מה יפו פעמיך בנעלים כו׳

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 7:2, “How beautiful are your footsteps in shoes, O daughter of the noble one.” The Alter Rebbe begins with the Talmud’s reading of the verse, which appears in two places: at the end of the fourth chapter of Sukkah and in the first chapter of Chagigah.

The Talmud reads the verse as praise for the “footsteps” of the Jewish people when they went up to Jerusalem for the three pilgrimage festivals. The words fit: pe’amim means both “footsteps” and “times,” and regel, “foot,” is also the name of a pilgrimage festival, so the verse ties to the Torah’s command that every male “appear before” G‑d “three times” (shalosh pe’amim) a year.

¶12 The pilgrimage theme returns at the very end, in paragraph 12.

Since the Temple was destroyed, prayer takes the place of the offerings, so “appearing before G‑d” now happens in prayer. The difference is that in Temple times the Shechinah rested in a physical place, the Sanctuary, as the verse “And they shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them” says.

Because that indwelling was bound to a physical place, it was also divided into separate times: the three festivals. Each festival corresponds to one of the three Patriarchs, in the order listed: Pesach to Avraham, Shavuos to Yitzchak and Sukkos to Yaakov.

Prayer is the spiritual counterpart of the pilgrimage, so it has no division into separate times: every prayer contains all three Patriarchs together. The Talmud’s statement that the Patriarchs instituted the prayers is brought as support.

Some passages of the prayers express love, the attribute of Avraham; some express awe, the attribute of Yitzchak; and some express compassion, the attribute of Yaakov. The verse “You, Havayah, will not withhold Your compassion from me” is given as an example of the third kind.

The parenthesis sends the reader to a discourse in Parshas Pinchas on this theme; there the Alter Rebbe reads “to offer to Me in its due season” as prayer and matches Pesach, Shavuos and Sukkos with Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. He then quotes “to Yaakov, who redeemed Avraham” (the verse itself reads “to the house of Yaakov”), which he reads as compassion, Yaakov’s attribute, redeeming love, Avraham’s; the next parts explain how.

In the two blessings before the Shema (Yotzer Or and Ahavah Rabbah) we ask G‑d for compassion, and its object is the G‑dly spark within us, which has no love and awe. The cause of that lack is that we have not contemplated G‑d’s greatness.

Love and awe are “born” from Binah, the power of understanding and contemplation. So in the blessing before the Shema we ask, “Have compassion on us and put understanding into our hearts”: compassion (Yaakov) is asked for in order to awaken love (Avraham), and this is how “Yaakov redeemed Avraham.”

The contemplation meant here is on creation from nothing: the entire world came into being through what is, so to speak, a single divine utterance, as “By the word of Havayah the heavens were made” says. The next paragraph draws out what this implies.

The Mishnah in Avos says the world could have been created with a single divine utterance. The verse “From my flesh I behold G‑d” allows us to learn about G‑d from the human being: a single word a person speaks is as nothing compared with the soul that speaks it.

So too above: all the worlds, upper and lower, come from what is, so to speak, a single utterance of G‑d, and they are as nothing compared with His essence. This is the contemplation that gives birth to love and awe.

Lengthy contemplation gives birth first to love, Avraham’s attribute, and then to awe, Yitzchak’s, as the verse “Avraham begot Yitzchak” hints. The words “And we shall not be ashamed… forever and ever” come from the blessing before the Shema, right after we ask that our hearts be united to love and to fear G‑d.

The Alter Rebbe reads “forever and ever” as the future era, when G‑dliness will be openly revealed, as Isaiah says: “And the glory of Havayah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see together.”

When G‑dliness is revealed, there will be lasting shame over deeds done in this world as though it were a separate, self-standing existence. In truth G‑d does not change through creation, and even now nothing actually hides Him; the world only seems to stand on its own.

