הנה ענין מדלג על ההרים הוא עד״מ שההפרש…

The maamar opens with a phrase from Song of Songs 2:8, where the beloved comes “leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.” To explain what “leaping” means, the Alter Rebbe first compares walking with leaping: one who walks keeps his feet on the ground itself. The Kehot note records that the Tzemach Tzedek’s Or HaTorah treats this discourse as an explanation of “Sixty are the queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number” (Song of Songs 6:8), which is why it later speaks of the Mishnah as a queen, the Baraisa as a concubine and the laws of the Talmud as maidens.

In walking only one foot is raised at a time, while the other stays planted. There is never a moment when the walker is wholly off the ground.

Running is faster but no different in kind: however quick the steps, one foot, right or left, is always touching the ground while the other is in the air. (The printed מגיה is evidently a misprint for מגביה, “lifts,” the word used in the previous part.)

A leap is different in kind: the whole body and both feet leave the ground, so that for a moment there is a gap, an empty space of air, between the feet and the ground, and only afterwards do the feet land. This gap is what the analogy will turn on.

Now the Alter Rebbe applies the analogy to what it illustrates (the nimshal): the coming-into-being of the four worlds. He begins with the problem: the worlds could not have come from the Infinite Light by a gradual chain of cause and effect, each level stepping down from the one above.

In any chain of cause and effect, the effect bears some relation and proportion to its cause. The finite worlds bear no relation at all to the Infinite One, so no gradual chain could ever lead from Him to a world.

The answer is the tzimtzum taught at the opening of Etz Chaim: first G‑d withdrew His light entirely, so that it was absorbed back into its source, the Luminary, leaving a void, and only then was a thin line of light revealed in it, the kav, also called chut, “thread.” That line comes from the Malchus of the Infinite Light, its last and lowest aspect.

The kav cannot come from the essence of the Infinite Light, for a revelation of the essence would return everything to how it was before creation, with no worlds at all. So the verse “Your kingship is the kingship of all worlds” (Psalms 145:13) is read as saying that all the worlds come into being from G‑d’s “kingship,” His Malchus, through the kav; the text then refers to Etz Chaim on what “the Malchus of the Infinite Light” means.

Etz Chaim is quoted to qualify the expression: to speak of “the Malchus within Malchus” of the Infinite is only an analogy, for there is no image or Sefirah in the Infinite at all. Such language is used only “to soothe the ear,” to give the listener something he can grasp.

The verse “The voice of my beloved… leaping” is now applied to this leap. The Torah has its source in Chochmah, and the revelation of the Infinite Light into Chochmah, the first revealed level, comes specifically by way of a leap.

A leap means that first there is a void and only afterwards the kav is drawn into it, just as a jumper first leaves a gap of air between his feet and the ground and only afterwards lands, which never happens in walking. The parenthesis sends the reader to the end of the discourse “The voice of my beloved” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 13), where the Alter Rebbe explains that the great revelation of the Exodus came “by way of a leap” and not in the step-by-step order of cause and effect, like one who leaps to a distant mountain he could not walk to, and that “leaping” is on one foot while “skipping” is on both.

So too above: the light that reaches Chochmah from the Infinite One does not come through the orderly, step-by-step chain of descent.

Hishtalshelus, the word for this chain of descent, comes from shalsheles, “a chain,” whose rings are each linked to the next with no gap between them. In Likkutei Torah, V’Zos HaBerachah, the Alter Rebbe uses the same image: intellect gives rise to emotion in its own measure, so such levels bear a relation to each other, with no leap between them.

The revelation into Chochmah, and with it the coming-into-being of the worlds, is different: the light first withdrew completely and was lifted away, and only afterwards did a revelation reach Chochmah through the kav, a break followed by a new beginning, which is what “leaping” means. The Alter Rebbe limits this to one step, the drawing-down from the Infinite One to Atzilus.

Within the four worlds, even from Atzilus down to Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, the descent is not a leap but a chain. The Kehot note points out that this does not contradict the previous discourse (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 32), which calls it Bilam’s error to think that the worlds come from G‑d by cause and effect: the chain is said here only of the worlds from Atzilus downward.

