מי יתנך כאח לי יונק שדי אמי כו׳

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 8:1, where the bride longs for her beloved to be “as a brother” to her. “Who will make you” (literally “who will give you”) is the Hebrew idiom for “if only”; later the maamar reads the “Who” (Mi) itself as a level of G‑dliness. The Alter Rebbe reads the verse as the plea of the Jewish people, the Congregation of Israel, to G‑d during the exile, when the Holy Temple is not standing.

In Psalms 122 the singer prays for Jerusalem “for the sake of my brothers and my friends”; the Alter Rebbe reads these as G‑d’s brothers and friends, a name Israel bear. The next verse adds “for the sake of the house of our G‑d,” so the two verses together tie this closeness to G‑d’s House.

Since Israel are called G‑d’s brothers in connection with the Temple, the title belongs to the time when the Temple stands. Now, in exile, the Congregation of Israel asks for that closeness to return: “Who will make you as a brother to me.”

There are two kinds of servants of G‑d: tzaddikim, the righteous, who have kept to the right path, and baalei teshuvah, who return to G‑d after having been distant. One saying of the Sages (Berachos 34b) seems to rank the baal teshuvah higher: where baalei teshuvah stand, even perfect tzaddikim cannot stand.

¶4 Two rungs, tzaddikim and baalei teshuvah: paragraph 4 joins them together.

Elsewhere the Sages praise tzaddikim highly: G‑d “took counsel” with the souls of the tzaddikim before creating the world, and baalei teshuvah are not mentioned, though by the first saying they would seem to be higher. Isaiah, too, praises the whole people by calling them “all tzaddikim.” In Likkutei Torah, at the start of Parshas Devarim, the Alter Rebbe brings these two sayings together: the souls come from G‑d’s thought and preceded creation, and their descent into a body is for the sake of an ascent.

The Alter Rebbe begins with the tzaddik. G‑d says of Avraham’s descendants that they will “keep the way of Havayah, to do tzedakah”; in the verse tzedakah is righteousness, and the maamar reads it as charity, the tzaddik’s service of giving G‑dliness to what is below. To explain “the way” and “tzedakah” he first recalls the purpose of creation: that G‑d have a dwelling place among the lower realms.

Before creation only “He and His Name” existed: G‑d was One, with nothing beside Him. The dwelling below means that this same Oneness be drawn down and revealed in the lower world just as it is above.

A road joins one city to another. So “the way of Havayah” is the path by which the light of the Name Havayah travels down and is revealed even in Asiyah, the lowest, “dark” world. In Torah Ohr, Beshalach, the Alter Rebbe likewise describes the daily renewal of creation through memalei kol almin as a “way” of descent, from cause to effect, down to physical heaven and earth.

Charity passes from one who has to one who lacks, and Scripture calls it reviving “the spirit of the lowly.” In the same way, drawing the Name Havayah down into the dark world is a divine “charity,” giving life and light to what is low.

Since every mitzvah draws G‑dliness down from above, all the mitzvos can be called tzedakah; in Nehemiah the people call their pledge to give money for the Temple service “mitzvos.” The 620 mitzvos (the Torah’s 613 and the Sages’ seven) are described as 620 pillars of light, each a channel of light from above. In Likkutei Torah, Ki Seitzei, the Alter Rebbe calls tzedakah the general and collective expression of all the mitzvos: as charity revives the spirit of the lowly, the mitzvos draw the light of Ein Sof down into the low, physical world.

Two more references close the bracket. In the discourse on Shemini Atzeres (Likkutei Torah, Sukkos), “the rock of my heart” is the strength to stay in the body and make G‑d a dwelling below, so that Havayah be “your Elokim.” In the Zohar in Vayishlach (175b), Rabbi Yehudah opens with “For the ways of Havayah are straight”: all of G‑d’s ways are straight, and the righteous, who study Torah, know them and walk in them.

