באתי לגני אחותי כלה אריתי מורי עם בשמי…

The discourse opens with Song of Songs 5:1, in which the Beloved, G‑d, answers His bride, the Congregation of Israel, who has invited Him into His garden. Each phrase of the verse will be explained in turn: the garden, the myrrh and spice, the yaari and honey, the wine and milk, and finally the “friends” who eat and the “beloved ones” who drink. In the plain sense yaari is “My honeycomb,” but the Alter Rebbe reads it as ya’ar, “forest” (section 6, the angels), and the translation follows his reading.

The Alter Rebbe reads “I have come into My garden” as the revelation of G‑dliness in the lower Gan Eden, the spiritual garden where the souls of the righteous dwell, at midnight. At that hour G‑d takes delight in those souls.

The delight comes after G‑d remembers the destruction of the Temple and cries out over it: then the souls of the tzaddikim, through their Torah study, are His consolation and delight. The verse “You who dwell in the gardens… let Me hear it” (Song of Songs 8:13) shows that what G‑d seeks in the garden is to hear the voice of their learning.

The Alter Rebbe raises two questions. First, how can Torah study bring G‑d delight and consolation, when everything in the Torah is already revealed and known before Him? Second, why does this happen specifically at midnight, and only after He remembers the destruction?

¶4 Hold these questions: paragraph 4 answers them, building on paragraph 3's midnight explanation.

The answer begins with the verse that man was placed in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it” (Genesis 2:15): the main purpose of man’s creation is to “work” the Garden, drawing into it a revelation of G‑dliness that was not there before. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, the discourse “For as the new heavens” explains that Gan Eden in itself is only a radiance of the Shechinah, and that the souls below, through their service, draw into it added light from G‑d’s very essence; that is the “work” of the Garden.

The Sages teach that wherever Israel were exiled, the Shechinah went with them (Megillah 29a). The Shechinah is called “the revealed world” (alma de’isgalya): G‑dliness as it is revealed in order to create the higher and lower worlds.

This creative revelation does not stop in exile: “the world follows its natural course” (Avodah Zarah 54b), G‑d promised that “seedtime and harvest” shall not cease (Genesis 8:22), and the morning blessing says that He renews creation every day. The difference between exile and the time of the Temple is therefore not whether the revelation is there but whether it is open or concealed: without the Temple the revealed world itself is hidden, “And I will surely hide My face on that day” (Deuteronomy 31:18).

The Alter Rebbe reads “on that day” as the state of the hidden world (alma de’iskasya): in exile the revealed world is covered over, as Isaiah says, “darkness shall cover the earth” (Isaiah 60:2).

The Alter Rebbe then draws a parallel from the darkness and light of our world: from evening the night grows steadily darker until midnight, and from midnight on it grows gradually lighter.

The Shechinah’s exile follows the same course: her fall deepens until midnight, the hour to which the text applies the verse about Esther pleading before the king, “And she fell before his feet” (Esther 8:3), and from then on she is gradually raised through the “men of deeds,” devout people who rise at midnight to study Torah, until at dawn she rises fully through the Torah, prayer and mitzvos of all Israel. This begins to answer why G‑d’s consolation comes at midnight: that is the hour the Shechinah starts to rise.

To explain what revelation and concealment mean, the Alter Rebbe uses the principle “From my flesh I behold [G‑d]” (Job 19:26): by looking at the human soul one can understand divine matters by analogy. A person has intellect, emotions and thought, and so too, by analogy, Above.

G‑d’s thoughts are not like ours (Isaiah 55:8), yet Scripture still speaks of “Your thoughts,” which are “very deep” (Psalms 92:6). G‑d’s “thoughts” are the hidden world (alma de’iskasya).

Just as a person’s inner thoughts are not visible in his outward conduct, G‑d’s “thoughts” are not seen in the way He conducts the worlds; He conducts them through His attributes (middos), the first of which is Chesed, as in “The world is built with kindness” (Psalms 89:3). These attributes are the utterances of creation, such as “Let there be light,” and the six days of creation, each day corresponding to one attribute, the first to Chesed.

All of time is only a repetition of those first six days. On Shabbos the worlds ascend to their source, and then the weekdays begin again, starting with the “first day,” the day of Chesed.

