ששים המה מלכות ושמונים פילגשים ועלמות אין מספר…

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 6:8–9. In the Song the lover praises his bride: there are sixty queens, eighty concubines and maidens without number, but she, “my dove, my perfect one,” is one, unique above them all.

The Sages read the verse as speaking of the Torah, and the Alter Rebbe points to their reading in the Midrash Rabbah on Shir HaShirim and in Parshas Korach, where it comes with the verse “But the sons of Korach did not die.” In this reading the sixty queens are the sixty tractates, the eighty concubines are the beraisos (teachings of the Tannaim, the Sages of the Mishnah, not included in the Mishnah), and the maidens without number are the countless halachos in the Gemara. The Midrash in Korach (Bamidbar Rabbah 18:21), which the Kehot note quotes, reads the eighty concubines as the eighty houses of study that were in Jerusalem.

“One is she” is Knesses Yisrael, the collective source of all Jewish souls; the name is linked to knisah, “gathering in,” because all the souls are gathered in her. She is called “one” because she receives from a supernal level called “Israel above,” which is itself called “one.” The Sages read tamasi, “my perfect one,” as te’omasi, “my twin,” and the Alter Rebbe explains why: the souls of Israel bring about the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the divine emotive attributes and Malchus, which are joined like twins.

If the Torah is the queens, concubines and maidens, and the souls are the one bride preferred above them all, then the souls rank higher than the Torah.

The Talmud (Pesachim 49b) reads the verse from Moshe’s blessing, “Moshe commanded us the Torah, an inheritance (morashah),” as me’orasah, “betrothed”: the Torah is betrothed to Israel, so Israel is the groom and the Torah is the bride. The Kehot note adds Song of Songs 3:11, “on the day of his wedding,” which the Mishnah (Taanis 26b) reads as the day the Torah was given.

The image of Israel as groom and the Torah as bride again implies that the souls stand above the Torah. Yet the saying “Three bonds are bound one to another,” in which Israel is bound to G‑d by being bound to the Torah, implies the reverse: that the Torah is above Israel. The rest of the maamar resolves this contradiction.

¶7 Hold this question: paragraph 7 explains how the souls surpass the Torah.

To resolve the question, the Alter Rebbe turns to the verse “Light is sown for the tzaddik.” The souls of Israel are the “tzaddik,” and they are themselves a light that G‑d has sown below by placing it in a body of flesh and blood.

As with any sowing, the purpose is a great increase: through the Torah and the practical mitzvos the souls perform in this world, the revelation of the Infinite Light is drawn down below. How this works is explained later in the maamar.

¶3 How the souls draw the Infinite Light below: explained in paragraph 3.

The comparison is exact. A farmer plants a single seed, it rots in the soil, and many seeds grow from it; in the same way, the practical mitzvos the souls perform in this physical world are a kind of sowing.

From that single seed comes growth and increase, and what grows is a revelation of the Infinite Light below. The Gemara (Pesachim 87b), to which the Kehot note points, uses the same image: a person sows a se’ah [a small measure of grain] only in order to bring in many kor [a far larger measure].

To explain why the souls are needed, the Alter Rebbe first describes the worlds. In its plain sense the verse praises G‑d’s eternal kingship, “a kingship of all ages” (olamim), and the Alter Rebbe reads olamim as “worlds”: the countless levels of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, which have no end, as the verse in Job asks, “Is there any number to His legions?”

For all their number, these worlds draw their life and their very existence only from G‑d’s Malchus, His attribute of kingship. Malchus is the last of the divine attributes, the one that faces outward toward creation.

Compared with G‑d’s own essence, Malchus is no more than a light and a radiance, as the verse says, “His splendor (hodo) is upon earth and heaven.”

That is, heaven and earth come only from His splendor and radiance, His Malchus, which gives life to the worlds and creates them from nothing as separate, finite beings. As such, they bear no comparison at all to the Infinite Light that is revealed in the higher worlds.

In the higher worlds the light is truly infinite, and everything there is united with G‑d and utterly nullified before Him. This is all the more true of the attributes named in “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness,” the divine attributes of Atzilus.

