שימני כחותם על לבך כו׳

The maamar opens with Song of Songs 8:6, where the bride, the Congregation of Israel, asks her beloved, G‑d: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.” The Alter Rebbe identifies the two seals with the two tefillin: the tefillin of the head, whose straps hang down over the heart, and the tefillin of the hand, worn on the arm. The Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkun 22), the first source the parenthesis names, reads the verse the same way: who would set a seal on the heart? It is the tefillin, whose straps hang over the heart.

¶7 Why the head-tefillin straps over the heart: paragraph 7 explains.

The request is that Israel herself be the content of the seal, what is engraved on it. The Talmud says that G‑d’s own ‘tefillin’ contain verses in praise of Israel, just as our tefillin contain verses about Him; so Israel asks to be what is written in G‑d’s seal.

¶9 What G‑d's tefillin and seal are: paragraph 9 explains.

To explain what a ‘seal’ means here, the Alter Rebbe turns to a signet pressed into wax. The signet leaves a second seal, its own image, in the wax.

What is cut into the signet comes out standing up in the wax, and what stands out on the signet comes out cut into the wax. These two forms, ‘sunken’ (shoke’a) and ‘raised’ (bolet), are the terms the whole maamar will use for the relationship between Israel’s service below and G‑d’s response from above.

The analogy is now applied to the soul. A spark of G‑dliness lives within the soul and expresses itself through its intellect, emotions, thought, speech and action; in its natural state this spark is the ‘hidden love’ for G‑d, present even when it is not felt.

Divine service begins by bringing this love into the open, until it rises like the “flashes of fire” of the same verse (Song of Songs 8:6) and breaks out of its sheath. Love that rises in this way stands out (bolet) like a mountain above a plain: it is the ‘raised’ seal, from below upward.

The Talmud (Pesachim 88a) says that Avraham called the place of the Temple a “mountain,” as in “On the mountain Havayah will be seen”; Avraham stands for love, so a ‘mountain’ is love that rises. The Alter Rebbe reads “And you shall love” as an expression of will: the desire that Havayah, the Infinite, become “your G‑d” in a revealed way, and not remain only as G‑dliness is enclothed and hidden within the soul.

The parenthesis refers to two other discourses that explain ‘mountains’ in divine service: one on “For the mountains shall depart” (Isaiah 54:10), and one on “The voice of my beloved … leaping upon the mountains” (Song of Songs 2:8).

The way to rise is the Shema. “Israel” stands for the G‑dly spark scattered among all the soul’s powers, and “Shema” is read not only as ‘hear’ but as ‘gather,’ as in “Shaul gathered (vayeshama) the people” (I Samuel 15:4): the spark is to gather itself from its dispersion and rise to its root.

Why should it rise? Because of “Havayah is our G‑d”: the two Names in this verse, Havayah and Elokim (‘our G‑d’), are ‘two companions,’ and through them the world is constantly renewed from nothing, as the blessing before the Shema says, “Who in His goodness renews each day, continually, the work of creation.” Yet “Havayah is One”: He does not change through this constant creating. In Kabbalistic usage ‘two companions’ names two levels that are never parted from one another. Here it means that Elokim, the power that renews creation, is never separate from Havayah, which is why the constant renewal brings no change in Him.

G‑d remains unchanged because He is not contained in what He makes, the way a maker’s force is in his product: “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” Only His Malchus, “the glory of His kingdom” of the line said after the first verse of the Shema, reaches the worlds: our physical world is the Malchus of Asiyah, and the lower and upper Gan Eden, where the souls receive their reward, are only the Malchus of Yetzirah and of Beriah.

All of these are only Malchus: even the righteous in Gan Eden “delight in the radiance of the Shechinah,” and the Shechinah is Malchus. Malchus is like a name, which is not the person himself but how others call and know him; so “King,” in the morning prayer’s words “the Unique One, Life of the worlds, King,” names only an outward expression of G‑d.