The main text resumes with Psalms 104:24, “How many are Your works, Havayah! You have made them all with wisdom.” “How many” (mah rabu) is read through its root as ribo revavos, “myriads upon myriads”: the countless worlds of the chain of descent, some within our grasp and some beyond it. The Idra, the Zohar’s account of Rabbi Shimon’s great assemblies, describes this multitude; the Kehot note points to the Idra Rabba and the Idra Zuta in Zohar III.

Yet all of them count only as “making” (asiyah), the lowest kind of activity. This holds even for the hidden worlds, called pele, “wonder,” and described with the word amun of Proverbs 8:30 (“I was with Him as amun”), which the Midrash at the opening of Bereishis Rabbah reads as “covered” and “hidden.” Scripture still calls them “made”: G‑d “makes wonder” and “makes wonders.”

The question is why spiritual worlds should be compared to “making,” which in a person is a physical act, and how “making” can apply to them at all.

The answer is an analogy. In a person, physical action has no connection with the mind: the acting hand holds nothing of the intellect itself, only a faint radiance of it, which reaches it through several layers of “clothing.” The parallel version printed in Sefer HaMaamarim 5565, as the Kehot note quotes it, gives the example of handwriting: the hand writes by the power of the vital soul, with only a glimmer of a glimmer of the mind in it, though the way it writes follows the mind.

The bracket points to two discourses. In “Who has counted” (Likkutei Torah, Balak), “I created him, I formed him, I also made him” are thought, speech and action, and “also” marks action as a thing apart, not related to thought as speech is; the other is “In the third month” (Torah Ohr, Yisro). So too above, all the worlds hold only “the power of the Maker within the made,” a mere power, not G‑d’s essence.

This is why the verse says “You have made” in particular. The power clothed within the worlds, which gives them life, is called memalei kol almin, “the light that fills all worlds”; the Maker’s own essence is sovev kol almin, “the light that encompasses all worlds,” which does not enter the worlds in revealed form.

Like a circle, which has no top or bottom, before G‑d’s essence the higher and lower realms are equal, as the Psalm says that before Him “darkness is as light.” In Likkutei Torah, Tzav, the Alter Rebbe notes the verse’s two kafs, “as darkness, as light”: not only is darkness like light before Him, but light is like darkness, for every light is dark before Him.

Two statements express this. The question “Where is the place of His glory?” says that even the highest beings cannot grasp Him, while “the whole earth is full of His glory” says He is present below; both are true because before Him there is no difference between high and low.

If G‑d is equally present everywhere, what does a “dwelling place among the lower realms” add? It means that He be One below as He is above.

That is, He should reign below as in “Your kingship is the kingship of all worlds,” a kingship His subjects accept willingly. Kingship (Malchus) rests on willing acceptance; “dominion” is rule imposed whether the subjects want it or not. The dwelling below means that the lower world, too, accept G‑d’s kingship willingly, and not only be ruled by Him.

Willing acceptance means bittul, self-nullification, the opposite of the arrogant person of whom G‑d says, “I and he cannot dwell [together].” The Infinite One rests in Chochmah because Chochmah (chaf, ches, mem, hei) is, in the same letters, koach mah, “the power of ‘what’,” a state of self-nullification.

The drawing-forth through the mitzvos is called “the way of Havayah” because every mitzvah is clothed in three garments: thought, speech and action. Through them the light reaches the lowest level, as the next paragraph explains.

Through the tzaddik’s mitzvos G‑dliness is drawn down level by level: G‑d’s thought is clothed in the person’s thought, His speech in the person’s speech, His action in the person’s action, “with all your soul,” that is, as a version quoted in Sefer HaMaamarim 5635 adds, with all the powers of the soul. In Likkutei Torah, Emor, the love “with all your soul” is likewise a drawing from above that binds a person’s thought, speech and action to G‑d’s wisdom in the Torah and His will in the mitzvos.

This seems to clash with Isaiah’s verse, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” The Alter Rebbe answers from the end of the same verse, “nor are your ways My ways,” reading the two halves as condition and result: G‑d’s thoughts are beyond ours only when our ways are not His ways.

When a person’s ways are G‑d’s ways, G‑d’s thoughts can be clothed in his thoughts as well. Walking in “the way of Havayah” means Torah study for its own sake, and that requires prayer first.

