ביאור על זה

The heading marks this as a biur, an explanation that expands on the discourse printed just before it, which opens with the verse “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm” (Song of Songs 8:6). The biur develops that discourse’s two seals, the raised seal and the sunken seal, and applies them to divine service, to the commandments and to the tefillin of the hand and the head.

Yechezkel saw the chayos, the holy living creatures of the Divine chariot, darting forward and returning. The Alter Rebbe reads this as the two movements of a person’s service of G‑d: ratzo, a surge of longing to rise beyond oneself, and shov, a return in self-nullification. He names them with an image from sealing: ratzo is a raised (embossed) seal and shov a sunken (engraved) seal.

Ratzo is love that burns like “flashes of fire,” a phrase from Song of Songs 8:6, the verse this discourse explains. Every Jew carries a hidden love for G‑d; in ratzo it comes into the open as a yearning that rises from below toward the Infinite One.

The Talmud says that Avraham called the site of the Temple a “mountain.” A mountain stands up out of the flat land, and so does this yearning, which wants to break out of its sheath, the bodily self that holds it; that is why it is called protrusion, a raised seal.

When a raised seal is pressed into wax it leaves a hollow impression: what protrudes on the seal is sunken in the wax. The maamar applies this to the exchange between a person’s service below and the response from above, which always takes the opposite shape.

So too, the arousal from below of ratzo protrudes like a raised seal, because the lover still feels himself to be someone: “there is one who loves.” The response from above takes the opposite shape, a sunken seal: G‑d’s light comes down clothed and contained in vessels, as the maamar develops below.

Hor HaHar is the mountain where Aharon died (Numbers 20:22), and the Midrash (Tanchuma, Chukas 14) reads its doubled name as “a mountain upon a mountain,” like a small apple on top of a large one. For its Kabbalistic meaning the text points to the Zohar on Parshas Mishpatim (109b) and to the Zohar HaRakia, a commentary on the Zohar, there.

Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes of Z’eir Anpin, the core emotive attributes, are called “mountains”; Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Imma, the lower part of Binah, enter Z’eir Anpin and rest upon those mountains, so they are “mountains upon mountains.” The Arizal says the same in his Likkutei Torah on Isaiah, on the verse “For the mountains shall depart” (Isaiah 54:10).

This shows why Hor HaHar is the sunken seal from above: Netzach, Hod and Yesod of Imma are a garment that wraps the mochin, the intellect, as they enter Z’eir Anpin, so the light comes hidden inside a covering. A Tosefta in the Zohar on Beshalach speaks of the time “before the pure air sank in (ishtaka),” the root of shoka, “sunken,” so the Alter Rebbe suggests that it too belongs to the sunken seal. Earlier in Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim (13b), he explains that passage: the “pure air” must first be drawn down from above before the “pierced stones” open.

For more on Hor HaHar the text refers to the discourse in Likkutei Torah, Nasso, on “Take the head count of the sons of Gershon.” There (21a, and its Biur, 23a) the Alter Rebbe explains that Aharon died at Hor HaHar because the emotive attributes of Z’eir Anpin are called “mountains” and their source, the attributes of Arich Anpin, is called Hor HaHar; he reads Aharon’s name as aleph-har-nun, the “mountain” of a love higher than Avraham’s.

The second movement of service from below, shov, is total self-nullification: the will is set aside entirely, as in the prayer “let my soul be like dust to all,” and the person feels yiras boshes, the awe of shame before G‑d’s greatness. Because he sinks himself, he is a sunken seal from below, and the response from above takes the opposite form, a raised seal.

The raised seal from above is the Infinite Light revealed as it is, not clothed in any vessel: a revelation of G‑dliness. That is how it will be in the time to come, when, as Yeshayahu says, the Teacher will no longer be hidden and G‑dliness will be seen “eye to eye.”