Since everything the worlds can hold is only Malchus, the love sought is for G‑d Himself, beyond all worlds: “Whom have I in heaven? … My flesh and my heart pine away.” This is love “with all your might,” a love that no vessel limits, the longing to cleave to the Infinite One Himself, the Source of all life and delight.

How does one reach such love? Through the order of the morning prayers. Pesukei deZimra (the Verses of Praise) take their name from zemer, ‘song,’ which also means ‘pruning’ (lezamer): the exaltations of G‑d in Psalm 149, said in Pesukei deZimra, are “a double-edged sword” that prunes away the ‘tyrants,’ whatever in a person stands against holiness.

Then come the blessings of the Shema, which describe how the angels sanctify G‑d. Some do so in quiet bittul; the Ofanim (an order of angels; the word means ‘wheels’) sanctify Him “with a great noise,” because they sense themselves as yesh, existing ‘somethings,’ in Daniel’s words “a thousand thousands and myriads of myriads.”

The Ofanim cry out when they see their own ‘something’ count as nothing: G‑d, even as He is drawn into the ‘hosts’ of creation (“Havayah of Hosts”), is Himself still “holy,” that is, utterly separate from them. Seeing this, they sanctify Him with a great noise.

The Seraphim, who “stand above Him,” are not like the Ofanim in this: they are already in bittul. All the more so the earth and all that is upon it, whose sense of their own existence is far greater, must cry out even more when they come to the nullification of the yesh. (In one manuscript, the Kehot note reports, the words about the Seraphim stand in parentheses, as an aside.)

This ‘noise’ is the Shema: an intense arousal over the nullification of self, to become “one with the One,” until the Shema’s last words, “I am Havayah your G‑d,” are true in fact. Then comes the Shemoneh Esreh, said in a whisper, like one speaking privately into the ear of the king.

Before it we say “Ado-nai, open my lips,” so that “my mouth will declare Your praise” in the blessings that begin “Blessed are You.” This whole ascent, from Pesukei deZimra through the Shemoneh Esreh, is the ‘mountain’: the hidden love brought from concealment into revelation, from below upward.

There is a higher ‘mountain’: Hor HaHar, the mountain where Aharon died, which Rashi (on Numbers 20:22) reads as ‘a mountain upon a mountain,’ like a small apple resting on a large one. It is the level of Sinai, where, the Talmud says, G‑d overturned the mountain over Israel “like a tub”: a mountain from above resting upon the ‘mountain’ of man’s ascent below.

When a person serves “with all your soul,” cleaving “spirit to spirit,” his thought bound to G‑d’s thought, an arousal comes from above of its own accord, without further effort on his part. This is the gift of G‑d’s own words: “And these words which I (Anochi) command you.” Tanya, chapter 45, to which the Kehot note points, describes this cleaving of spirit to spirit as the binding of a person’s speech in Torah to the word of G‑d.

This higher mountain is the Torah, which “comes forth from Chochmah.” All creation was made with Chochmah, so what sets the Torah’s Chochmah apart is that it is in bittul, wholly given over to G‑d, like “holy anointing oil” (Chochmah is likened to oil). The Kehot note reports that one manuscript has this aside in parentheses and lacks its closing words, from “Only that” to “holy anointing oil.”

The purpose of the whole Torah is to bring everything to bittul before the One. Its laws sort and refine: they acquit the innocent and convict the guilty, and they separate evil from good.

The Aramaic phrase “through Chochmah they are sifted” sums this up. The 248 positive commandments bind a person to G‑d and are called “the limbs of the King,” vessels that make a dwelling for Him; the 365 prohibitions separate out the evil.

This bittul is drawn down by a person’s own effort below, which raises the soul to resemble G‑d (“Just as He is compassionate, so be compassionate”). Hence the blessing “Who has sanctified us with His commandments”: holiness comes through the commandments themselves; and “You have raised my horn … I am anointed with fresh oil” describes the soul lifted and anointed with this oil of Chochmah.