He raises a difficulty from the well-known phrase that in Atzilus “He and His life-forces and His vessels are one”: if G‑d’s essence, the light and the vessels of Atzilus are all one, how can limited worlds descend from Atzilus link by link? The answer is that the vessels of Atzilus already have an aspect of limitation, so a finite world can follow from them.

Therefore thirty vessels of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva of Atzilus are themselves enclothed in the lower worlds and become their soul. The parenthesis compares this to soul and body, which are so united that the soul feels a pain in the foot although the soul is spiritual and the body physical; so the Ten Sefiros of the lower worlds serve as bodies for the vessels of Atzilus.

This descent follows the pattern of the soul in the body, which is graded: it shines most in the head, less in the hands, and still less in the feet. In the same graded way the thirty vessels of Atzilus are enclothed in the lower worlds, and Beriah receives the highest revelation, like the soul in the brain.

The Alter Rebbe adds a qualification: there is indeed a partition, the parsa, between Atzilus and Beriah. Yet compared with the tzimtzum and empty space between the Infinite One and Atzilus, which is the “leap,” the parsa is not called a leap at all; it is still part of the chain of descent.

The parsa is like light shining through a screen: the screen dims the light but does not cut it off. In Torah Ohr, in the discourse “Eliyahu opened” (Vayera), the Alter Rebbe draws the same line: Atzilus comes into being through the tzimtzum and an actual empty space, while Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah come through the parsa, “and not an empty space.”

A second illustration: when an idea is clothed in an analogy, it is hidden inside a garment, yet the idea was not first taken away. In that Torah Ohr discourse the parsa is compared to a teacher who clothes a great idea in an analogy so that his student can grasp it.

On the contrary, the light itself passes through the screen, and the idea itself is present in the analogy. The screen or partition is there only so that the receiver, who could not take in the light or the idea directly, is able to receive it.

From the Infinite Light, the Emanator, to Atzilus, the process is different in kind: all the light must first withdraw into its source, and only afterwards is a revelation drawn down, and even then only a radiance, through the kav.

This is what is called “leaping,” and it is also called “above the order of hishtalshelus.” The text closes by referring to the discourse “Eliyahu opened” (Torah Ohr, Vayera, 13c), which explains the difference between the empty space of the tzimtzum and the parsa.

A new section begins (numbered 2). From Atzilus downward the divine light is called memalei kol almin, the light that fills all worlds, and it comes down by a continuous chain (hishtalshelus) rather than by a leap. The reason begins here: the vessels of Malchus of Atzilus are themselves the level of the lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Malchus of Atzilus receives from all ten Sefiros of Atzilus. Each Sefirah has its own aspect of Malchus, and from the Malchus of Chesed comes the Chesed within Malchus, from the Malchus of Gevurah the Gevurah within Malchus.

Since Malchus holds something of all of Atzilus and its vessels are the level of the lower worlds, the whole order from Atzilus down can be spoken of in general as memalei. Although Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah are finite, the rabbinic principle “two hundred includes a hundred” applies: the greater includes the lesser. The parenthesis recalls that this chain still has a separating partition (parsa) between Atzilus and Beriah, as the previous section explained.

Through this chain, a radiance from the light of Malchus of Atzilus shines into each world and gives it life. In each world it is enclothed according to what that world can receive, step by step, as cause and effect.

An analogy from the human soul: the emotions come from the intellect in a chain, and the intellect is enclothed in the emotions and then in thought, speech and action. It reaches even the physical act of writing, for a person writes an idea down and the idea is revealed in what he writes. Another transcript of this discourse (Sefer HaMaamarim 5570) adds that although the motion of the finger holds more than the idea, the idea is truly enclothed in it, as a spontaneous gesture of the hand shows still more clearly.

So the intellect itself has come down step by step, by cause and effect, until its very essence is enclothed and revealed in the act of writing. It follows that even the physical act of writing bears a relation to the spiritual intellect, and this is what a chain of cause and effect means.

If even the physical act of writing bears a relation to the intellect, all the more so do the emotions, which follow the intellect in proportion: a small child, whose intellect is slight, has emotions about small things.