Each week’s six days are therefore the original six days of creation, renewed. Man’s main task concerns G‑d’s deep “thoughts”: to bring what is hidden into revelation, and this is what Psalm 130 means by “From the depths I have called You.”

The text gives places in the Zohar that discuss “From the depths” (Beshalach 63b, Va’eschanan 265b, Vayechi 221a, Acharei 70a): there prayer reaches “the depth of all,” a hidden place above from which the blessings flow down. It also cites the end of chapter 3 of Vayikra Rabbah, which brings “Deep waters are the counsel in a man’s heart” (Proverbs 20:5) together with “From the depths I have called You.”

“From the depths” means from the level of concealment, G‑d’s deep “thoughts,” the hidden world, and “I have called You” is like calling a friend to come out of his house into the open: man’s service calls the hidden level out into revelation. In the plain sense the psalmist cries out of the depths of distress; here the depths are G‑d’s own hidden level, from which He is called out.

The Tikkunei Zohar, in the passage known as Patach Eliyahu (Eliyahu’s address to G‑d), says that G‑d does not in Himself possess a defined attribute such as “righteousness” (judgment). He brought forth the attributes in order to conduct the worlds through them, “according to the deeds of human beings.”

The way the attributes are drawn down to run the worlds depends on what people do. This is the principle that an arousal from below brings about an arousal from above.

For example, charity and kindness done below cause the Infinite Light to rest, be revealed and be enclothed in the attribute of Chesed above, and the same holds for every attribute. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, the discourse “To My mare” explains this pairing of an arousal from below with an arousal from above, and adds that there is a higher arousal from above that comes with no arousal from below at all.

The Infinite Light, however, rests and is revealed only in Chochmah. The Targum Yerushalmi, an ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah, renders “In the beginning G‑d created” as “With wisdom [G‑d created],” and “You have made them all with wisdom” (Psalms 104:24) shows that Chochmah is enclothed in all the attributes as their life-force.

Still, Chochmah hidden inside the attributes cannot be compared with Chochmah revealed as itself, which is far above the attributes and is their source, as “wisdom gives life” to those who possess it (Ecclesiastes 7:12). In Likkutei Torah, V’Zos HaBerachah, the discourse “And it shall be, at every New Moon” compares the six days to a person who draws his intellect down into the details of a task, and Shabbos to its return to its source.

The Alter Rebbe concludes that the Infinite Light can be drawn down below only through the Torah, which is G‑d’s wisdom and will. The Torah is itself G‑d’s delight, as it says, “And I was [His] delight” (Proverbs 8:30).

This revelation of the Infinite Light through Chochmah is the level called “Father” (Av), since Chochmah is the root and source of all the descending worlds.

In the daily Amidah we therefore ask forgiveness from “our Father”: the Father is the source of compassion and forgiveness because the blemish of sin does not reach that high a level. As Elihu tells Job, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?” (Job 35:7): that level is beyond the reach of human deeds, so sin leaves no blemish there.

When only the attributes are visible, with G‑d conducting the world through them, that is concealment, and that is why the account of the six days of creation says “And Elokim said” each time: Elokim is the Name of tzimtzum, the contraction that conceals. The Tzemach Tzedek’s Or HaTorah, quoted in the Kehot note, puts it this way: in those days the flow comes only from the six attributes through which G‑d conducts the world, and that is still concealment, for the Infinite Light rests mainly in Chochmah.

Shabbos is the revelation of Chochmah, and of it the Torah says “And Elokim finished (vayechal),” which the Alter Rebbe reads, from the same root, as “the level of Elokim came to an end (kalsah)”; in the plain sense, G‑d finished His work. Only after that does the Torah say “on the day that Havayah Elokim made” (Genesis 2:4), where the Name Havayah appears for the first time in the account of creation. G‑d then joined the attribute of Havayah, mercy, to Elokim, judgment, as Rashi on Genesis 1:1 explains.

The Alter Rebbe now returns to the opening statement, that at midnight G‑d delights in the souls of the tzaddikim through their Torah study.

¶2 This answers paragraph 2's questions, drawing on paragraph 3 for why midnight.

