כי על כל כבוד חופה

The maamar opens with the end of Isaiah 4:5, where the prophet foretells the cloud by day and the fire by night that G‑d will create over Mount Zion, “for over all glory [there is] a canopy.” The Alter Rebbe notes that “all glory” implies more than one: there are two kinds of glory.

¶4 Hold this verse: paragraph 4 explains the chuppah over each glory.

Scripture speaks of G‑d’s glory in two opposite ways. “The whole earth is full of His glory” (Isaiah 6:3) places it everywhere, while “Blessed be the glory of Havayah from His place” (Ezekiel 3:12), together with the Kedushah’s question “Where is the place of His glory?”, treats it as hidden and beyond reach; the Zohar passage cited reads the first as the glory below and the second as the glory above.

The glory that fills the earth is the lower glory (kavod tata’ah). It is Malchus, G‑d’s attribute of kingship, acting as the light that fills all worlds (memalei kol almin): it enters each of the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and gives it life.

These worlds are created from nothing, are finite, and bear no comparison to the Infinite One. So the divine power that sustains them must conceal itself in a great tzimtzum (contraction), letting very little through.

The contraction lets through nothing but a faint glimmer and radiance, just enough to bring finite existence out of nothingness. That is why it is called “glory”: it is radiance alone, not the source that radiates it.

Jeremiah 23:24 has G‑d say “The heavens and the earth I fill,” and “I” means His very essence. The Alter Rebbe answers that the essence is indeed there, but hidden; what is revealed in the worlds is only the radiance, and this revealed radiance is called the “created glory” (kavod nivra).

Above the created glory is a second, higher glory (kavod ila’ah), called the “emanated glory” (kavod ne’etzal), “emanated” as opposed to “created.” The bracket refers to the Ramaz (the Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) in his commentary on the Zohar, Parshas Bamidbar, folio 118, on Moshe’s plea “Show me Your glory” (Exodus 33:18).

This higher glory has no limit: it is above the level of light and radiance and beyond anything the mind can grasp. That is why of it one asks “Where is the place of His glory?”: it cannot be located or comprehended.

To explain the two glories, the Alter Rebbe introduces two views of what is “existence” (yesh) and what is “nothingness” (ayin). The first is the ordinary one, implied in the phrase “from nothingness to existence”: the created world below is the real “something,” and the source above, which cannot be grasped, is “nothing.”

The second view reverses the first: above is the true existence (yesh) and below is nothingness (ayin). The Alter Rebbe says that both views are true, each from its own vantage point.

Seen from above to below, the true existence is the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev kol almin), the infinite light too great to enter them. The worlds, and even all the lights that give them life, are only a faint glimmer beside it; “all before Him is considered as nothing” (Zohar 1:11b), and so what is below is called “nothing.”

Seen from below to above, from the creature’s side, the lower glory counts as existence, because it lies within the range of comprehension.

From that side, what is above counts as nothingness, because it is beyond comprehension: “no thought can grasp Him,” as Eliyahu says in the Tikkunei Zohar. Yet what seems “nothing” from below is in truth the true existence, G‑d’s own infinite being and essence, and this is the higher glory (kavod ila’ah).

The two glories are now called “the glory of the groom” and “the glory of the bride.” The Alter Rebbe links chasan (groom) to the Talmud’s chus darga, “go down a step,” said of taking a wife, so the groom stands for light that descends from above to below, like water flowing down from a height.

Kallah (bride) is linked to kalsah nafshi, “my soul pines away” (Psalms 84:3), the soul’s consuming longing to rise to G‑d, voiced also in the verses quoted from Psalms 73 and 63. This upward pull is like fire, whose nature is to rise and merge with the element of fire above.

In the same way, the source of the souls of Israel, the Malchus of Atzilus, constantly rises to be included in what is above it. Psalms 30:13, “So that glory may sing to You [and not be silent],” calls this ceaseless rising song “glory,” and the Zohar (1:86a; 2:140a) says that Malchus “calls constantly and is not still,” never ceasing to call toward the light above it. This thirst, “My soul thirsts for You,” is the glory of the bride.

So groom and bride are opposites: the groom’s nature is to descend from above to below, and the bride’s is to rise from below to above, as water flows down and fire leaps up.

Such complete opposites cannot join by themselves, so there must be a chuppah, a level higher than both, which encompasses them from sovev kol almin, the infinite light that surrounds all worlds.

Because the chuppah’s illumination is above both, it lets the opposites unite. This is the known teaching on “He makes peace in His heights” (Job 25:2): the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 12:8) and the Zohar (3:12b) say that Michael, the angel of water (of snow, in the Midrash), and Gavriel, the angel of fire, do not harm each other, because G‑d makes peace between them.

Looking more closely, there are two chuppos, one over the groom and one over the bride. This is how the verse’s “over all glory” is read here.

Over each of the two glories, the groom’s and the bride’s, there is a chuppah: an encompassing light (makif) that surrounds it from above rather than entering within it.

¶1 This explains the verse quoted in paragraph 1.

The Alter Rebbe begins with the bride’s chuppah. The glory of the bride, the rising song of “So that glory may sing to You,” corresponds in a person’s soul to a love and longing for G‑d that the heart can hold; this is the love “with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 6:5).

Such a love is a “vessel”: it comes from contemplating the Creator’s greatness, so it is as large as one’s understanding. The Zohar reads “Her husband is known in the gates (she’arim)” as “each according to what he measures (meshaer) in his heart,” and so the love that results is bounded within the heart.

The love “with all your might” is different: it is boundless and too great for the heart to hold, so it remains above as an encompassing light. It is the soul’s inner point, the “will of the heart” (re’usa de’liba), as in the verse where the heart says “Seek My face” (Psalms 27:8).

This boundless love is therefore the chuppah over the bounded love “with all your soul,” the glory of the bride, because it cannot be held within the heart and so encompasses it from above.

The bracket refers to the discourse on “On the eighth day he sent the people away” (I Kings 8:66), in Likkutei Torah, Shemini Atzeres. There the Alter Rebbe explains that the hidden love in the inner point of the heart comes from a root above reason and knowledge, and of it is said “he abides in the shadow of Sha-dai” (Psalms 91:1): a shadow and not a revealed light, that is, an encompassing level. It also refers to the Zohar (2:27a), which explains “with all your might” as including them all above, “in a place that has no measure.”

The word me’od means “exceedingly,” beyond limit. Yet the verse says “your me’od”: the love is beyond the heart only relative to you, because your vessel is too small to hold its light, and so for you it stays encompassing.

For someone whose vessel is broader, the same love can be felt inwardly (pnimi) and not be encompassing at all. Whether a love is inner or encompassing depends on the capacity of the one who receives it.

By the principle that an arousal from below draws an arousal from above, the bride’s chuppah, the boundless love “with all your might,” awakens the groom’s chuppah above as well.

The groom’s chuppah is the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev kol almin). When the two chuppos join, the groom and bride beneath them, the descending light and the rising soul, are joined as a matter of course, though by nature they are opposites.