hod is acknowledgment, as in “We acknowledge You” (Modim) in the prayer: yielding to G‑d’s will and overcoming what He calls an abomination. Like Netzach, it works without needing to understand.

That is why Netzach and Hod are called the legs: legs carry the body, but no reason or understanding is revealed in them.

Shmuel’s words “the Eternal One (Netzach) of Israel does not lie” are read as a statement about Netzach: it does not fade, as the feelings of prayer do. The text refers to the discourse “These are the journeys” (Likkutei Torah, Masei), where G‑d’s truth is His goodness that never ceases and never changes, and to Iggeres HaKodesh, the letter beginning “To understand the parable and figure,” which explains the Sefiros through the powers of the human soul.

Yesod, “the end of the body, the sign of the holy covenant,” is bonding: Israel’s attachment to the living G‑d, refusing to be drawn after the materiality of the body and of the world.

Malchus, “the mouth,” is drawn down through speaking words of Torah, as G‑d says, “My words which I have put in your mouth.” When a person reads and studies, the Holy One, as it were, reads and studies opposite him.

So the supernal Man, the “measure of stature” (shiur komah) made of the ten Sefiros, is drawn down through the ten powers of the human soul.

In and through these ten powers, given over to G‑d, the Infinite Light is enclothed in the ten Sefiros above. Because Israel draw down G‑d’s revealed “stature” in this way, He calls Knesses Yisrael “My mother.”

Now the crown itself. A royal crown sits above the king’s body and is not part of it, as Etz Chaim says of the crown (Keser) of Z’eir Anpin; so “the crown with which his mother crowned him” is a level above the “body” of the supernal Man.

A crown is made of precious stones. In themselves they are lifeless minerals, yet because they are precious and shine, they become the crown on the king’s head.

So too the letters of the Torah clothed in physical matters, such as terumos and maasros, the portions separated from produce, become the Keser above. The most material mitzvos are the precious stones of G‑d’s crown.

The Talmud teaches that when Israel said “we will do” before “we will hear” at Sinai, ministering angels tied two crowns on each of them. The Alter Rebbe now explains what each crown is.

“We will hear” (nishma) means self-nullification before the words of Torah one speaks, which are G‑d’s will and wisdom: as one studies, he should feel as if the Shechinah were speaking from his throat, “My tongue shall answer Your word,” the tongue only answering, that is, repeating, G‑d’s own word.

The Talmud’s “Let your ears hear what you (atah) bring forth from your mouth” is read here as hearing that “You” (Atah), G‑d, is the one who brings the words forth.

Before this comes “we will do” (naaseh), a deeper nullification: not to the words of Torah but to the One whose will it is, the Infinite Light Himself. This higher nullification draws down the level of “we will hear,” for “spirit brings spirit”: in Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe uses the same phrase to explain that the Infinite Light enclothed in the mitzvos is drawn down through “You shall love,” an arousal from below.

The Talmud says that one who has “nothing but Torah” does not have even Torah. The Alter Rebbe explains: Torah becomes one’s own, drawn down to him from the Infinite Light, only through nullifying one’s will entirely to G‑d, being absorbed in the Infinite Light itself. In the Gemara (Yevamos 109b) this describes one who studies but does not practice, for “you shall learn them and do them” teaches that only one who is engaged in doing is engaged in learning. The Alter Rebbe hears in the doing the deeper self-nullification of “we will do,” without which the Torah is not truly his.

This nullification of the will, in both “we will do” and “we will hear,” is what the Talmud calls the two crowns.

Above, too, the nullification of will, as it were, is called Keser: G‑d sets aside His infinite will in order to want Torah and mitzvos, though He is exalted far above any such will. As Elihu says, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?”

So His will clothed in Torah and mitzvos is pure kindness and charity toward us. That is why the psalm says, “for all Your commandments are tzedek,” righteousness, read here as tzedakah, charity.

All the mitzvos are therefore called tzedakah, as the verse says, “And it shall be tzedakah for us if we take care to do all this commandment”: in the plain sense merit or righteousness, here G‑d’s charity. In each mitzvah G‑d drew down His infinite will as a gift.

What brings down this gift is Torah study with nullification of the will, “My words which I have put in your mouth.”

Next, a seeming difficulty: the verse “This is the Torah: a man” suggests that the Torah is on the level of “man,” the supernal Man of the Sefiros, since it comes from Chochmah. That is true, the Alter Rebbe answers, of the Torah as it emerges from concealment into revelation.

But the Torah’s root is called “desert,” as in “and from the desert, a gift.” A desert is a place “where no man passed through and no human dwelt”: a level far above “man.” The Gemara (Nedarim 55a) reads this verse, a stage in Israel’s journey in the wilderness, to teach that one who makes himself like a desert, open to all, receives the Torah as a gift. Here the desert is the Torah’s own root above, the level beyond “man.”

“Man” (ish) is the level of “Havayah is a man of war,” the war “for Havayah against Amalek”: G‑d as He is already drawn down, through the three “kadosh,” into the Name Havayah.