Atzilus does have distinct attributes, such as greatness, which is Chesed, and might, which is Gevurah. Yet they are entirely united with G‑d and nullified before Him: they are “Yours, Havayah.”

The Tikkunei Zohar says of Atzilus that G‑d is one with “His life-forces” and “His vessels,” that is, with its lights and its vessels, so that they too are truly infinite. Eliyahu’s words there, that G‑d is “not of any of these attributes,” show that even the attributes through which He acts do not define or limit Him.

In the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, it is otherwise: the G‑dly life-force that creates them is greatly contracted and hidden, because they are meant to be finite and separate creations.

With each step of the chain of descent and its contractions the concealment deepens, until in Asiyah the G‑dly life-force is hidden so completely that creatures seem to exist on their own, as a “something” apart from G‑d. That appearance is what lets heretics claim that two powers rule the world.

In the Gemara (Sanhedrin 39a) a magus, a Persian priest, tells Amemar that the upper half of his body belongs to Hormiz and the lower half to Ahormiz, the two rival powers of Persian belief; for the words the text sends the reader to the Aruch, the medieval dictionary of the Talmud. Such a claim can arise only because the lower world is a “world of separation,” as the verse says of the river that leaves Eden: “from there it separates.”

Atzilus is a realm of complete union, where the Infinite Light shines openly; yet “from there it separates.” From G‑d’s Malchus the light is drawn down through many contractions and concealments that hide it, until finite creations, made something from nothing, and separate worlds come into being.

Because the lower worlds draw their life only from Malchus, they bear no comparison to the light of G‑d revealed in the higher worlds, which is infinite.

The Alter Rebbe illustrates this with numbers: one still has some proportion to a myriad of myriads of thousands, since both are numbers, but anything finite has no proportion at all to the infinite, and measured against it one and a myriad of myriads are exactly equal. The Kehot note says this teaching is cited in several places in the name of the Maggid of Mezritch, the Alter Rebbe’s teacher. In Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe explains that there is proportion between the levels of the chain of descent, since each comes from the other, but none between them and the Emanator Himself.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the Tanya, chapter 48, which discusses this lack of proportion. It follows that the lower worlds live only from G‑d’s “light and radiance,” His Malchus, and not from the Infinite Light itself.

Yet G‑d’s purpose in creating the worlds is to have “a dwelling place among the lower realms”: that His Infinite Light be revealed below exactly as it is above. For this purpose a light from above is “sown” in the lower worlds.

That light is the souls of Israel, which come down into bodies of flesh and blood. Through the Torah and the practical mitzvos they perform in this world, they draw the revelation of the Infinite Light into the lower worlds as well, exactly as it is in the higher worlds.

¶2 This is the explanation promised in paragraph 2.

The goal is that the higher and lower worlds become one, so that the lower worlds are no longer “worlds of separation” in which G‑d’s face is hidden. Yeshayahu describes that time: “Your Teacher will no longer be hidden by a wing,” that is, G‑d will no longer conceal Himself. The text also refers to the discourse “And I pleaded” (Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan).

The phrase from the morning prayers, “He sows charities, makes salvations sprout,” expresses the same idea. Charity is given to a poor person, who has nothing of his own, and so it brings light to a place of darkness, like the “owl of the ruins” in the psalm that is “a prayer of the poor man.” Giving to the poor below arouses a corresponding giving above, which draws the Infinite Light into the lower worlds, dark and divided as they are.

This is “makes salvations sprout”: a growth with great increase, in which the supernal lights (nehorin ila’in), here numbered 375, are drawn down below. In Torah Ohr, Vayeitzei, said on the same Shabbos, the Alter Rebbe reads yeshuos as the 370 (shin-ayin) supernal lights, letters found in the word yeshuos itself, and then, as here, as sha’ah, “turned.”

The Sages teach (Bava Basra 9b) that in charity “each and every perutah combines into a great sum,” and the Alter Rebbe reads “a great sum” as the revelation of the Infinite: small coins given below add up to it. He refers to the epistle “And He donned charity as a coat of mail” (Tanya, Iggeres HaKodesh 3), which opens with this saying, and to the discourse on “A great shofar will be sounded” (Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah).