This open revelation is also what the prohibitive commandments draw down. They stand higher than the positive commandments because they are rooted in the first two letters of the Name Havayah, yud and hei, while the positive commandments are rooted in its last two, vav and hei. The Kehot note points to the Biur on “I am black, yet comely” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 9b), which says this, and to Iggeres HaTeshuvah, chapter 1, where transgressing a prohibition is shown to be graver, since it blemishes the soul’s root above.

The four letters of the Name Havayah correspond to levels. The yud, a mere point, is Chochmah: contraction and bittul, a sense of being nothing; in terms of feeling it is the higher awe, inward, the awe of shame.

The first hei is Binah, where higher love unfolds, so at this level awe comes before love (dechilu urechimu); in the lower letters the order is reversed, the vav lesser love and the final hei lower awe (rechimu udechilu), and a gloss in Or HaTorah, the Kehot note reports, calls this “their order from above to below.” The prohibitions belong to yud-hei, and so to the yud, the nullification of one’s very existence.

The Infinite One as He transcends the Ten Sefiros can be drawn down only through the nullification of the yesh, a person’s sense of being a separate something. That inward sinking from below brings an outward protrusion from above, open revelation “eye to eye.”

This explains the prohibitions. The sitra achra, the side opposed to holiness, is made entirely of yesh, self-assertion; by refraining for G‑d’s sake, for example from wearing shaatnez (wool and linen together), a person nullifies the yesh and subdues the sitra achra.

The same holds within a person. When he nullifies his very self, so that “yes” and “no” are alike to him and he has no will of his own, that sinking from below brings, as a matter of course, the protrusion from above: the revealed Infinite Light of the time to come.

Love and the positive commandments cannot reach that far. Love, however lofty, is still someone feeling something: it is a yesh and a vessel, so it cannot draw down what transcends the chain of descending worlds.

Therefore what love and the positive commandments draw down is light clothed in vessels, revealed only as far as the vessels allow. That is the sunken seal from above.

The first blessing of the Amidah, “Who remembers the kindnesses of the fathers and brings a redeemer to their children’s children,” is read as a map of the Sefiros: “the fathers” are Abba and Imma, “their children” Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, and “their children’s children” Netzach, Hod and Yesod. The text refers the reader to the Zohar at the start of Parshas Shemini (36a) and the Mikdash Melech commentary there.

“For the sake of His Name” is Malchus, the last Sefirah. So the blessing describes the Infinite Light clothed in all Ten Sefiros of Atzilus, from Abba and Imma down to Malchus: light in vessels, the sunken seal from above.

The blessing ends “with love,” be’ahavah, and its first letter, beis (two), hints at two loves: love rising from below draws a matching love from above. That love above “presses” the Infinite Light to come down and clothe itself in the Ten Sefiros.

“As in water, face answers to face” (Proverbs 27:19): the face one shows is reflected back. So love from below calls forth love from above, and the word ve’ahavta, “you shall love,” equals 414, twice or, “light” (207): one light from below and one from above. The Kehot note traces this to Etz Chaim, in the gate on Leah and Rachel, where at ve’ahavta in the Shema one intends to give Rachel two lights.

So too with the positive commandments: giving charity awakens compassion and charity from above, as the Talmud says, “Whoever has compassion on creatures is shown compassion from Heaven.”

In G‑d’s own essence no attribute such as kindness or compassion applies at all; as Eliyahu says in Patach Eliyahu (Tikkunei Zohar 17b), it is “not that You have a known justice.” The attributes come into play only in answer to an arousal from below, and then as lights in vessels, the sunken seal from above.

Section 2 develops the other side of the exchange. Keeping the prohibitions and nullifying the yesh, the sinking from below, draws down from above something beyond the chain of descending worlds, openly and protruding: the raised seal.

Etz Chaim describes two kinds of ascent. In the first, the ascent of the worlds on Shabbos, the inner part of the lower world rises and wraps itself around the higher world, while the higher world sends only its outer part down into the lower world’s inner part.