In its source, in the Infinite Light itself, the Torah is “desert,” where no “man” has been: above the whole form of the supernal Man.

From there it is drawn down as the crown over the head and the brain, far above them. The Sifra deTzniusa (the “Book of Concealment,” the most hidden part of the Zohar), to which the text refers, applies “no man passed through it and no human dwelt there” to the most precious level of all and says that adam is outside it, and all the more so ish; Zohar HaRakia is a Kabbalistic commentary on the Zohar.

Now the verse itself. The Midrash reads “King Shlomo” as “the King to whom peace (shalom) belongs,” and the Alter Rebbe notes that the name Shlomo ends with the letter hei, which he will explain.

Peace is needed because the Infinite Light, which, true to its name, has no end, must give life to limited worlds. Infinite and finite are complete opposites, and drawing one into the other needs something that makes peace between them.

What joins the infinite and the finite is “King”: G‑d’s kingship over all worlds, as the psalm says, “Your kingship is a kingship of all worlds,” where olamim, in the plain sense “ages,” is read as “worlds.” Kingship is the bridge between Him and what He rules.

The phrase from the morning prayer, “Unique One, Life of the worlds, King,” says the same: in Himself G‑d is alone and unique, and His being the life of the worlds is only the level of “King.” In Likkutei Torah, Nasso, the Alter Rebbe explains that this primordial thought, “I will reign,” is the root of all the worlds, since there is no king without a people, and that even this will to reign is only a garment.

The King “to whom peace belongs” is Shlomo spelled with a hei: the peace reaches as far as the lower hei of the Name Havayah, which gives life to all creatures and brings them from nothing into being, from concealment into revelation and from potential into actuality.

What brings about this peace is “the crown with which his mother crowned him”: it depends on an arousal from below, the service of Israel. In Torah Ohr, Bereishis, in the discourse on this same verse, the Alter Rebbe explains “the King to whom peace belongs” as the joining of two opposites, giver and receiver, through a new light drawn from above the chain of worlds.

The souls in Gan Eden are of two kinds, “daughters of Jerusalem” and “daughters of Zion.” The daughters of Jerusalem (Yerushalayim, read as yirah shalem, “complete awe”) are souls that have not yet come down into bodies.

Their awe is complete, on the level of the infinite, whereas angels can receive only a measured light, each according to its rank.

The Talmud tells that when G‑d “stretched out His little finger” among a band of angels, they were burned up. Even the smallest touch beyond their measure annihilated them.

For angels have a kind of body, made of the elements of fire and air, as the psalm is read here: “He makes His angels [of] winds, His ministers [of] a flaming fire”; in the plain sense, He makes the winds His messengers. Having a form, they have a limit.

Souls not yet in bodies can receive the Infinite Light as it is, because they are still included in their source. In the earlier discourse “I am black” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 6), the Alter Rebbe explains that all souls, before descending, stand nullified within the Infinite Light, as Eliyahu said, “As Havayah lives, before whom I have stood,” and that they are then called daughters of Jerusalem.

The daughters of Zion are souls that lived in this world and came to Gan Eden. “Zion” is linked to the Talmud’s “Torah scholars in Babylon are metzuyanim,” distinguished, a word the Alter Rebbe reads as “clothed”: these souls wear garments made of their Torah study and mitzvos, as in “Fortunate is he who comes here with his learning in his hand.” In the Gemara (Shabbos 145b) they stand out because they are away from their own place, as people say, “In my town, by my name; away from it, by my garment.” Their distinction is their clothing, and this is the link the Alter Rebbe draws on.

¶1 This explains "daughters of Zion" from paragraph 1.

The garments let them enjoy the radiance of the Shechinah, as one needs a vessel to look at a great light.

So too every prophet saw through an aspaklaria, a lens: Moshe through a single shining lens, the others through seven. Even prophecy needs a medium.

Psalm 139 says “Days were formed, and not one among them,” but the word lo is read “and to Him.” The Alter Rebbe reads “days” as garments, formed so that “One,” G‑d’s oneness, should shine in them; in Likkutei Torah, Shelach, he reads the same verse as Adam’s words after the sin: the days were garments given him to draw down “One,” but he had not drawn it into them.

A garment lets a soul enjoy the divine radiance through wondrous comprehension, which belongs to Chochmah, as “a man’s wisdom makes his face shine.”

As the prayer says, “By the light of Your countenance You have given us a Torah of life”: the Torah is the light of G‑d’s face, and the righteous in Gan Eden enjoy its radiance. That radiance is the light of the Torah and mitzvos they performed.

The crown, though, is the Torah and the mitzvos themselves, far above Chochmah. They are “from the desert, a gift,” from where no “man” dwells, and no human comprehension can enjoy them.

This is why the verse says “Go out and gaze”: go out of the garments. A garment is needed only to receive comprehension, however great and wondrous.

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

But the crown is beyond comprehension altogether, so the garment of understanding is of no use there. To gaze at the crown, one goes out of the garments.