The whole ascent described so far, of the soul and of the worlds rising from below, is the ‘raised’ seal. Its counterpart, coming from above in response, is the ‘sunken’ seal, just as the wax receives the reverse of what is pressed into it.

G‑d in Himself has no fixed attribute, not even ‘righteousness’ or any other quality, as Eliyahu’s prayer at the opening of the Tikkunei Zohar says. Only through man’s arousal from below (as the saying goes, when a person engages in Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, studies opposite him) does the Infinite Light come to be enclothed in Chochmah. Earlier in Likkutei Torah (Shir HaShirim 41a), where the Kehot note sends the reader for this saying, the Alter Rebbe explains that a person’s speech in Torah is then G‑d’s own word speaking in him.

The Zohar notes that in the verse “And you shall do them” (Leviticus 26:3) the word for ‘them’ is spelled so it can be read atem, ‘you’: by keeping the commandments a person ‘makes’ G‑d, as it were, below. So too the blessing before the Shema asks that we be granted “to do and to fulfill all the words” of the study of the Torah.

At Sinai “Havayah descended,” enclothing His Infinite Light in the Torah, which is a form of concealment: this is the ‘sunken’ seal, from above downward.

This is the tefillin of the hand, which, as the Zohar and the codes record, some put on while seated: it parallels the seated part of prayer, the Shema and its blessings, with their ‘great noise’ of ascent from below. In its first section, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn” is that ascent (the firstborn is Chochmah, which is ‘first’), and the answer from above is “so that the Torah of Havayah may be in your mouth,” the Torah drawn down from Chochmah into a person’s mouth: the sunken seal.

The second section of the tefillin, which tells of the Exodus, stands for love brought from the mind into the heart. While love is only understood in the mind it is in ‘Egypt’ (Mitzrayim), read as meitzar, a narrow strait: it is in exile, unrevealed.

When the love is felt in the heart it is ‘born,’ as in Ezekiel’s image of Israel as an infant born in Egypt. This is the joy of a mitzvah, “a joyful mother of children,” the opposite of the reproach “because you did not serve … with joy.”

This revelation corresponds to the sections Shema (love) and Vehayah Im Shamoa (awe). In action, revealed love is expressed in charity: as the first section draws down Torah, this section draws down tzedakah, which is compassion, and a person’s compassion arouses compassion above.

Compassion is an emotion, a being moved, and nothing moves or changes the Infinite Light; as Eliyahu’s prayer says, He is “not of any of the attributes.” Rather, G‑d enclothes Himself in compassion in response to a person’s deed of charity.

An arousal below draws an arousal above. The Alter Rebbe reads kein in “Kein tzedakah lechayim” (Proverbs 11:19) as ‘base,’ as in the kein, the base, of the laver in the Sanctuary: charity is a pedestal for the ‘Life of life,’ G‑d Himself, “a foundation (machon) for Your dwelling,” a word from the same root.

This enclothing of the Infinite in emotive attributes is also the sunken seal. It comes from above downward, and it is a form of concealment.

Both forms described so far, raised from below and sunken from above, belong to “a seal upon your arm,” the tefillin of the hand. This fits “His left hand is under my head,” for the arm that bears the tefillin is the left.

The word lerashi (‘my head’: lamed, reish, alef, shin, yud) has the same letters as Yisrael (yud, shin, reish, alef, lamed). So “His left hand under my head” means that G‑d’s ‘left hand’ supports and brings about the ascent of Israel, the G‑dly spark, from below upward.

The maamar turns to a second, higher seal that works in reverse: here the service from below is ‘sunken,’ the self-effacement of the silent Shemoneh Esreh and its bowings, a bittul before the Infinite Light itself. In Torah Ohr, Vayechi (“Yehudah, you, your brothers shall acknowledge”), cited here, the Alter Rebbe explains bowing as utter bittul, like one who bows before a king, a bittul revealed only after Pesukei deZimra and the Shema with its blessings have come first.