Words from the morning prayers say that G‑d is the same before and after creation, so the world never truly conceals Him; this is why the revelation will bring shame over having acted as though it did. The parenthesis sends the reader to the discourse “And behold, a menorah of gold” for more on this.

Section 2 opens with the Talmudic teaching that the angel Sandalphon, who stands behind the divine Chariot, “ties crowns for his Maker,” to which the text adds “from the prayers of Israel.” The rest of the section explains why this angel is the one who lifts the prayers.

The angel’s name contains the Gemara’s word for a shoe, sandal: the Aramaic translations render Scripture’s na’al, “shoe,” as “sandal,” so the sandal of the Gemara and the na’al of Scripture are one thing. A shoe covers most of the foot, and this is Sandalphon’s role; the prayers from which he makes crowns are, specifically, the Shemoneh Esreh.

Every request in the Shemoneh Esreh, for knowledge, for redemption, for healing, asks G‑d to change what His will has so far decreed. Such a change must come from a level of will higher than the Torah, since the Torah “comes forth from Chochmah,” G‑d’s wisdom, and the will we appeal to stands above that wisdom.

The worlds are governed by the Torah’s rules, among them the Talmudic principle that suffering comes only because of sin. So the world as it is follows the Torah’s own judgment.

The long exile, too, accords with the Torah’s judgment. So when we pray for a change, we ask that it come from above the will expressed in the Torah, which itself comes forth from Chochmah. (The printed מקשים and הרצחן are evidently misprints for מבקשים, “we ask,” and הרצון, “the will.”)

The request is that the change be drawn from the “Master of the will,” G‑d Himself, who stands above every particular expression of His will. In Likkutei Torah, Rosh Hashanah (“Blow the shofar on the New Moon”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the Supreme Will has two levels: one clothed in Chochmah and drawn down through the Torah and mitzvos, and one far above the chain of descent, revealed through teshuvah from the depths of the heart.

Before the Shemoneh Esreh comes the Shema, and the law requires that “redemption,” the blessing after the Shema, be joined directly to the prayer. The Alter Rebbe identifies this with the self-sacrifice of the Shema, the love “with all your heart and with all your soul,” which must come first.

In “Hear, O Israel,” the word “hear” means to understand and contemplate that G‑d is One, with a simple, absolute oneness.

The contemplation is the one described in section 1: all the worlds come from a single utterance and are as nothing before G‑d’s being and essence.

Dwelling on this deeply and at length (the printed באכיכות is evidently באריכות, “at length”) brings the soul to long for G‑d until it “expires,” in the words of Psalms 84:3, wishing to be absorbed in His essence. The verse “Whom have I in heaven? And with You I desire nothing on earth” expresses this longing.

The Alter Rebbe reads “with You” as everything that accompanies G‑d, even the highest spiritual lights: the soul wants none of them, only G‑d’s essence itself. In Likkutei Torah, Nitzavim (“For the thing is near to you”), he explains that self-sacrifice reaches G‑d’s very being, above His Name and radiance.

This longing is given a vessel through “And these words which I command you,” that is, through binding one’s thought and speech to the Torah, so that G‑d’s own word speaks through the person. “I have put My words in your mouth” and “These and those are the words of the living G‑d” both say that the words of Torah a person speaks are G‑d’s word.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse “For on this day He shall atone” (Likkutei Torah, Acharei), which explains that “These and those are the words of the living G‑d” means that what Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel say is not their own words but G‑d’s word in their mouths. The second section of the Shema promises “you shall gather in your grain,” and the Alter Rebbe identifies this with the act of charity given from what one earns.

The self-sacrifice of the Shema reaches higher than the Torah, as Chassidus explains in several places. The Talmud hints at this in “There is one who acquires his world in a single hour,” said of a man who earned the World to Come in one moment by giving his life; and the Alter Rebbe hears in sha’ah, “hour,” the word vayisha, “and He turned to,” used of G‑d turning to Hevel’s offering, suggesting a single turning of the whole self toward G‑d.