A second reading of yeshuos connects it with sha’ah, “turned toward,” as in the verse where G‑d turned to Hevel’s offering but not to Kayin’s. In this sense salvation means G‑d turning toward a person and what he offers.

That turning is the descent of the revelation of the Infinite Light below, brought about by the practical mitzvos of Israel. This is why, the Alter Rebbe says, the Jerusalem Talmud calls all the mitzvos simply “charity.” In Tanya, chapter 37, he puts it the other way round, that throughout the Jerusalem Talmud charity is called simply “the mitzvah,” and Likkutei Torah, Re’eh, which the Kehot note cites, joins the two: charity is the general and collective expression (klalus) of all the mitzvos.

This is why the first mitzvah of the Torah is “Be fruitful and multiply”: its very content is increase. All the practical mitzvos of Israel likewise bring about increase and multiplication of divine revelation.

The verse “Yosef is a fruitful son” ties fruitfulness to Yosef, who stands for the supernal tzaddik, the attribute of Yesod (foundation) in Kabbalah, the Sefirah through which the flow of the higher attributes passes on to Malchus. Of the tzaddik it is written, “Light is sown,” and sowing is for the sake of increase.

The Midrash at the beginning of Parshas Shemos connects Yosef’s name with “G‑d will again (yosif) [set] His hand a second time.” The name Yosef itself speaks of adding and increase.

The blessing said before every mitzvah, “Blessed are You, Havayah … Who has sanctified us with His commandments,” expresses the same idea. The Alter Rebbe now explains its wording.

The word asher, “Who,” is related to osher, happiness and delight, as when Leah named her son Asher, saying, “In my happiness, for daughters will call me happy.” In the blessing it alludes to the supernal delight, G‑d’s own pleasure.

That delight is infinite. When Acher (Elisha ben Avuyah), the sage who left the path of Torah, died, it was said that he would be neither judged, because he had studied Torah, nor brought to the World to Come, because he had sinned; Rabbi Meir said it was better that he be judged and then come to the World to Come, so great is its delight. Through doing the mitzvos, this supernal delight is drawn down below.

The image of sowing continues. Before planting, a farmer must plow the field well to loosen the soil.

Plowing loosens the earth, and without it the seed is lost. In the same way, the souls’ sowing, the “do good” of fulfilling the practical mitzvos (in the psalm’s words, “Turn away from evil and do good”), needs a preparation before it.

That preparation is “turn away from evil,” the plowing of the animal soul: turning over its bad traits and nullifying every desire not directed to G‑d. The aim is to want nothing but G‑d and to have “a broken and crushed heart.”

After this plowing, the sowing of the practical mitzvos, “do good,” can draw the revelation of the Infinite Light down below. It is a growth with great increase, the harvest of the souls’ sowing.

The parenthesis points to the discourse on “Listen, O heavens” (Likkutei Torah, Ha’azinu), where the study of Torah is the rain that must come after the plowing, and to the discourse on “And you shall draw water” (Likkutei Torah, Sukkos), where “His left hand under my head,” the humbling of a person who considers how far he is from G‑d, must come before “His right hand embraces me.” The plowing explains why G‑d did not turn to Kayin and his offering: Kayin was a man of anger, who never plowed his traits by turning away from evil.

Because Kayin had not plowed, his sowing, his offering, could not draw G‑d’s light down. Hevel had turned away from evil completely, and so “Havayah turned to Hevel and to his offering”: his sowing bore fruit.

The verse “In plowing and in harvest you shall rest,” which in its place commands rest on the seventh day even in the seasons of plowing and harvest, is read here as speaking of the time to come, when this plowing will no longer be needed. For then G‑d will fulfill His promise, “And the spirit of impurity I will remove from the land.”

The Talmud’s teaching that in the time to come “holy” will be said before the righteous is explained by the same idea. The righteous draw down the Infinite Light, which is “holy,” that is, set apart and beyond the worlds, and so the title “holy” is said of them.

Now the opening question can be answered: in this the souls of Israel surpass the Torah. The Torah does come from supernal Chochmah, but as it comes down it becomes halachah, which the Talmud calls “the word of Havayah.”

¶1 This answers the question from paragraph 1.