This answers the questions of section 2. The destruction G‑d remembers at midnight is the fall of “the revealed world,” the Shechinah, into exile and concealment, and His consolation is the revelation of the “delights” above, which come from the supernal Chochmah.

This revelation comes through Torah study, which draws the Infinite Light into Chochmah and from there into the attributes. Through it the revealed world, the Shechinah, begins to rise out of its concealment, as section 3 described for the hours after midnight.

Section 2 opens with a question about what has been said. G‑d Himself is far above Chochmah, and Chochmah is the level from which even physical creation comes (“You have made them all with wisdom”); how then do Israel have the power to draw the Infinite Light, which transcends Chochmah, down into it?

The answer lies in the next phrase of the verse, “I have gathered My myrrh with My spice.” Myrrh and spice are fragrances, and fragrance will be the key to the answer.

Fragrance strengthens the brain and revives the soul. The mor of the verse, translated “myrrh,” is here musk, which the Rambam (Hilchos Klei HaMikdash 1:3) describes as blood gathered in an animal of India; so a fragrance is made from the congealed blood of an impure animal, and the next parts apply this to divine service.

The same happens in a person’s service through iskafya, subduing the sitra achra (the other side), by “turning away from evil” completely. That means keeping every prohibition in all its details, including the fine points added by the Rabbis, without transgressing a single one.

It also means forcing the evil inclination and the animal soul not to follow their natural desires. Just as the impure animal’s blood hardens and congeals into myrrh, a person who strengthens himself against his own desire produces a “fragrance.”

This service becomes “a pleasing fragrance to Havayah” that rises and is included in the Infinite Light itself; the words “rises (olah) to G‑d” echo the burnt-offering, the olah, which the Torah calls “a pleasing fragrance.” The text cites Yitzchak smelling “the fragrance of his garments” (Genesis 27:27): garments surround the body, and so stand for the encompassing light (makif), a level beyond inward grasp.

The Sages read begadav, “his garments,” as bogdav, “his traitors” (Sanhedrin 37a), for beged means both “garment” and “treachery,” as in “With treachery (beged) have the traitors betrayed” (Isaiah 24:16): evil itself, once transformed into good, becomes fragrance. Through this Yitzchak blessed Yaakov with “the dew of the heavens” (Genesis 27:28); “heavens” (shamayim) is read as sham mayim, “there is water,” which stands for Chochmah, the source of the brain’s moisture.

The “dew of the heavens” is the drawing down of the Infinite Light into Chochmah, exactly what this section’s opening question asked about. The parenthesis refers to the discourse “See, the fragrance of my son” in Torah Ohr, Toldos, for more on this.

Now the verse is applied: “I have gathered My myrrh” is the fragrance produced by keeping the negative commandments, and “with My spice,” the fragrance of all the other spices, is iskafya in keeping the positive commandments.

The positive side of iskafya means pushing past one’s nature: studying more Torah than one is used to, giving more charity than comes naturally, doing every mitzvah with alacrity, and overcoming every obstacle, whether from within oneself or from outside.

Through iskafya in both “turning away from evil and doing good,” a strong fragrance rises above and, like fragrance, “revives the soul”: it draws the Infinite Light into Chochmah. This answers the question of this section: what rises from such service reaches the Infinite Light itself, above Chochmah, and so draws it down.

The next phrase is “I have eaten My yaari with My honey.” In the plain sense yaari is “My honeycomb” (as in ya’aras hadevash, “the honeycomb,” I Samuel 14:27), but the Alter Rebbe reads it as ya’ar, “forest”: the angels. They are called trees, “acacia wood, standing” (Exodus 26:15), and they are described as “standing,” like the “Seraphim standing” above Him (Isaiah 6:2).

Of the angels, too, it is said that G‑d made trees grow in Eden “good for food” (Genesis 2:9), and that food is what the angels transmit: through them the divine flow reaches Israel and the whole world, both spiritually and physically. The Sages say that every blade of grass below has an angel above it; the Kehot note observes that the Midrash itself (Bereishis Rabbah 10:6) says “mazal,” a heavenly force, rather than “angel.”