Through this self-sacrifice we can afterwards ask, in the Shemoneh Esreh, for a change of will above the level of Torah. The parenthesis refers to the discourse on “One is she, my dove, my perfect one,” where the Sages’ reading of tamasi, “my perfect one,” as teumasi, “my twin,” is explained.

A difficulty: our thoughts and words in prayer are physical, so how can they reach the divine will at the level of Keser, the Crown above wisdom? The answer is the angel Sandalphon, who receives the prayers, strips them of their physical form and raises them as spiritual “crowns.”

To understand why the angel is called “sandal” and “shoe,” one must first understand how the worlds descend and come into being from nothing. The order of that descent is shaped by G‑d’s attributes, the middos.

The days of creation follow the attributes: on the first day, “Let there be light,” the light of supernal Chesed, kindness; on the second, “Let there be a firmament,” and so on with each attribute in turn.

Yet Chesed on its own could not produce finite beings that feel separate: whatever flows from it stays wholly nullified in its source, like sunlight that is still within the sun. Something more is needed for a world that feels like an entity of its own.

A separate “something” comes from Malchus, sovereignty, because a king needs a people distinct from himself (“there is no king without a people,” a saying the Kehot note traces to Rabbeinu Bachya). Malchus is the Name Elokim, which is like a sheath around the sun, covering and concealing the Name Havayah so that creatures can exist: in “a sun and a shield is Havayah Elokim,” Havayah is the sun and Elokim the shield that screens it.

Creation happens through G‑d’s command, “He commanded and they were created,” and a king’s word carries authority. The parenthesis refers to two further discourses on this.

Even from Malchus the world would still have spread without limit. Measured limits, like the Talmud’s “journey of five hundred years” from the earth to the firmament, come about through the angel Sandalphon, who is the “shoe” covering the “foot,” Malchus.

The earth, G‑d’s “footstool,” stands for the lowest level, Malchus. Sandalphon covers Malchus as a shoe covers the foot, so that what comes from it is limited and measured.

This happens through the angels: they have a defined existence, yet they are wholly nullified to G‑d and never feel separate from Him, as “the host of heaven bow down to You” says. So they can carry the divine light into limited forms without severing it from its source.

Because he is the “shoe” at the very bottom, Sandalphon has great power to raise crowns to the very top. The lowest point is bound to the highest: “their beginning is wedged in their end” (Sefer Yetzirah), and what comes “last in deed” was “first in thought” (words of the hymn Lecha Dodi), in G‑d’s primordial thought, “I will reign,” the Malchus of the Infinite One, His will to be King.

A King needs a “people” that exists and yet is nullified to Him, so the main purpose of creation is a yesh, a created being, that is nullified to G‑d; this is why the “shoe” at the bottom reaches the top. In Likkutei Torah, Shabbos Shuvah, the Alter Rebbe reads “For forgiveness is with You, so that You may be feared” of Yom Kippur: its forgiveness draws down the thirteen attributes of mercy so that awe of G‑d is revealed.

Section 3 applies the idea of the “shoe” to the human soul. The souls are called the “foot”: the name Yaakov is read as yud–akev, a yud and an akev, “heel,” and all Israel, G‑d’s “children,” are, in the Talmud’s phrase, their father’s “leg.” The animal soul is the shoe that clothes this foot.

The animal soul comes from the “dregs” of the ofanim, the angels called “wheels” in the lower part of the divine Chariot. In the vision of the Chariot, the lion’s face stands for love and the ox’s face for awe, and these creatures carry the Throne.

The Talmud says that a river of fire comes forth “from the sweat of the chayos,” the angels called “living creatures.” The chayos cannot contain the intensity of the love and fear that flow into them, so they “tremble” (za’os), and this yields “sweat” (ze’ah), a waste product that leaves them as sweat leaves the body through the pores.