In Eliyahu’s words in the Tikkunei Zohar, Malchus is the “mouth,” and the Oral Torah is named for it. Its countless particular halachos are like strands of hair, “the locks of your head,” and they are the “maidens without number,” each one ruling that in such a case the law is such.

At this level the halachah has no increase or multiplication: it is exactly what the supernal speech decrees, “when it is so, the law will be so.”

The angels, too, come from the word of G‑d, as the verse says, “and by the breath of His mouth all their host.” So they have no growth or increase: one angel cannot produce a second, and angels do not reproduce.

The souls of Israel, by contrast, constantly draw the Infinite Light down below through their practical mitzvos, and they do so with increase. The verse “which a person shall do” stresses that it is the person’s own deed.

“And live by them” is read as saying that the souls draw down life-force from the Infinite Light. The Zohar notes that in “And you shall do them (osam)” the word is written so that it can be read atem, “you”: it is the doers themselves who bring about what the mitzvos accomplish.

All this depends first on Israel’s self-nullification and readiness for self-sacrifice, as in the love of G‑d commanded in the Shema, “with all your soul,” right after it declares G‑d One. Through this Israel are called “One is she, my beloved,” for they receive from the One, the Only One of the world.

The Midrash on Nasso links the “one spoon (kaf) of ten [shekels] of gold” that each of the princes brought with “One is she, my dove.” Why it is called “one spoon” is explained in the discourse on “My dove, in the clefts of the rock,” on “and go for yourself”: Or HaTorah, quoted in the Kehot note, says the point is the letter kaf, for ulechi (“and go”) is written there with kaf and yud, and the explanation of that discourse (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 16) calls the kaf the primordial thought, the level of Adam Kadmon.

Once Israel are “one” through this self-nullification, they can draw the Infinite Light down below and bring about a true union of the higher and the lower worlds. Then the lower worlds no longer seem to exist apart from G‑d, as “a something, separate by itself.”

That false appearance is what gives rise to the belief in two dominions, the heretic’s claim in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 39a) that a person’s upper half belongs to one power and his lower half to another.

The heretic’s error grows out of a real difference: above, all is in complete union, but as the chain of descent comes further down, it becomes a world of separation, “and from there it separates.”

When Israel draw the revelation of the Infinite Light down below as it is in the higher worlds, the higher and the lower become completely united. The separation is overcome from below.

This is the meaning of tamasi, “my perfect one,” from temimus, wholeness; the Yiddish says “makes me whole.” Through Knesses Yisrael, G‑d’s unity is made whole below exactly as it is above.

It is also te’omasi, “my twin”: the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, that is, of the divine emotive attributes of Atzilus with the Malchus of Atzilus, which is enclothed in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Through the children of Israel these two are completely united, like twins.

Before this union there must be “my dove,” as in “Your eyes are doves.” A pair of doves takes its chief delight in gazing at one another.

So too above: the union of “my perfect one, my twin,” of groom and bride, comes about only through “my dove” first. That is the delight the souls must have in gazing “upon the glory of the King,” in the Zohar’s phrase.

That gazing is contemplation of the greatness of the Infinite Light. It is called “the joy of the bride,” her delight in looking at the groom, the glory of the King; and in response, from above to below, “The eye of Havayah is toward those who fear Him.”

“Those who fear Him” are those in a state of self-nullification. When Israel below are constantly nullified before G‑d, a great delight is aroused above.

It is like the delight of creation, when “G‑d saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good”: G‑d delights in it as a person delights in a beautiful vessel. This delight above is called “the joy of the groom.”

The groom is the union of Atzilus. The word chasan, groom, is read as nechos darga, “going down a level,” as in the Talmud’s saying “go down a step and take a wife” (Yevamos 63a): Atzilus comes down to give to the source of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, which is called the bride. This too depends first on “my dove,” the souls’ delight in G‑d.

The joy of groom and bride, the delight of both, makes possible “my perfect one,” the union of groom and bride. In Kabbalistic terms this is the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva.

This union will be complete in the time to come, of which the prophet Yoel says, “And a spring will go forth from the house of Havayah and will water the stream of Shittim.” Then there will be no worlds of separation at all.