The Sages’ wish that “a person would pray the whole day” is read to mean that the bittul of prayer should leave an impression that lasts all day. One then lives as “let my soul be as dust to all,” not as a self-important ‘something’ that cannot set itself aside, but in the spirit of “Nullify your will before His will.”

This bittul corresponds to the prohibitions, which stand higher than the positive commandments. In the teaching on “This is My Name (shemi) … and this is My remembrance (zichri),” shemi (350) with yud-hei (15) makes 365, the prohibitions, and zichri (237) with vav-hei (11) makes 248, the positive commandments; the hand-tefillin and the positive commandments, which bind a person to G‑d and raise him like a ‘mountain,’ belong to vav-hei. Earlier in Likkutei Torah (Shir HaShirim 7a), cited by the Kehot note, the Alter Rebbe explains that this advantage of the prohibitions is why most of the Sages’ fences are in them.

The prohibitions express bittul as pure restraint, the level of ‘do not.’ This lower, ‘sunken’ self-giving draws down from above the raised seal, an open revelation.

While the Temple does not stand, G‑d’s light comes only hidden: “our signs we have not seen.” In the Time to Come it will be open: “your Teacher will no longer be hidden.” The Alter Rebbe refers here to the discourse “I am asleep, but my heart is awake” (Song of Songs 5:2).

There are two ways the Torah can be present. In the first, G‑d’s word is “placed in your mouth” through Chochmah, which is a garment for the Infinite Light (“He wraps Himself in light as in a garment”): this is the sunken seal, G‑d enclothed and hidden.

In the second, the garment does not hide what it clothes. Then, as in Isaiah’s prophecy of the redemption, “eye to eye they shall see” Havayah’s return to Zion.

Then “Havayah has bared His holy arm” before all the nations, and His righteousness is revealed in their sight. For this one is called kore baTorah, ‘one who reads in the Torah’: kore also means ‘calls,’ and in Torah Ohr, Bereishis (“The heavens are My throne”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the Torah’s letters are G‑d’s names, so reading them is like calling someone by name, drawing from above downward.

That is why there is a mitzvah to keep studying even laws one already knows. The purpose of study is not only to know but to draw down the Infinite Light, so that it is revealed below and the garment of the Torah does not hide it at all.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the end of the discourse “If you will listen to the voice.” This revelation is “His right hand embraces me,” like a person who embraces a friend and will not let him go.

He also refers to the discourse “On the eighth day, an assembly” (on Shemini Atzeres) for the embrace of the right hand. This embrace is “as a seal upon your heart”: the straps of the head-tefillin that hang down over the heart.

¶1 This explains the straps over the heart from paragraph 1.

The tefillin consist of letters written on parchment, and the halachah requires each letter to be surrounded by parchment on all four sides. The letters stand for the soul’s ascent through its understanding.

The parchment is higher than the letters, since it bears and carries them; and the straps are made of the same hide as this parchment.

Everything in the tefillin apart from the letters, parchment and straps alike, is only the hide of a kosher animal. So the straps, continuing the parchment that is above the letters, hang down to the heart and bring a revelation of love there: the embrace of “His right hand.”

The verse’s next words, “for love is strong as death,” are explained by the bond of soul and body. The soul does not need the body, and the body darkens its light, yet parting from it is very hard for the soul, because the body is its vessel. The Zohar in Metzora (III 54b) reads the verse the same way: nothing in the world is as hard as the soul’s parting from the body, and so the love of the Congregation of Israel for the Holy One, blessed be He, never parts.

So too the Congregation of Israel asks to stay ‘sealed’ upon G‑d’s heart even through the darkness and concealment of exile. The Zohar, cited in the text, explains that a seal leaves its whole image where it was pressed even when it goes ‘here and there,’ so she asks that her image remain in Him wherever she goes; this ‘image that remains’ is the bittul of the Shemoneh Esreh.