Below, from the “skin” itself, the outer layer of the chayos’ awe and love, which the text calls “letters,” comes the animal soul. On the way down, through the descending chain and through nogah, the realm where good and evil are mixed, it becomes the animal soul with its natural traits.

Natural traits differ from person to person: one is drawn by nature to honor, another to money. In origin they are all the outer “skin” of the angels’ love and awe, lowered into natural desires.

The analogy is an animal: its flesh, sinews and bones are its inner part, and the hide covers it from outside. The animal soul is likewise the “hide,” the outer layer of the person.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse on “My offering, My bread” in Parshas Pinchas, which discusses the skin; there the Alter Rebbe likens the letters of the prayers, such as “Who heals the sick,” to the hairs of wool that grow from the skin. The analogy continues: from an animal’s hide one makes shoes.

So too the animal soul, drawn from the outer layer of the ofanim, becomes a shoe through iskafya, subduing it, and is’hapcha, transforming it, which happen through the self-sacrifice of the Shema. The Mishnah reads “with all your heart” as “with both your inclinations,” the good and the evil, so even the animal soul is enlisted in loving G‑d.

Walking is done mainly by the feet, and they carry the head along to where it wants to go: the lowest part brings the highest to its goal. In Torah Ohr, Bereishis (on “And the earth is My footstool”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the Congregation of Israel is called the “foot” because the feet walk and carry the head, which depends on them; Iggeres HaKodesh, letter 1, says the same of the loins, which carry the whole body.

So too with the animal soul: once it is subdued and transformed in the Shema, it becomes the “shoe” that carries the whole person. This is the principle “last in deed, first in thought.”

The purpose of creation is that G‑d have a dwelling place in the lowest realm, so raising the lowest part of the person, the animal soul, fulfils G‑d’s first intention. That is what enables us, in the Shemoneh Esreh, to ask for a change of will from Keser, above the Torah.

The order of the morning prayer climbs through the worlds. The morning blessings and the passage of the incense belong to Asiyah, the lowest world; then come “Blessed is He who spoke” and the Verses of Praise, which, as the next parts say, belong to Yetzirah.

“Halleluyah” is read as hallelu, from behilo, “when His lamp shone,” and Kah, whose two letters stand for Chochmah and Binah: the Verses of Praise make the light of the mind shine. This removes the “dullness” of mind and heart that keeps a person from feeling what he understands.

The mind is lit by contemplating that all the worlds are only a “remembrance” of G‑d’s abundant goodness, and that His “mighty acts” are the contractions that make them possible; both phrases come from the psalm “A praise of David,” at the heart of the Verses of Praise. Compared with His essence the worlds are as nothing, and He is “Unique One, Life of the worlds, King,” words from the blessings of the Verses of Praise. (The printed word מצלך, which has no meaning, is evidently מלך, melech, “King.”)

All of this, from “Blessed is He who spoke” until the blessing Yotzer Or, “Who forms light,” is the prayer of Yetzirah, the World of Formation, the world of the angels and the emotions.

The blessing Yotzer Or before the Shema belongs to Beriah: it describes the ofanim and chayos rising “with a roar” and declares that G‑d alone is exalted and holy. (The printed יוצא אור, “goes out light,” is יוצר אור, Yotzer Or, “Who forms light.”) After it comes the Shema itself, “with all your heart.”

The Shemoneh Esreh, said in a whisper (the printed בלח ש is בלחש), belongs to Atzilus, the highest world. On Shabbos all the weekday prayers rise, because Shabbos is when the worlds ascend: the Shabbos offering is an olah, literally a “going up,” and on Shabbos G‑d “rested” from the work of creation.

Since even the “shoe,” the animal soul, is elevated on Shabbos, wearing shoes is permitted on Shabbos and festivals, in contrast to Yom Kippur.