Now the world is as described in “And a river goes forth from Eden, and from there it separates,” but in the time to come there will be “my perfect one,” which is “my twin.” The next section explains why the future is described as a spring and the present as a river.

The third section returns to the verse from Yoel with which the previous section ended: the prophecy that in the time to come a spring will go forth from the house of G‑d and water the stream of Shittim. It will now explain in more depth why the future revelation is pictured as a spring.

The question: why does the prophet speak of a spring (ma’ayan) and not of a river (nahar), the image the Torah uses in the account of Eden, “And a river goes forth from Eden”? The choice of word must be deliberate.

¶12 Hold this question: paragraph 12 explains why it says “spring,” not “river.”

The answer in brief: of the river the Torah says “and from there it separates,” the beginning of division, while of the spring Yoel says only that it “will water,” even the stream of Shittim. The spring stands for a revelation that unites rather than divides.

The Talmud (Shabbos 65b) records Shmuel’s view that “a river is increased from its banks”: mevarich, literally “is blessed,” means that it grows from its own water. That is why, in the laws of immersion, there is no concern that rainwater dripping into it might outweigh its own flowing water.

The Alter Rebbe explains the saying: whatever a river has beyond what first came out of its spring comes from its own source. The river increases of itself, not from anything added to it from outside.

The parenthesis brings the commentators’ support. The Aruch, the medieval dictionary of the Talmud, quotes Rabbeinu Gershom: the river grows “from its banks,” by itself and not from rainwater; and Rashi explains it the same way in Nedarim, at the end of folio 40a, where the saying appears again.

On Shabbos 65b Rashi explains mikifeih as “from its bank, from its source and from its rock.” The Aramaic word kif means a bank: the Targum renders “the Jordan is full over all its banks” (Joshua 3:15) with the same word, kifohi.

Two more examples from the Targum: “the bank of the river,” where Moshe’s basket was placed (Exodus 2:3), is rendered kif nahara, and “on its bank” in Ezekiel 47 is al kifeih. So “from its banks” means from the river itself, and not from rainwater.

This is the principle the maamar needs. In the spring itself the water spreads out only a little, but once it leaves the concealment of the spring and comes out into the open as a river, it grows greatly of its own accord.

The river is now illustrated from the human soul. Emotions are born from the mind: when a person thinks deeply about something and understands that it is good, love and longing for it arise in his heart of their own accord.

A small child’s mind is too small to grasp much, and so his emotions, too, are for small things. The verse “A man is praised according to his intellect” is read as saying that the emotions, which are called “man,” are born in the measure of the intellect.

Yet experience shows something more. Although the emotions come entirely from the intellect, once they are revealed in the heart they become far stronger and greater than they were while they were still only in the mind, as anger shows: once it flares in the heart, it grows far beyond the thought that set it off.

The reason is the one given for the river: in the mind the emotion is completely hidden and spreads out little, but when it comes out into the heart it spreads out and grows strong of itself.

The same holds for the river. All its water comes from the spring, yet once it leaves the spring’s concealment and comes into the open, it spreads out and increases of itself.

This is the meaning of “a river is blessed from its banks”: its growth comes from itself. With this analogy the Alter Rebbe turns to the river of Eden, which describes the order of the Sefiros above.

Eden is supernal Chochmah of Atzilus, the first point of the divine mind. In Eliyahu’s words in the Tikkunei Zohar, G‑d is “wise, but not with a known wisdom”; this Chochmah is completely hidden and nullified, and so Iyov says that wisdom is found “from ayin,” from nothing.

Because Chochmah is truly “nothing,” a point not yet grasped, it is compared to the spring, whose water is still hidden. The river that goes forth from Eden is Binah of Atzilus, which issues from Chochmah “to water,” that is, to give rise to the emotive attributes; the Zohar (2:123b), cited in the Kehot note, likewise calls the yud Chochmah and the river from Eden Binah.

Binah is called “the mother of the children” because the supernal emotive attributes of Atzilus, her “children,” are born from her. The Zohar calls Binah “the broad expanses of the river,” from which fifty gates of light open to all six directions.