Thought and speech go together, since one cannot speak without thinking. So when G‑d’s words are placed in a person’s mouth through Torah study, His speech clothed in the person’s speech, His thought comes to be clothed in the person’s thought as a matter of course.

The main text takes up the next words, “who nursed at my mother’s breasts,” through an analogy. A nursing child grows more in its twenty-four months of nursing than in any later two years; that growth bears no proportion to its growth in the rest of its life.

So too the revelation of Havayah below is a great “growth”: the level of which the Tikkunei Zohar says “no thought can grasp Him,” the most hidden of all, comes to be revealed below, until “My thoughts are your thoughts.”

The bracket refers to the Zohar in Haazinu (the Idra Zuta) on “my breasts are like towers”: the breasts are full, to nurse all, and the towers are great rivers that flow from Imma Ila’ah, the supernal mother. The Alter Rebbe then reads Mi, “Who,” in “Who will make you” as the name of a level of G‑dliness: it is the level of “Mi” that brings all this about.

“My mother” stands for “a joyful mother of children” (Psalms 113:9), the level of joy. Joy adds no new life-force; it releases and spreads the life-force that was contracted before.

The next words, “I would give you spiced wine to drink,” fit this: wine, like joy, brings out what was hidden, as the Sages say, “wine entered, the secret came out,” for yayin (wine) and sod (secret) both have the numerical value seventy. Here the secret that comes out is the revelation of G‑dliness. The same Hebrew word, ashkecha, means “I would kiss you” in the opening verse and “I would give you to drink” here.

In Proverbs the Torah, speaking as wisdom, says, “I was [His] delights day by day, playing before Him … and my delights are with the children of men.” The plural “delights” is read as two delights, one before G‑d above and one with people below, and through this joy G‑dliness is revealed below.

The verse goes on: “I would lead you, I would bring you into my mother’s house; you would teach me.” First the light is drawn into Imma, which is Binah, and from there down, to make the dwelling below. That is why the verse speaks of teaching: “my mother” is the Written Torah, and “you would teach me” is the Oral Torah, which teaches and spells out what the Written Torah holds.

All of this describes the tzaddik, who is called G‑d’s “brother.” His whole service goes from above to below: drawing G‑dliness down into the world.

The maamar’s second section begins. The second kind of servant is the baal teshuvah, and to him belong the next words of the verse: “I would find you outside, I would kiss you; moreover, they would not scorn me.”

Teshuvah here does not refer only to one who has sinned. It includes anyone who is separate from G‑d and lacks fervor.

Businesspeople, who give Torah only fixed times, are the example: when one turns from worldly affairs to study, that turning is itself teshuvah, a return.

Because he comes from worldly involvement, his return stirs him more strongly than if he had never been away. The distance is what gives the stirring its intensity.

The Alter Rebbe contrasts the angels, of whom the morning blessing (Yotzer) says that they “all stand in the heights of the world.” The bracket refers to the discourse “Many waters” (Torah Ohr, Noach), where the toil of earning a living is “the waters of Noach,” which raise the soul higher than before, and where businesspeople are told they are wrong to think they cannot pray as well as those who sit and study: the advantage of light comes from the darkness.

“Standing” means remaining at one level, because the angels are always in bittul. Since they never become something else, they cannot be stirred, for being stirred is a change in one’s state.

A person in business is different: he changes from someone occupied with worldly matters into someone who studies Torah. That change in his state is what makes his stirring possible.

The baal teshuvah’s stirring is felt only in the vital soul, the soul that animates the body, yet it reaches very high. The reason is that it subdues the sitra achra, the “other side” opposed to holiness.

By subduing the sitra achra a person arouses G‑dliness from the very level to which it had withdrawn. The words are the Zohar’s (2:128b): when one brings the wicked back and the sitra achra is subdued, istalak, “the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, is raised up”; the Alter Rebbe reads the same word also as “withdrew,” the glory that had gone far above.