The same holds in the worlds: the light comes down in a chain and shines in each world according to that world’s measure, giving it life and existence, more openly in Beriah and less in the worlds below it, until in Asiyah it is contracted. Because the revelation differs from world to world, the worlds can change: summer and winter, the building and the destruction of the Temple, and the days of Mashiach.

All this is possible because what shines in the worlds is only a radiance, the level of memalei, which gives them life.

It follows that memalei is not revealed equally in all the worlds, but only through contraction, in each world according to its measure. That is why there are changes, following the measure of the revelation.

Sovev kol almin, the light that encompasses all worlds, is different: it is the essence of the light itself, and in relation to G‑d’s essence nothing changes, as the verse says, “I, Havayah, have not changed” (Malachi 3:6). For Him above and below, physical and spiritual, are the same as they were before the world was created.

The analogy is the sun: screens can block its rays and hide its light, but they change nothing in the sun itself.

So too the essence of the Infinite Light, which fills heaven and earth (Jeremiah 23:24), undergoes no change or concealment at all: “darkness is as light” (Psalms 139:12), and everything is as nothing before Him. (The printed כלאר is a slip for כלא, “as nothing.”)

Change belongs only to the realm where the essential light was hidden and contracted and only a radiance is drawn down. That is the radiance that comes through the “leap,” the void and the empty space described in the first section.

In the Time to Come, when the light of sovev is revealed, even the physical body will rise at the Resurrection of the Dead. It will delight in the radiance of the Shechinah and live without eating and drinking, as the Sages describe the World to Come (Berachos 17a); the next part gives the reason.

Before the essence of the light nothing at all is hidden, so G‑d’s providence reaches every last detail. Three sources are brought: “By Havayah are a man’s steps established” (Psalms 37:23); the Talmud’s saying that a person does not bruise his finger below unless it is proclaimed over him above; and the verse in Daniel, “He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.”

Before His essence there is no above or below; everything is as nothing before Him. This is the meaning of Psalms 113:5–6: because He is “enthroned on high,” as sovev, beyond any relation to worlds, He “looks down low” upon the earth as upon the heavens, and there is no difference between them.

On this point the wicked Bilam was blinded. In its plain sense his phrase “the number of the rova of Israel” (Numbers 23:10) means a fourth part, one of the four camps of Israel; the Talmud (Niddah 31a) reads it as G‑d counting the marital unions of Israel, awaiting the drop from which a righteous person is formed, and says that Bilam thought it unfitting for the Holy and Pure One to look upon such a thing, and his eye was blinded.

His error was to think that creation comes only by a chain of descent and enclothing in the worlds. Then there would be a real distinction between above and below, and it would seem utterly remote that G‑d should come down so far as to watch over the details of the earth as He does the heavens; that is why those who share this error say, “His glory is above the heavens” (Psalms 113:4). Another transcript of this discourse (R. Pinchas’s) names them: the idol-worshippers, who say in their error, “Havayah is high above all nations.”

In truth, “where His greatness is, there is His humility,” as the Sages say (Megillah 31a): precisely because He is enthroned high above, He looks down low. For sovev, which is beyond the bounds of worlds altogether, there is no difference between above and below, all being truly as nothing; and so “beneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27), read here as His reach to what is lowest.

A new step: the light of sovev comes to shine within memalei through the study of Torah. The verse “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes” is applied to this.

¶10 Torah draws sovev into memalei; paragraphs 8–10 show what must come first.

The Mishnah is called “a queen,” that is, Malchus, and when a person studies and rules “pure” and so on, it is the Mishnah itself that speaks through his mouth. In the Mishnah the revelation of the Infinite Light shines constantly, for its rulings belong to the emotive attributes of Yetzirah, the world where the six extremities, Z’eir Anpin, “nest,” and there they shine openly and constantly.

The Infinite Light is revealed in Chochmah, the Torah comes from Chochmah, and the laws of the Mishnah, “kosher,” “permitted” and the rest, are “clarified through Chochmah,” which sorts the good from the evil. When a ruling declares a thing permitted to eat, the very essence of the revelation shines in it and the thing is thereby elevated; when it is forbidden, the opposite.