“Broad expanses” means that in Binah the intellect spreads out far beyond what it was in Chochmah, which is “nothing.”

Binah draws all it has from Chochmah, but it brings the idea out of concealment into understanding that grasps it. That passage from “nothing” to “something” is why Binah grows and spreads out of itself, like a physical river that comes out of its spring, and like the emotions that grow in the heart once they come out of the mind.

Now it is clear why separation is said of the river and not of the spring. The flow passes from Binah of Atzilus into Malchus of Atzilus, the last of the Sefiros, which spreads down and is enclothed in the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah; there comes complete separation: finite creatures and “worlds of separation” that seem to exist apart from G‑d.

But this can happen only after the river has spread out, that is, after Binah and the emotive attributes of Atzilus have flowed into Malchus of Atzilus so that it can be enclothed in the lower worlds.

“From there it separates” means that only from that point downward do worlds of separation come into being. The river itself, Binah and the emotive attributes of Atzilus, is still wholly united with G‑d and nullified before Him, as the verse “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness” says of the divine attributes, and as the Tikkunei Zohar says of Atzilus that G‑d “and His life-forces and His vessels are one.”

Although the river has already left Eden, which is Chochmah, and spread out, it constantly receives from Eden, and so it remains united and nullified.

Even so, the river is a source from which separation can follow once its flow is drawn down into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

It can be that source because it has already left the concealment of the spring, supernal Chochmah, and come into revelation and comprehension as Binah and the emotive attributes. What has been revealed and grasped can be lowered step by step through the chain of descent and its contractions, until at its end come creatures that are truly separate, which seem to be a “something” existing by itself.

The spring itself, supernal Chochmah, cannot be a source of a separate “something” at all. In the spring there is no spreading out of the kind there is in the river, from which separate existence could develop.

The reason is that Chochmah is “found from nothing”: it remains one with the “nothing” from which it comes, wholly nullified.

Therefore, when the essence of supernal Chochmah is revealed below in the time to come, the lower world will no longer be a world of separation at all. Below, too, G‑d’s light will be united, exactly as it is above.

This is the meaning of Yoel’s prophecy, “And a spring will go forth from the house of Havayah.” The essence of the spring, supernal Chochmah, will be drawn down and revealed below just as it is, as a spring, and not as now, when the flow comes down as a river, from which separation follows below.

¶9 This answers the question from paragraph 9.

Then the spring will water even “the stream of Shittim.” The name shittim is read two ways: as shtus, folly, and as in “the people roamed about (shatu)” to gather the manna (Numbers 11:8); both, the text says, are the worlds of separation.

The stream of Shittim is the source that nourishes all the cravings and pleasures of this world that are not for G‑d.

This matches what the discourse on “Hear, O Israel” (Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan) explains about the “lower waters.” They nourish all the pleasures of this world, which are refuse (p’soles). These are the waters that G‑d divided from the upper waters by the firmament on the second day of creation. Here they stand for the source of worldly pleasure that has become separate from holiness.

This comes about through the firmament that divides the upper waters from the lower waters, as on the second day of creation; from that division the stream of Shittim branched off below, in the lower waters. The text then refers to a passage at the end of Parshas Va’eschanan (folio 74b), and the Kehot note quotes it from the Zohar: since that stream increases affection in the world, when the holy spring goes forth and comes to it, it will be set right and made straight, and will no longer be in its foulness as before.

That passage explains that when the essence of the spring is revealed, G‑d’s light will be revealed even in the stream of Shittim. The verse cited, as the Kehot note points out, reads in full, “And nations shall walk by your light.”

Yeshayahu also foretells that in the time to come people “shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the earth, from before the terror of Havayah and from the splendor of His majesty.” G‑d’s majesty will then be felt even in the lowest places.

Then there will be no separation at all, unlike now, when the world can look as if there were two dominions, G‑d forbid. In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 39a) a magus told Amemar that a person’s upper half belongs to one power and his lower half to another, and Amemar answered: if so, how does the one let the water pass through the other’s land?

The answer shows that the upper and the lower are one. In truth everything comes from G‑d alone; only the many stages of descent and contraction hide the light that gives the creatures life and brings them into being, so they appear to be independent things.