This ascent comes through love, which still protrudes: the lower world rises without truly nullifying itself. So the answer from above sinks into it, clothed and contracted within the lower world, as a sunken seal.

The second ascent is that of mayin nukvin, the “feminine waters” of yearning that rise from below, in the manner of ibbur, gestation: the lower level is held inside Imma like an embryo, folded “three within three.” Here it gives up its own being entirely and is absorbed in the higher level, and in return mayin duchrin, the “masculine waters” of giving, bring down new mochin, a fresh intellect. In the version printed in Or HaTorah, the Kehot note reports, this line adds “a revelation of new light, the level of protrusion.”

The Exodus followed this pattern. In Egypt Israel was like an embryo in the womb, and the redemption brought new mochin of extraordinary height, as Pri Etz Chaim explains in its gate on Pesach.

These mochin also came all at once, not stage by stage as at every other time. The Alter Rebbe refers back to his discourse on “The voice of my beloved” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 14d), where “the King of the kings of kings revealed Himself to them” is explained as the revelation of His very essence, “He and His Name alone,” above the chain of descending worlds; that is why it came “leaping over the mountains,” not in the usual order.

The miracles of the Exodus and the Splitting of the Sea overturned nature in heaven and on earth, a revelation that stands out: a raised seal. It is the opposite of exile, of which the Psalmist laments, “We have not seen our signs.”

The Talmud teaches that when the woman emits seed first, the child is male. The Alter Rebbe reads the woman as the lower level whose ascent comes by sinking, for in Kabbalah the Yesod of Nukva, the feminine configuration, is described as sunken; then what is “born” from above is “male,” a protruding revelation.

¶3 This is the explanation promised in paragraph 3.

Conversely, when the rising is by protrusion, through love, as when “the man emits seed first,” the result above is “female,” a sinking: light drawn into vessels.

A parenthesis explains the two seals from above in terms of Keser. All the mitzvos, the 613 of the Torah and the seven rabbinic ones, together 620, the numerical value of Keser (כתר), draw from Keser; but the positive commandments come from vav-hei, the seven lower Sefiros of Arich Anpin, which are clothed inside Atzilus, since Abba and Imma wrap around Arich Anpin’s Chesed and Gevurah. Light that comes clothed is a sunken seal.

The prohibitions come from yud-hei, the first three Sefiros of Arich Anpin, which are not clothed in anything, so they are a raised seal. The Biur on “I am black, yet comely” puts it one level higher: there (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 10d) the Name from which the commandments are drawn is the Havayah of Atik Yomin, so that the positive commandments draw from its seven lower Sefiros and the prohibitions from its first three.

Etz Chaim teaches that the seven lower Sefiros of Atik are clothed within Arich Anpin. Through Arich Anpin they can therefore be grasped and known.

The first three Sefiros of Atik cannot be clothed in Arich Anpin. That is the meaning of the term “the head that is not known” (reisha d’lo isyada): even Arich Anpin does not know it.

Atik is the lowest level of the Infinite itself, its Malchus, while Arich Anpin is the root of everything emanated. So the seven lower Sefiros of Atik, which are clothed in Arich Anpin, are the radiance of the Infinite that already now enters the root of creation.

The first three Sefiros of Atik are light of the Infinite that, at present, does not enter or clothe itself in anything, not even in the root of Atzilus. This is the light kept for the future revelation.

This unclothed light, the first three Sefiros of Atik, is what will be revealed in the time to come, and it is the raised seal. A second explanation, which the Alter Rebbe calls the main one, draws on Pri Etz Chaim on the kavanos of the Shema: the highest source of mochin available now is only the outer dimension of Atik.

The inner dimension of Atik remains sealed and hidden, so the inner dimension of Yesod of Atik is the raised seal, to be revealed only in the future. Yeshayahu’s promise “My covenant of peace shall not be shaken” refers to it, since in Kabbalah the covenant (bris) is associated with Yesod; it is the same verse whose opening, “For the mountains shall depart,” was cited above.