This sorting is what the verse means: “You shall distinguish between the pure animal and the impure” (Leviticus 20:25). In a Baraisa, a teaching of the Sages left outside the Mishnah, the light and revelation are slight and not constant, like a man who goes to his concubine only from time to time, while the queen, the Mishnah, is with him constantly.

The Mishnayos correspond to Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, the middle vessels of the body, Tiferes being the body itself. The Baraisos correspond to Netzach, Hod and Yesod, which are outside the body proper: outer vessels.

The very name Baraisa means “outside,” and these levels are enclothed even in Asiyah, the lowest world. That is why the Baraisos multiplied in the time of the exile, when “the feet reach the feet,” the lowest levels; the Zohar (Pekudei) links the Mishnah with the Second Temple while the Baraisos dwell outside, “between the thighs,” and in the exile Israel descends until it dwells “in the feet.” (The printed נה״ח is apparently a misprint for נה״י, Netzach, Hod and Yesod, named in the previous part.)

That is why the light in the Baraisos is slight. Originally, however, everything was contained in the Mishnah, as Ilfa claimed that he could resolve any question on the Baraisos of Rabbi Chiya and Rabbi Oshaya from the Mishnah (Taanis 21a). In Tanya, Iggeres HaKodesh 9, the Alter Rebbe likewise contrasts the days of the Tannaim and Amoraim, when Torah study was the main service, with the “footsteps of Mashiach,” when the Shechinah has come down to the level of the feet.

After the Mishnah, “the queen,” and the Baraisos, compared to concubines, come the “maidens” (alamos), the third group in the verse “Sixty are the queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number” (Song of Songs 6:8): these are the laws of the Babylonian Talmud, which grew through question and answer and through comparing one case with another. The Talmud is rooted in Beriah, where Imma, that is Binah, “nests” and G‑d’s Chochmah shines, and the word alamin is read as related to he’elem, concealment.

The phrase “Who forms light and creates darkness” (Isaiah 45:7, said daily in the morning blessings) is read as a statement about the worlds: “forms” (yotzer) points to Yetzirah and “creates” (borei) to Beriah, so that Yetzirah is called light and Beriah darkness. In the first discourse “Shechorah” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 5) the Alter Rebbe explains this darkness with a teacher and his student: Beriah is like the teacher’s thought, still darkness to the student, and Yetzirah like his speech, which is light to him.

The reason is that in Yetzirah, where the six emotive attributes of Atzilus “nest,” the attributes can come down and be enclothed, so that a recipient receives real kindness, in measured form, and feels its goodness. Though this bears no comparison to the Chesed of Atzilus itself, since in Yetzirah the attributes are finite, it is still called “light,” because what is received is received clearly.

G‑d’s Chochmah, however, cannot come so far down the chain. So whatever one grasps of it, one does not grasp it to its root and depth.

The intellect of Atzilus, its Chochmah, Binah and Daas, cannot be revealed in finite vessels. The phrase “wise, but not with a knowable wisdom” says that G‑d’s wisdom is beyond any wisdom that can be known.

So although Chochmah shines more brightly above, in Atzilus, when it comes down into finite Beriah it appears as darkness, “creates darkness.” Yetzirah, which holds only the emotive attributes, is called light, because the finite can receive those but cannot receive His Chochmah.

That is why the Babylonian Talmud is called “dark places” (Lamentations 3:6, as expounded in Sanhedrin 24a). The Talmud gives the reasons of the Mishnah, which are G‑d’s Chochmah, and these cannot be revealed in such a way that one grasps a reason fully, in its true foundation and root.

The same pattern appears in the tefillin. The hand-tefillin, in which the emotive attributes shine, are linked with “Who forms light,” and the head-tefillin, which correspond to the intellect, with “and creates darkness,” because the revelation of Chochmah comes in concealment.

Therefore Beriah, which receives from the intellect of Atzilus, is “darkness”: its revelation is like that of the speculum that does not shine, or a still deeper darkness and concealment. A further reference is given to the end of the discourse “Go forth and see,” on “the crown.”