The felt love of prayer passes, but its impression is to stay like a seal, so that G‑d’s right hand embraces even ‘from behind,’ as one embraces a friend from behind: that is, when a person has turned ‘here and there’ to the day’s affairs.

The Congregation of Israel is called a ‘vessel,’ as in “those who bear the vessels of Havayah,” because at the time of prayer it is in bittul. That is why the Zohar says the image ‘remains’: the bittul of prayer should leave its mark all day, the meaning of “would that a person would pray the whole day.”

The Alter Rebbe cites the passages of the Zohar that explain the verse this way: in Vayechi (I 244b–245a), a seal’s impression stays after the seal is lifted; in Mishpatim (II 114a), the Congregation of Israel asks that her image stay engraved in Him, so that He remember her wherever she goes.

This is also the meaning of “A woman, when she conceives and gives birth to a male” (Leviticus 12:2), with the Talmud’s teaching that when the woman’s seed comes first, a male child is born. In the manuscript, the Kehot note reports, this maamar comes with the remark that it “belongs to the verse ‘A woman, when she conceives.’”

The Alter Rebbe applies this to a service from below that is ‘sunken,’ an ascent through bittul rather than through self-assertion. In the Kabbalah the feminine, Nukva, is the receiver, and her Yesod is described as ‘sunken’; here it stands for awe and self-effacement, like Miriam, who “stationed herself at a distance.” Such sunken service ‘gives birth to a male’: it draws down from above the raised seal, an open revelation.

The blessing said at a circumcision speaks of G‑d ‘sealing’ a Jew’s offspring “with the sign of the holy covenant”; the Tikkunei Zohar (Tikkun 22) likewise reads “Set me as a seal” as the covenant of circumcision. The Alter Rebbe then refers to his discourse in Vayakhel on “Take from among you an offering,” about subduing the evil inclination (iskafya) and transforming it (is’hapcha).

There it is explained that subduing oneself, in the spirit of “let my soul be as dust,” arouses from above the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev), higher than what transformation arouses. This is the same principle as here: lowly, sunken service draws the higher revelation.

He also refers to his discourse in Bechukosai on “And ten women shall bake,” a verse that in its place describes famine among the curses. There the ten powers of the soul are to be ‘feminine,’ that is, receivers.

To be ‘feminine’ in this sense is to know that all the good in oneself is received from above, given by the Master of truth, as in “Havayah illuminates my darkness.” This too is the meaning of “A woman, when she conceives.”

A gloss adds another explanation of why the seal is tefillin: G‑d’s own ‘tefillin’ are the Infinite Light drawn down and shining in Chochmah and Binah.

That is why, the gloss says, the first section of His tefillin has the verses “For who is a great nation” and “And who is a great nation”: that section corresponds to the higher Chochmah, the source of the Torah, and when the Infinite Light is enclothed there, Israel appear as “a great nation.” The gloss refers to the discourse “For with You is the source of life,” on “Look down from Your holy dwelling … and bless Your people Israel.”

Chochmah is called a ‘seal’ because “the seal of the Holy One, blessed be He, is truth,” and truth is the rung of Chochmah. The gloss cites the discourse “These are the journeys” and the gloss in Tanya, chapter 35, which explains, as the Alter Rebbe heard from his teacher, that the Infinite unites even with Atzilus only through Chochmah, because He is the true One and there is none besides Him.

This explains “Set me as a seal”: in G‑d’s tefillin, which are His seal, what is written is Israel’s praise, “For who is a great nation.”

¶1 This explains G‑d's tefillin, mentioned in paragraph 1.

If we do not see this now (“our signs we have not seen”), it is because what is drawn down today comes from the sunken seal, hidden within. The Alter Rebbe refers to the end of the discourse “And these are the names of the children of Israel.”