The Ramaz, Rabbi Moshe Zacuto, comments on the Zohar’s account of a new Torah insight that rises and “enters the eighteen worlds”; as the Kehot note cites from Or HaTorah, these are the inner dimension of Yesod of Atik. He also comments on a passage in the Zohar on Parshas Bo.

Another explanation is given in a discourse on Purim, on the verses “And the Jews accepted” and “What did they see,” which also discusses “the woman emits seed first.” The Kehot note identifies it as the discourse Chayav Inish (“A person is obligated…”) in Torah Ohr, Megillas Esther (99c), whose first word our text prints without its final letter, as chayei. There the self-nullification of Purim, which began from Israel’s own initiative, “the woman emits seed first,” is shown to be higher than that of Sinai, where the initiative came from above.

The text also refers to Rabbi Chaim Vital’s Mavo She’arim (“The Gateway of the Gates”), an introduction to the Arizal’s teachings. It then names the theme of the rest of the maamar: the two seals of the verse, “upon your arm” and “upon your heart,” are the tefillin of the hand and the tefillin of the head.

¶14 Hold this: paragraph 14 explains how the hand tefillin match the seated prayer.

Section 3 begins with a law of the Torah scroll and tefillin: every letter must be surrounded by blank parchment on all sides. The word for letters, osiyos, is linked to asa, Aramaic for “came” (as in “morning comes,” Isaiah 21:12), for a letter is something new coming into being.

¶12 This preface on letters and parchment is applied to the head tefillin in paragraph 12.

So any act of bringing into being can be called “letters”: the firmament coming into being from Chesed of Atzilus, emotions coming into being from Chochmah, or even Chochmah itself coming into being from what is above Daas, the realm beyond intellect.

At that highest step the “letters” are like hairs. A hair bears no comparison to a person’s essence, and cutting it does not affect him at all, yet it is still a slight extension of his being; so Chochmah issues from what is above it only as a faint extension.

In Kabbalah, Abba (Chochmah) draws its nourishment from the eighth of the thirteen features of the “beard” of Arich Anpin, called the mazal, from nozel, “flowing,” a kind of hair. Its ultimate root is the white of the skull, the Chesed of Atik, and from there the radiance of the hairs brings into being Chochmah of Atzilus, the start of the whole chain of descent.

A human skull, too, is white bone surrounding the brain, and the hair grows from it. Etz Chaim notes that in one respect the hairs are superior to the whiteness and in another the whiteness is superior to the hairs; the text refers to Mavo She’arim for the distinction.

Sefer Yetzirah names the means of creation, which Chassidus reads as sofer and sefer, scribe and book. The sofer is Chochmah, the source from which letters, new existences, come into the sefer, Binah; Binah is called pittuchei chosam, “engravings of a seal,” from the root “to open,” because when its Yesod opens, the letters of the emotive attributes are opened and revealed.

The Raaya Mehemna, the “Faithful Shepherd” section of the Zohar, says on Parshas Shoftim that the bones, built upon the brain, are white, and that black writing can be read only against white, “like the Torah.”

The Ramaz explains that the white and the black there are Chochmah and Binah. The essence of the intellect is like white parchment: it carries and holds the “letters” of thought that form in it when the intellect unfolds into comprehension and understanding.

Hence Binah is called sefer, a book of letters, while Chochmah is the sofer, the scribe: the source, the white.

The same idea appears in the Biur on “And you shall make a tzitz” in Torah Ohr, Tetzaveh (84a), on the High Priest’s gold forehead-plate engraved “like the engravings of a seal.” There the Alter Rebbe explains these engravings as the letters of Binah, the Yesod of Imma, in which the letters take form, since Chochmah is like a flash of lightning with no shape; and they are like a name engraved in wax, which is not the essence of the one it names.