This is also why the laws of the Talmud are called alamos: an almah, a maiden, is “a virgin, and no man had known her,” as the Torah says of Rivkah (Genesis 24:16). So too the “drop” of Chochmah does not shine within Beriah in open revelation.

Still, some radiance is revealed there, though not clearly; that is the sense of “creates darkness.” It is like seeing in the dark, where one’s own being is as nullified and nothing is seen well: whatever is seen is not seen clearly or in its true setting, nor taken in fully by the eye. A further reference is given to the verse “He looks in through the windows, He peers through the lattices” (Song of Songs 2:9).

The verse “In embroidered garments she is brought to the King; virgins behind her, her companions” (Psalms 45:15) is now read in these terms: the bride brought to the King is Malchus, and the virgins who follow her are the laws, the alamos.

The laws called alamos correspond to the seven chambers (heichalos) of Beriah, and they are the “virgins” (besulos) of the verse. They are so called because the radiance did not enter them openly; they received it only through the nullification of their own being.

Some radiance does shine there, but it cannot be revealed in a finite vessel. That is why the recipient’s being is nullified before it.

That is why they are “behind her, her companions”: they follow the queen, Malchus. When Malchus rises, “she is brought to the King,” the seven chambers rise with her, “brought to You” as a matter of course.

They rise along with her not because they received the light inwardly, for the light does not shine openly within the vessel, which cannot contain it, but because of the revelation that is there: so they are “brought to You” of themselves.

A third section begins (numbered 3). Drawing all of this down through Torah study requires a prior arousal from below, through the Shema and prayer: the eighteen blessings of the Amidah join the eighteen vertebrae of the spine, from head to feet, and this is brought about by the raising of mayin nukvin, the “feminine waters,” the soul’s upward striving, in the Shema.

The verse “One is she, my dove” (Song of Songs 6:9) describes this preparation: the soul must reach the level of achas, “one” in the feminine form. Achas stands for Nukva, the receiving feminine aspect, which receives from echad, “One,” that is, Z’eir Anpin.

When mayin nukvin are raised from below in this state of achas, then, in the words of the Zohar, “spirit brings spirit and draws down spirit”: the arousal below draws down a response from above. “My dove” recalls “your eyes are doves” (Song of Songs 4:1), and the next words say what the eyes do: they gaze at the glory of the King.

One reaches achas by gazing at the glory of the King, that is, by the contemplation in Pesukei deZimra, the Verses of Praise, whose opening blessing ends “praised and glorified forever and ever is His great Name.” The Alter Rebbe reads “forever and ever” as all the praises and glories, from the head of all levels without end, and all of them come only from “His great Name,” a mere radiance and glow of His essence.

So too the closing blessing of Pesukei deZimra, “May Your Name be praised forever,” says that the whole chain of descent, from the highest of heights, is only “Your Name.”

Lengthy contemplation in the Verses of Praise brings a person to the level of echad, the “One” of the Shema, and to “You shall love Havayah your G‑d … with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), a love without limit that is self-sacrifice. This is why we say “For the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah”: a unification must take place below as well, and it comes about through self-sacrifice.

“That which dwells (shochen) among the lower realms” is the Shechinah, whose name comes from the same root, “to dwell.” When a person raises mayin nukvin, the soul’s upward striving, without limit and “with all your might,” this arousal from below calls forth an arousal from above: the union of sovev, the light beyond the worlds, with memalei, the light within them.

Without this union sovev cannot be revealed within memalei, and Torah study cannot draw down the revelation of sovev, which is “holy and set apart,” beyond the bounds of any world. The Talmud’s saying that one who says “I have nothing but Torah” does not have even Torah (Yevamos 109b) is applied here: Torah study without the self-sacrifice of prayer cannot draw down this revelation.

Only when a person brings self-sacrifice without limit, a strength greater than the vessel can hold, does his Torah study draw down the revelation of sovev. The parenthesis sends the reader to the explanation, elsewhere in Likkutei Torah, of Zechariah’s vision of the golden menorah with its bowl on top (Zechariah 4:2).

¶6 This completes the point from paragraph 6: self-sacrifice in prayer lets Torah draw sovev.