Even spiritual gifts such as wisdom and understanding come through the angels. G‑d is the giver, as the verse says “Havayah gives wisdom” (Proverbs 2:6), but the angels are the messengers who carry the flow.

The reason is that the Infinite Light cannot descend so far without many contractions (tzimtzumim) at many different levels, “levels upon levels.”

Those levels are the angels of each world, who serve as vessels for the contracted light, and from them the souls of Israel receive their love and awe of G‑d. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, the discourse “I am asleep” applies this very phrase, “I have eaten My forest with My honey,” to the Shema and its blessings: the angels stand in awe and long to be included in G‑d’s light, and the souls are the forest’s sweet fruit.

That is why the morning blessing “Who forms light,” said before the Shema, describes the angels standing at the heights of the world and proclaiming in awe. It is like someone who comes before a great king and is seized with fear when he sees ministers and nobles falling on their faces before him.

Awe is thus received from the “ministers,” the angels. The next blessing, “With an everlasting love,” works in the same way for love: it speaks of G‑d’s love and abundant compassion for Israel, and says, “You have brought us near to Your great Name.”

Israel are brought nearer than the angels: the angels draw their life from “the breath of His mouth,” G‑d’s speech (Psalms 33:6), while Israel “arose in [His] thought” (Bereishis Rabbah 1:4), a far deeper root.

One who sees great and honored ministers who are still not as close to the king as he is feels love for the king; in the same way, contemplating the angels, who are further from G‑d than Israel, arouses love for Him. The text refers to chapter 46 of Tanya (Sefer Shel Beinonim), which develops this at length.

So the souls of Israel receive love and awe through the angels. In Likkutei Torah, Ha’azinu, the discourse “As an eagle stirs up its nest” explains that in exile the revelation of the Shechinah comes down through many separate levels, the camps of angels, and through them the soul receives its love.

Correspondingly, on the other side, the flow that becomes physical pleasure and worldly wisdom for the sitra achra also comes through angels, for “G‑d has made one opposite the other” (Ecclesiastes 7:14): every level of holiness has a corresponding level of impurity. A person has free choice to choose the good and make himself a “chariot,” a vehicle for holiness, and then the divine flow reaches him through the holy angels.

“My honey” stands for sweetness, the fruit of those trees, the angels, for every fruit’s sweetness is called “honey” (devash), as Rashi explains on Leviticus 2:11.

The “fruit” is the soul’s emotional response, the love and awe aroused in a person by the angels’ influence in the blessings “Who forms light” and “With an everlasting love.”

Israel’s love and awe is called “fruit of the forest” because it is born through the “trees of the forest,” the angels.

Now the Alter Rebbe explains why all this is called “I have eaten.” The angels are the trees “good for food,” and food sustains a person yet stands lower than him, and he elevates it: what was mineral, plant or animal becomes part of a human being. So too, when Israel receive from the angels, the angels are elevated through them.

The souls of Israel rise higher than the angels through self-sacrifice (mesirus nefesh) at the word “One” of the Shema, which brings them to “being absorbed into the body of the King” (Zohar 1:217b) and to becoming truly one with the One. Angels, on their own, cannot unite with G‑d to that degree.

The next phrase is “I have drunk My wine with My milk.” “My wine” alludes to the vine’s “wine that gladdens Elokim” (Judges 9:13); “My milk” is compared to the milk that makes a nursing child’s limbs grow.

In the same way, the revelation of G‑dliness that comes from G‑d’s Chochmah makes the soul’s emotions “grow,” adding light and closeness to G‑d.

The middle blessings of the Amidah, such as “who graciously grants knowledge” and “who desires teshuvah,” were instituted along these lines: each adds a flow of revealed G‑dliness into a particular area, knowledge, teshuvah, forgiveness and so on.

What happens in a person, from below upward, has its counterpart Above: there “wine” acts on the level of Elokim and tzimtzum, which hide the light of Chochmah inside G‑d’s attributes. The Sages say, “wine (yayin) enters, a secret (sod) comes out,” for the letters of both words add up to seventy (Eruvin 65a); so here the wine draws what was concealed in the hidden world out into revealed light.