The appearance of separateness arises because the whole chain of descent flows from the river, Binah, of which it is said, “and from there it separates.”

In the time to come, though, the essence of the spring will be revealed below, and the lower world will be united with G‑d exactly like the higher; this is “my perfect one, my twin” from the opening of the maamar, the complete union brought about by the souls. More on this subject is in the explanation on Hoshea’s verse, “And the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea” (Likkutei Torah, Bamidbar).

Etz Chaim calls the Infinite Light’s enclothing in Binah and the emotive attributes of Atzilus “He and His vessels are one,” and its union with supernal Chochmah “He and His life-forces are one,” a closer bond than that of the vessels. The printed letters of the sha’ar read Mem-Ayin, which gives no sha’ar number; the Kehot note’s heading reads them as Mem-Alef, Sha’ar (Gate) 41, chapter 7, and the translation keeps the printed letters. The gloss in Tanya, chapter 35, gives in the name of the Alter Rebbe’s teacher the reason for Etz Chaim’s statement that the Infinite Light is united even in Atzilus only by first being enclothed in Chochmah: the Infinite One alone truly exists, and that is the level of Chochmah.

Even so, Binah of Atzilus and all of Atzilus are called Atzilus, “beside” G‑d, because they are united with Chochmah. Beriah, which receives only from Binah, is not, and so below Atzilus “it separates.”

Now the verse “Light is sown for the tzaddik,” with which the explanation began, becomes clear. G‑d’s revelation can be in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah as it is in Atzilus only through the souls of Israel, the light that is “sown” below in a body.

The souls can do this because, as the Midrash says (Bereishis Rabbah 1:4), Israel “arose in thought” before the world was created, and their root is the very essence of supernal Chochmah, the “nothing” from which wisdom is found. The text says this will be explained further below.

It was also explained in the explanation on “My dove” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim), which opens with the Sages’ saying that the Torah is the “fallen fruit” (novlos) of supernal wisdom (Bereishis Rabbah 17:5).

Because the souls are rooted in Chochmah itself, their descent into Asiyah enables them to draw the revelation of supernal Chochmah down into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, as it is in Atzilus. Then G‑d will no longer be “hidden by a wing,” behind the screen and partition that divide Atzilus from Beriah; instead “a spring will go forth from the house of Havayah”: supernal Chochmah itself will be revealed.

For what this Chochmah is, the text points again to Etz Chaim, Sha’ar (Gate) 47, chapter 3, and to Zohar HaRakia, a commentary on the Zohar, on Parshas Pekudei at folio 234. There it is explained that the Ein Sof within this Chochmah is enclothed in the supernal Chochmah of Adam Kadmon, the primordial level above Atzilus, and that this Chochmah is enclothed in Atzilus.

In just this way Chochmah will be revealed in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

The Talmud (Menachos 29b) reads “For in Kah, Havayah, is an everlasting rock (tzur olamim)” as “with Kah, Havayah formed (tzar) the worlds (olamim)”: the World to Come was created with the yud and this world with the hei. The hei is “the broad expanses of the river,” the river that goes forth, which is Binah; because it is the river, “from there it separates,” and that is the nature of this world.

The yud is the spring, and it has no spreading out of the kind the hei has. Therefore the World to Come was created with it, for then “a spring will go forth from the house of Havayah.”

The text also refers to the comments of the Ramaz, the Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, on Parshas Shelach (159a) about this verse.

The maamar closes with a list of places where the Midrash Rabbah expounds “There are sixty queens … One is she.” It is expounded in Bamidbar Rabbah on Parshas Bamidbar, at the beginning of section 4, and on Nasso (section 9), on “And the kohen shall take holy water,” the waters of the sotah, the wife suspected of unfaithfulness.

The other places are Bamidbar Rabbah, section 14, on the offering of the eleventh day (Numbers 7:72), one of the tribal princes’ offerings for the dedication of the Mishkan, where “One is she” is Israel, whom G‑d chose; Korach, section 18; Bereishis Rabbah at the beginning of sections 90 and 94, where “One is she, my dove” is expounded of Avraham; and Shir HaShirim Rabbah on the verse itself.