That is, from the level to which G‑dliness withdrew in exile, as in the Zohar (3:20b): the Holy One “ascended higher and higher,” as in “Why, Havayah, do You stand far off?”, and from that far place comes “Behold, I will save you from afar.” The Alter Rebbe explains this as the revelation withdrawing into G‑d’s very Being and Essence, and says that from that very level the revelation will be drawn down below.

Micah promises wonders “as in the days of your going out of Egypt,” and at the Giving of the Torah G‑d spoke “face to face”: G‑dliness revealed below at the level of “face.”

Before that revelation there first had to be the hiding of the Face, the 210 years of exile in Egypt, so that the face-to-face revelation could follow. The Hebrew writes 210 as רד״ו, the word redu, “go down,” with which Yaakov sent his sons to Egypt (Rashi on Genesis 42:2, as the Kehot note cites); the bracket refers to the end of the discourse on “And Elokim spoke … I am Havayah” (Torah Ohr, Va’eira).

The destruction of the First and Second Temples follows the same pattern: G‑d withdrew higher and higher into concealment. The purpose of hiding the Face is to bring about a great stirring upward.

It is like a father who hides from his son: when the father hides, the son cries out to reach him. That longing is what the father wants, and it is why he hides.

So too, the hiding of the Face makes a person’s Torah study and prayer far more intense. That intensity subdues the sitra achra and draws revelation down from the level that had withdrawn.

This explains “I would find you outside, I would kiss you”: “outside” is the baal teshuvah, who comes from a place far from holiness. The bracket points to the Zohar on “born outside,” which it reads as coming from the side of Imma, from the place of Z’eir Anpin, and on “Wisdoms cry aloud outside,” where supernal Chochmah is “the hidden of all hidden”; and to the discourse on “When you raise up the lamps,” where Aharon is told, “Yours is greater than theirs.”

Through this comes “I would kiss you”: kisses are “the cleaving of spirit to spirit,” as the Zohar in Vayeshev also reads this verse. In the blessing “Blessed are You, Havayah,” this is the drawing-forth from the level called “Blessed” into open revelation, “You,” G‑d addressed face to face. Tanya, chapter 45, uses the same image of kisses for binding one’s speech and thought to the word of G‑d in Torah study.

Yet the verse asks for both at once: “Who will make you as a brother,” the tzaddik, together with “I would find you outside,” the baal teshuvah. This joining is what the Zohar means in saying that Mashiach will bring even the tzaddikim to teshuvah.

¶2 This answers the two rungs raised in paragraph 2: both at once.

The Sages advise that a person spend “all his days in teshuvah” (Shabbos 153a), and this applies to the tzaddik as well. The bracket refers to the discourse on the second day of Yom Tov (Likkutei Torah, Shemini Atzeres), which says that the virtue of Mashiach is to bring the tzaddikim to teshuvah, so that the level of teshuvah is revealed in perfect tzaddikim.

A tzaddik’s teshuvah is for not having had enough bittul, for example in his prayer. The bracket refers to “the third teshuvah” in the discourse “How goodly” (Likkutei Torah, Balak), the teshuvah of the soul’s higher level, in which it returns to be included in its root; and to the discourse “Return, O Israel” (Likkutei Torah, Shabbos Shuvah), where Yaakov’s vow, “If Elokim will be with me … then Havayah will be G‑d to me,” describes reaching a bittul in the Infinite Light so great that Havayah itself is reckoned as Elokim.

When he now reaches true bittul, that is his teshuvah. Then “all judgments are removed” from him, the external forces have no hold, and the end of the verse is fulfilled: “moreover, they would not scorn me.”

The Sages say (Sanhedrin 97b) that when Israel do teshuvah they are redeemed. The reason is that the concealment of exile comes chiefly from G‑d’s withdrawing above; teshuvah arouses revelation below, and the redemption follows of itself.

In the words “teshuvah, prayer and tzedakah,” from the High Holiday prayer Unesaneh Tokef, teshuvah is the service of the baal teshuvah and tzedakah that of the tzaddik (as paragraph 2 explained); together they achieve what neither achieves alone.