After a cross-reference to the discourse “The matter of the libations,” the Alter Rebbe explains “milk” Above: the revelation of the Infinite Light drawn into G‑d’s attributes, so that they act in a state of “greatness” (gadlus), expanded and increased; that increase is what is called “milk.” In Likkutei Torah, Sh’lach, that discourse explains that wine, hidden in the grape and coming out of it, has the nature of drawing the hidden into revelation, and so the wine poured on the altar draws down the inner dimension, “wine that gladdens Elokim.”

This is the inner content of the middle blessings of the Amidah: each “Blessed are You, Havayah” adds light to G‑d’s attributes, and that added light then flows down as the specific gift asked for, such as knowledge or forgiveness. Forgiveness comes from the “merciful Father,” the level of Chochmah that, as explained earlier in the discourse, the blemish of sin does not reach.

The parenthesis refers to a discourse in Torah Ohr, Parshas Terumah, “If only you were as a brother to me, who nursed at my mother’s breasts” (Song of Songs 8:1), for more on “milk.”

The next phrase is “Eat, friends.” The tzaddikim are called G‑d’s “friends,” as in “For the sake of my brothers and my friends” (Psalms 122:8).

This friendship comes through Torah study. The Infinite Light is enclothed in the Torah, so studying it draws that light onto the person’s soul; “My words which I have put in your mouth” (Isaiah 59:21) are literally G‑d’s own words.

The Talmud’s phrase “the Mishnah is a queen” (Beitzah 28b) is in its place a mnemonic: the queen, malkasa, recalls Rav Malkiya, to whom Rav Pappa attributes the rulings found in the Mishnah and the Baraisa. The Alter Rebbe reads it literally: the Mishnah rules like a monarch, and when it states “this law is thus,” that is G‑d’s own spirit speaking. (The printed text has here a word, ממה, that seems to be a misprint, most likely for ממש, “itself”; the translation follows that reading.)

The Sages teach that the words of Torah should be in one’s eyes as though they were given today at Sinai (Chorev), as Rashi brings on Exodus 19:1; the text bases this on the verses that join “make them known to your children” with “the day that you stood before Havayah your G‑d at Chorev” (Deuteronomy 4:9–10). In Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim, the Alter Rebbe reads “which I command you today” the same way: every day the words of Torah should be new in one’s eyes, for the Torah is eternal and “today” is said of every day.

The very word that G‑d spoke face to face at Sinai dwells in the person at the moment he studies. He therefore becomes G‑d’s “friend,” as in the Zohar’s phrase for Chochmah and Binah, “two friends who never part”; in Likkutei Torah, Re’eh, the Alter Rebbe explains that a person’s contemplation of G‑d’s greatness and his self-nullification must likewise always go together, like those two friends.

The Torah is Chochmah, the supernal “Eden” and delight, the “delight” of Proverbs 8:30, and those delights are “with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31). So in Torah study the Infinite Light is present below exactly as it is above, as the discourse on Shemini Atzeres also explains.

The Alter Rebbe explains why the verse says “eat”: eating means taking something inside oneself. So the Torah becomes part of the one who studies it, as in “Your Torah is within my innards” (Psalms 40:9).

The last phrase is “Drink and become drunk, beloved ones.” The word dodim means both “beloved ones” and “love” (as in “your love is better than wine,” Song of Songs 1:2), and the Alter Rebbe takes it as Israel’s love for G‑d, which lies hidden within the animal soul; at special times a person arouses it “until it desires” to shed its bodily “garments” and cleave to G‑d.

This love includes a thirst, for it burns like “flashes of fire” (Song of Songs 8:6). Of it Isaiah says, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the water” (Isaiah 55:1): water puts out fire and quenches thirst.

“Drink” means that Torah study quenches this thirst.

The “friends” of the previous phrase do not thirst at all, because their souls are always bound to the living G‑d, like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s words in the Zohar, “With one knot I am bound to Him.” Only the “beloved ones,” whose love comes and goes, feel thirst.

To the “beloved ones” the verse says “Drink,” and also “become drunk,” arousing the “wine that gladdens,” joy and emotional excitement. The “friends” above are like oil, which is absorbed quietly; the closing words, “this suffices for one who understands,” leave the rest for the reader to work out.