That is why the formula speaks of uniting “the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah”: it is a union of mayin nukvin, rising from below, with mayin duchrin, the “masculine waters” that flow from above in response. The Talmud says the same of rain (Taanis 25b), and the Zohar quotes it in the form given here: no drop descends from above without two drops rising from below to meet it.

Prayer also accomplishes the refinement (birur) of the sparks held in kelipas nogah, the “glowing husk” in which good and evil are mixed and from which permitted things draw their life. The permitted food a person has eaten adds strength and life-force to him, and with that very strength he prays and says “Hear, O Israel” and “You shall love” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5).

When that strength is spent on the Shema, the sparks in the food are refined out of kelipas nogah, and achas, the receiving soul, is included in echad, the One. Contemplation in prayer makes the soul shine in the body, so that the body no longer hinders it.

The self-sacrifice itself comes from the G‑dly soul, which is capable of it because it is “the portion of Havayah” (Deuteronomy 32:9), truly, in the Talmudic idiom, “a son is the leg of his father.” The analogy is of a foot, which never resists the head; another transcript of this discourse (R. Pinchas’s) adds here the verse “My son, My firstborn, Israel.”

Wherever the head moves the foot, into cold or into heat, the foot simply yields and does it, because it is truly one with the head and its whole life-force is nullified to it. Its obedience comes from that unity, not from a decision of its own.

So it is with souls: each is a portion of G‑d and, as it were, “his father’s leg,” so every soul has within it the power for real self-sacrifice. What holds it back is only the intellectual soul of the animal side, the mind that belongs to a person’s animal nature.

Contemplation in prayer brings even this intellectual soul to consent “to be absorbed into the body of the King,” a phrase of the Zohar (1:217b). Its stance becomes that of the psalm: “Whom have I in heaven? And with You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalms 73:25).

Beyond consenting, the intellectual soul is then raised even higher, as in “a woman of valor is the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4), a point the text says is explained elsewhere. The same pattern of ascent links study and prayer: each day’s learning rises in that day’s prayer, and the prayer of the whole week rises in the prayer of Shabbos.

So “my dove,” the gazing at the glory of the King, brings about “my perfect one” (tamasi) (Song of Songs 6:9), wholeness and completeness in every level, which is the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah. And through the self-sacrifice described above, the union of sovev within memalei comes about and is revealed.

The verse continues, “One is she to her mother” (Song of Songs 6:9): when the soul is achas, included in the One, it rises to “her mother,” which is Binah, called “the mother of the children” (Psalms 113:9). To show why this is an ascent, the text recalls that the heavens were made “by the word of Havayah” (Psalms 33:6), and that in a person speech is drawn from thought.

The souls, by contrast, “arose in thought,” a level above the divine speech that made the world. So when a person’s soul reaches achas and the body too consents to self-sacrifice, the Holy One and His Shechinah are united, and the whole chain of descent ascends, and all its levels are raised to their source and root.

This is “pure (barah) is she to the one who bore her” (Song of Songs 6:9), where the one who bore her is Binah, the mother. Barah is read as birur, refinement: through Torah and prayer all the refinements are completed, and the refined sparks are included and rise to Binah, for they were drawn out of kelipas nogah when the person ate food whose root is in kelipas nogah.

With the strength of that food he prayed the Shema’s “One” and “You shall love.” The root of these sparks is known to be in the World of Tohu, the world of chaos that preceded our ordered world, whose vessels shattered so that its sparks fell below.

The verse “Man does not live by bread alone, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of Havayah does man live” (Deuteronomy 8:3) shows that what truly nourishes is the divine utterance within the food. That utterance in the food is higher in its root, coming as it does from Tohu.

So when a person prays with self-sacrifice using the strength of the food, everything is included and raised, and from this the revelation of sovev within memalei follows. This is the pattern described above: the raising of mayin nukvin from below and, in response, the drawing down of mayin duchrin from above.

The maamar closes on the order with which this section began: prayer, the raising of mayin nukvin, must come first, and then Torah study draws down the revelation of sovev within memalei. This is “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes” (Song of Songs 2:8), the verse whose next words, “leaping upon the mountains,” opened the maamar.