For the same reason it is a mitzvah to eat and take pleasure on Shabbos, since the animal soul shares in the ascent. In Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (“Go forth and gaze”), the Alter Rebbe explains that “I was young and have also grown old” is said of the angel Metatron, who clothes the light drawn down in the six weekdays and is therefore called “the shoe of the Shechinah.”

On Yom Kippur, when eating and drinking are forbidden, wearing shoes is forbidden too. The Alter Rebbe adds that only leather shoes are forbidden, while wool is allowed, because leather is a coarse garment that stands further outside the body than ordinary clothing, which becomes part of the body.

When the animal soul rises on Shabbos through the subduing and transforming done in the weekday prayers, the verse says, “How beautiful are your footsteps in shoes”: the shoes themselves are beautiful. Indeed the main beauty is in them, because what is last in deed was first in thought.

Raising the lowest level is the purpose of creation. But the power to give up one’s soul at the word “One” in the Shema does not come from a person alone: it comes from a radiance of supernal Chesed, kindness, drawn down from above.

This is “daughter of the noble one”: Avraham is called nadiv, which also means “generous,” for his generosity in giving his bread even to Arabs (the Talmud says he took his three angelic guests for Arab wayfarers); and above, his attribute is the supernal Chesed that shines down every morning. The verse “And Avraham rose early in the morning” is read as this kindness arriving each morning so that we can pray.

All beginnings are hard, and the morning prayer is a beginning that comes right after sleep, which the Talmud calls “one sixtieth of death.” The strength to begin comes from the Chesed that shines from above.

Section 4 explains the second half of the verse. The Torah is called the “body,” and the thighs, which are “outside the body,” stand for the act of charity.

Charity involves physical effort: one goes on one’s own feet to do business and then gives the poor what one earned through that toil. This is why it belongs to the legs; the parenthesis refers to a discourse on “With the lawgiver, with their staffs.”

The leg has three segments, and the uppermost, the thigh, is the hidden one (the Kehot note refers to the Zohar, 1:241a, on this). So too the finest form of charity is “a gift in secret” (Proverbs 21:14).

The Talmud in Moed Katan records that Rabbi Chiya applied “the curves of your thighs” to charity and acts of kindness, and Rashi in Sukkah explains chamukei as “the hidden parts.” So the verse speaks of charity given in secret.

Chala’im are ornaments a woman wears on her head, as in “an ornament of fine gold.” The Mishnah calls such head ornaments totefes, a frontlet, and sarbitin, pendants that hang from it.

So charity done below becomes an ornament and a crown on the “head” above. This is the verse “He donned tzedakah as a coat of mail, and a helmet of salvation on His head”: charity becomes a helmet upon the head.

The parenthesis sends the reader to Iggeres HaKodesh, to a Torah Ohr discourse for Chanukah and to the Zohar on Pekudei, which speaks of a hidden light that shines from above “in the mystery of ‘the curves of your thighs.’” In Torah Ohr, Vayeishev, the Alter Rebbe explains that charity, in which a person gives the life of his soul from his toil, draws down from above the inner dimension of the Infinite Light itself.

The Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, explains there that this is the drawing down of the “370 lights,” their source and root, a Kabbalistic term for lights of a very high level.

That light is drawn down in response to what “takes below,” the mayin nukvin, the “feminine waters,” raised by doing the mitzvos. Above, the Song of Songs says of the Beloved, “His head is the finest gold, his locks are curled.”

The ornaments of the head above are the Written and Oral Torah, a “man’s ornaments,” given from above. Charity done below makes “a woman’s ornaments,” and this is “the work of the hands of a craftsman.”

A craftsman refines precious metal out of dust and earth and makes jewelry of it. So too a person refines his earnings, gained through toil and business, into an ornament through charity.

When one gives what one earned to the poor, “to revive the spirit of the lowly,” the physical money is refined and purified and becomes the “woman’s ornament.”

An ornament exists only for beauty, and through this beauty love is drawn from above, and the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah comes about.