In Etz Chaim, Sha’ar (Gate) 25, Drush 5, on how the Tiferes of Imma becomes the Keser, the crown, of Z’eir Anpin, the Arizal writes that everything of Imma is white and mercy relative to Z’eir Anpin, and that the white head of the skull is the white of the Tiferes of Tevunah, the lower aspect of Binah; the same, he adds, applies to Arich Anpin. Likkutei Torah, Tzav (11a), cites this drush to show that Binah is to Z’eir Anpin like Atik and Keser.

It follows that the sefer, Binah, contains both the white parchment, the white of the skull formed from the Tiferes of Imma, and the black letters, drawn from the Yesod of Imma.

The scribe, Chochmah Ila’ah, the higher wisdom, stands above both the white and the black of the book.

Elsewhere it is explained why “the words of the Scribes are dearer to Me than the wine of the Torah”: the teachings of the soferim are rooted in the higher Chochmah, called sofer, which is above the Written Torah, called sefer. Likkutei Torah, Shemini Atzeres (80b), to which a Kehot note on “sofer and sefer” points, explains this saying through Sefer Yetzirah: sofer is Chochmah, which flows into sefer, Binah or thought, and from there into sippur, speech.

Yet the Written Torah, the sefer, has both white and black, parchment and letters, since every letter must be surrounded by parchment.

So the sofer must stand above both. This fits Etz Chaim, which says that the white of the skull is only the white of the Tiferes of Tevunah, a level within Binah.

The higher Chochmah, the sofer, is therefore above that white. The text adds an explanation from the Biur on “I am black, yet comely,” where the “words of the soferim” are the hidden source of the encompassing light, above both “white light” and “black light” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 10b–c). The printed word here, ספר, can be read sefer or sofer; that passage shows it is the sofer.

This applies to tefillin, whose black letters and white parchment mirror the black and the white. Their four passages draw down the four mochin: Chochmah, Binah and the two sides of Daas.

The first passage, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn,” is Chochmah, which is to be revealed below, as that passage says, “so that the Torah of Havayah may be in your mouth.” The text adds the words “I am the Mishnah that speaks in your mouth”: one who studies Torah for its own sake draws down lights in vessels. The words come from a known tradition in which the Mishnah that a sage studied with devotion revealed itself and spoke through his mouth. Here they show Chochmah, the Torah itself, becoming revealed speech in the mouth of the one who learns it.

The second passage, “And it shall be when He brings you,” is the mind of Binah. The white parchment around the letters is the white skull, which surrounds the mochin and is their source.

Section 4 explains “as a seal upon your heart”: it is the tefillin of the head, so called because the straps of the head tefillin hang down over the heart.

¶8 This applies the preface begun in paragraph 8.

The straps are made of hide, like the parchment, and they are valid even when made of parchment itself. They stand for the supernal emotive attributes: the Zohar on Parshas Pinchas (236b) calls the two straps “two arms” above and “two thighs” below.

These supernal attributes are drawn from the white of the skull, which is the parchment, as explained above.

Experience shows that emotions follow the intellect: a small child, whose understanding is small, loves small things. Yet the emotions also have a source above the intellect.

The Idra Zuta, a section of the Zohar, says that Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes, “hangs upon and is bound to” Atika, the Ancient One. So the root of the emotions is in Atik and the skull; only their path of descent runs through the intellect. Likkutei Torah, Shmini (19b), cites the same line to show that Z’eir Anpin is rooted above Abba and Imma and is only drawn down below them.

We see this in ourselves: emotion begins from understanding, but once aroused it can surge beyond what the mind accounts for, like the overwhelming joy of seeing a friend after many years.