In the Time to Come, when “eye to eye they shall see,” it will be the raised seal. The higher Chochmah, now “most hidden of all hidden,” will be openly revealed.

This is “as a seal upon your heart” and “His right hand embraces me”: the inner Chesed (kindness) that the Idra Rabba (the “Great Assembly,” a section of the Zohar) calls “the Chesed of truth.” It comes from the Source of truth, G‑d, the true One beside whom there is nothing.

This also explains the Talmud’s teaching that Israel twice asked improperly and G‑d answered properly. First they asked that G‑d come “like the rain,” and He answered, “I will be like the dew.”

The second time they asked, “Set me as a seal,” and He answered, “Behold, upon My palms I have engraved you”; the Midrash on Song of Songs develops this at length. There (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 8:6) the prophets object that a seal on the heart is sometimes seen and sometimes not, and propose instead “a crown of glory in the hand of G‑d”; G‑d replies that even a crown can fall from a king’s head, but “upon My palms I have engraved you,” for as a person cannot forget his own palms, so He will never forget Israel. Rain is a response from above that comes through an arousal from below, as the mist first rises from the earth.

¶12 Hold this question: why was "Set me as a seal" improper? Paragraph 12 answers.

Dew, by contrast, comes of itself, without any arousal from below, from a level that man’s service cannot reach. In Likkutei Torah, Ha’azinu (“Give ear, O heavens”), the Alter Rebbe explains that the rain Israel asked for is drawn down by service below, while the dew is too high for any deed below to arouse, yet after that service it comes of itself.

The request “Set me as a seal” is understood in the same way. A seal is a made, physical thing, a name engraved on it, yet its mark is what confirms and validates every document.

With G‑d, the seal is the higher Chochmah, called “His seal is truth”; and before Him even Chochmah counts as a ‘making’ (“You made them all with Chochmah”). This seal too has two forms, raised and sunken: the higher and the lower Chochmah.

Israel asked to be a seal because where the Infinite is enclothed in Chochmah, in the Torah, Israel appear supremely important: the whole Torah is addressed to them (“Speak to the children of Israel”). Above Chochmah, however, the verse says, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?”: nothing a person does can add anything there.

That is why Israel asked specifically to be a seal. Yet G‑d’s answer, “upon My palms I have engraved you,” was the ‘proper’ one, because the request to be a seal still falls short.

¶9 This answers the question from paragraph 9.

A seal is still a made, physical thing, separate from G‑d’s essence, and the Infinite Light is endlessly beyond Chochmah; as Tanya, Part II, explains near the end of chapter 9, before Him even Chochmah is considered like a physical deed.

Even the raised seal, the revelation of open wonders like the Exodus (unlike our hidden present), is limited in this way: Scripture calls G‑d “making wonders,” and He is called “Master of wonders,” so a miracle too is a kind of physical making before Him. The discourse “I will sing to Havayah” discusses this.

Israel themselves, however, “arose in thought”: they are rooted in G‑d’s primordial thought, above Chochmah. In Likkutei Torah, Matos (“And a woman who makes a vow”), to which the Kehot note points, the Alter Rebbe brings this saying to show that the Congregation of Israel, the source of all souls, comes from a very high place. Here he refers to two other discourses, one on “For the conductor, on the Sheminis,” and one on tzitzis, which reads the letters of Yisrael as li rosh, ‘a head for Me.’

G‑d’s answer, “upon My palms I have engraved you,” speaks of letters engraved in His very essence. A seal, by contrast, bears letters engraved in a separate object; so Israel are not a seal apart from Him but are engraved in Him.

The words chukosai (‘My statutes’) and chukas (‘the statute’) share the root of chakikah, engraving, the same root as ‘I have engraved you’; the Alter Rebbe refers to his discourses on those verses. This engraving is the Zohar’s “He engraved engravings in the supernal luster,” a level above Chochmah where the souls of Israel are rooted.