The Talmud teaches that one who says he has nothing but Torah does not even have Torah. Without deeds a person has no real connection to the Torah, so he cannot draw down the Torah, the higher Chochmah, and make it “the words of the living G‑d” (Elokim chayim).

“Words of the living G‑d” means that Elokim, the Name of contraction, is filled with spiritual life from the Infinite One, the Life of all life. That is what drawing down the Torah means.

This happens through charity: the arousal from below, reviving the lowly, brings an arousal from above that draws the Torah down. So the deed of charity is what lets the Torah come into a person.

The verse “My tongue shall respond with Your word, for all Your commandments are tzedek” sums this up. “Respond” is read as in the Mishnah in the third chapter of Sukkah, “he responds after them what they say”: repeating word for word what the reader says.

This “responding” is the drawing down of the Torah from above to below, called the “620 pillars of light,” pillars that join above and below. It comes about through “for all Your commandments are tzedek.”

The practical mitzvos are all called tzedakah, as the verse “And it shall be tzedakah for us if we take care to do” all the commandments shows.

The parenthesis refers to the discourse “Go forth and gaze” in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim, where the Alter Rebbe explains “the crown with which his mother crowned him” as G‑d’s will, which He clothes in the Torah and mitzvos as an act of kindness and tzedakah; this is why all the mitzvos are called tzedakah.

The Sages also read “the curves of your thighs” as speaking of the Torah: as the thigh is hidden, so words of Torah should be studied privately. The teaching is in Sukkah 49b, at the end of the fourth chapter of Sukkah, the passage cited at the start of the maamar; “Sotah” in the printed text appears to be a slip.

The Torah, too, comes down into physical matters, such as the laws of seeds and produce.

The parenthesis asks how the Torah can be “thighs” when it was called the “body” above, and answers from the Zohar on Pekudei: the Mishnah corresponds to the “body,” Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, while a Baraisa, a teaching of the Tannaim outside the Mishnah, is “outside the body,” Netzach, Hod and Yesod. Yet the Baraisos are the uppermost segment of those three, the hidden “thighs,” as the Mikdash Melech explains there.

So the Torah’s hidden “thighs” are the Baraisos, and this too is “the curves of your thighs.” The text cites three discourses that develop this.

Rashi explains “the work of the hands of a craftsman” as the Torah, the craftsmanship of the Holy One, blessed be He. The Zohar on Terumah, which the text cites, says that G‑d looked into the Torah, His “craftsman,” and created the world.

There are two kinds of “shoes,” two ways in which the animal soul is raised. The first is through doing all the mitzvos, with charity, which is equal to all of them; it comes from the camp of Gavriel in the Chariot, awe and fear. (The printed [על is evidently נעל, “shoe.”)

¶12 Two shoes: the second, joy in a mitzvah, comes in paragraph 12.

The second “shoe” is the joy of a mitzvah, which also belongs to the animal soul. Joy is felt in the heart, and the heart is where the animal soul dwells, as the verse “with joy and with gladness of heart” suggests.

¶11 This is the second shoe promised in paragraph 11.

The blood is the seat of the animal soul, and, as the natural science of the time held, sadness comes from murky blood in the heart and joy from clear blood. The joy of a mitzvah comes through the blessing “Who (asher) has sanctified us with His commandments,” since asher is read as osher, “bliss,” a word for the supreme delight.

All the mitzvos must be done with joy, as the Torah rebukes those who did not serve “with joy and with gladness of heart.” Of charity in particular it says, “Let your heart not be grieved when you give to him.”

This joy is the second shoe, drawn from the camp of Michael, the level of love, while the first shoe came from the camp of Gavriel, awe.

Zohar HaRakia, a commentary on the Zohar, writes there that the shoes are the angels Metatron and Sandalphon, who are enclothed in kelipas nogah, the realm where good and evil are mixed, in order to govern the world on weekdays. On Shabbos they rise, and kelipas nogah itself is refined and rises with them.