The reason is that the source of the emotions is higher than the intellect. The Idra Zuta says that Abba and Imma “are included in the mazla, hang upon it and are bound to it,” for they come from the hairs, while Z’eir Anpin is bound to Atika itself, the white parchment. In Torah Ohr, Yisro (73a), on “The Patriarchs are the Chariot,” the Alter Rebbe explains that although the emotions are born from the intellect and match it, their root is taken from a higher place. The saying is Reish Lakish’s in Bereishis Rabbah (47:6). He learns it from verses such as “G‑d went up from upon Avraham”: the Patriarchs were so wholly given over to G‑d that the Divine presence rested “upon” them, as a rider rests upon a chariot. Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov embody Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferes, the emotive attributes, so that discourse is a fitting place to treat the source of the emotions.

This is why the straps are made of parchment: the white essence of the parchment is the Chesed of Atik, and from it they are drawn over the heart, the seat of the emotions. But this radiance from the Chesed of Atik cannot enter the emotion from within, as the intellect does; it can only surround it.

That is the meaning of “His right hand embraces me”: the right hand is the Chesed of Atik, and an embrace surrounds the one embraced from outside.

So the straps hang over the heart, encompassing it, and their root is the parchment, the supernal white that surrounds the letters.

But having descended into the emotive attributes, they lack the brightness they have at their source, the white of the parchment: what the Chesed of Atik extends downward bears no comparison to the white of the Chesed of Atik itself, the source of the revelation.

Because their root is so high, the straps must be black, a law given to Moshe at Sinai, and the halachic authorities require the boxes to be black as well. The passages inside, by contrast, are written on white parchment.

That is why the verse calls the head tefillin “a seal upon your heart”: its straps hang over the heart.

Section 5 explains “as a seal upon your arm”: the tefillin of the hand. The Zohar in Parshas Bamidbar links the two tefillin to the two parts of the morning prayer: the seated prayer, up to the Shemoneh Esreh, corresponds to the tefillin of the hand, and the standing prayer, the Shemoneh Esreh, to the tefillin of the head, “and this is like that.”

¶7 This explains the hand tefillin named in paragraph 7.

The Shema and its blessings, said seated, are the level of Nukva, the feminine, since a woman is called a “seat.”

The Psalmist’s “Havayah sits as King forever” links sitting with Malchus of Atzilus, which clothes itself in the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The text refers to two other discourses on the theme of sitting; the second explains “From your dwellings (moshvoseichem) you shall bring,” a word from the same root as moshav, seat.

The love of the Shema, “with all your might,” rises from below and stands out like a mountain, since in it “there is one who loves.” It is a raised seal from below.

In response, Hor HaHar, the upper mountain, is drawn down from above, in proportion to the mountain that rose from below.

This is the Infinite Light clothed in the Ten Sefiros, the vessels of Atzilus, and covered within them: the sunken seal from above.

The 248 words of the Shema match the 248 limbs of the body; its three paragraphs hold 245, and three words complete the number: “Havayah your G‑d is true,” which the prayer leader says again aloud, or, for one who says it alone, “G‑d, faithful King” before it (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 61:3, and the Rema there). Reciting it builds and draws down the 248 “limbs of the King,” Z’eir Anpin of Atzilus. The Mishnah in Oholos, counting the 248 limbs, lists “nine in the head,” so the Shema builds the whole of Z’eir Anpin, its head included.

The text refers to the discourse “Go forth and see” (Likkutei Torah, Shir HaShirim 18:7), which brings from the kavanos of the Shema that its 248 words draw down the 248 supernal “limbs” of the figure of “man” above.

That is why this drawing-down is the tefillin of the hand, of which the Torah says “a sign for you,” and the Talmud adds, “a sign for you, and not a sign for others.” The light is covered inside vessels and does not show outwardly: a sunken seal.

The Shemoneh Esreh is the nullification of the yesh, expressed in bowing and prostrating. It is said in a whisper because through bittul one has come close to G‑d.

One whispers only to someone near. From this closeness comes protrusion from above, a revelation of the Infinite Light that transcends the Ten Sefiros of Atzilus.

That revelation is the head tefillin, which are worn in plain view. The verse “His left hand is under my head, and His right hand embraces me” traces the order: first the Shema and the hand tefillin, then the head tefillin.