ביאור ענין שחורה אני ונאוה

The maamar sets out to explain the verse “I am black, yet comely, O daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 1:5). The speaker is the Community of Israel, and the listeners, “the daughters of Jerusalem,” are identified as souls not clothed in a body.

¶2 Why these souls are called "daughters of Jerusalem": paragraph 2 explains the name.

The Community of Israel is the Shechinah, G‑d’s indwelling Presence, which in Kabbalistic terms is Malchus, the last Sefirah of the World of Atzilus. She descends into the lower worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah and dwells even among Israel in their impurity, as two verses attest; it is she who calls herself black yet comely.

Before the souls come into the lower worlds they exist within Atzilus like a child in the womb, held within their source; this is called “gestation.” Their coming forth into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, where each soul becomes a separate being, is called “birth.”

Once born into the lower worlds, the souls become finite. The reason is that the kav, the ray of the Infinite Light, reaches only as far as Atzilus and stops there; below it, all existence is bounded.

Everything in the lower worlds is limited, starting with the angels: Michael serves with love and Gavriel with awe, and the angels who say “Holy” do so only at set times in the twelve hours of the day. The Kehot note’s heading reads “three times ‘Holy’” (ג״פ קדוש) here, and the later discourse it cites explains, from Tanna d’Vei Eliyahu, that each “Holy” so nullifies an angel that its soul returns only after four hours. The angels’ limits also show in the Talmud’s account that when they objected to the creation of man, asking “What is man?”, G‑d stretched out His finger and consumed them.

The angels could not receive more than their own measured capacity allowed. The verse from Psalms speaks of “the glory of the splendor of His kingship”: the maamar reads it to say that not the whole measure of G‑d’s kingship is enclothed in created beings, only its “glory.”

What the angels receive is only the glory and radiance of G‑d’s kingship, a tiny glimmer, yet even this is “splendor” (hadar, the verse’s word) to them. The text then turns to show that not only angels but even souls are limited once they are in the lower worlds.

Even the Patriarchs’ souls have two levels: one in Atzilus, where the soul is wholly one with G‑d’s light (“He and His life-forces are one”), and one in Beriah, where it is a limited, separate being.

Limitation begins only with the souls’ “birth” into the lower worlds. While they are still in “gestation” in Atzilus they share the state described in the Tikkunei Zohar, where G‑d, His life-forces and His vessels are all one.

In Atzilus the Infinite Light shines openly. The souls there are called “daughters” because they are held within Malchus as in a womb, and “of Jerusalem” because they receive “complete awe” (yirah shalem), read in the name Yerushalayim: a true self-nullification in which they feel nothing but G‑d.

¶1 This explains the name "daughters of Jerusalem" from paragraph 1.

The Shechinah calls herself “black” because she has descended among limited beings, far from the higher unity, the state in which everything is nullified before G‑d. Her blackness is the darkening of bitterness at being so far away.

Such distance calls for great compassion, the kind asked for in the morning prayer “G‑d of the world, in Your abundant mercy, have mercy on us.” The next verse calls her “swarthy” (shecharchores), a word that doubles the letters of shachor, “black”; the Zohar on Tazria asks why the verse does not simply say “black” and answers that there are two darknesses, and the text reads it so: two kinds of blackness.

The first blackness is the bitterness itself. As Job says, “from my flesh I behold”: a person knows from his own experience how bitterness over the soul’s state, felt in the heart’s left chamber, arouses great compassion for that soul.

The verse “the sun has gazed upon me” describes this bitterness. The “sun” is the higher unity, called “a sun and a shield”; remembering it darkens her, and the Zohar reads the verse as “the sun has withdrawn from shining for me.”

A parenthetical aside begins: the Sages say the Chanukah lamp is lit “from when the sun sets.” The text reads this as the time of exile, when the Temple does not stand and Malchus has descended into the lower worlds, so that “the sun has withdrawn” from her.

The Chanukah lamp is a rabbinic mitzvah, and the words of the Scribes are called the source of light; through it “comely” is drawn into “black.” After the aside, the text names the second blackness: the descent itself, into the practical mitzvos.

The second blackness is not about missing the “sun” but about physicality itself: the mitzvos are done with material things, such as animal offerings, woolen tzitzis and parchment tefillin.

Now comes the comfort: the Shechinah is comely precisely because of her blackness, not in spite of it. Each kind of blackness produces its own beauty.

Of the blackness of bitterness the text says, “Much produce comes through the strength of the ox” (Proverbs 14:4). It explains this by the Zohar: when the sitra achra, the side opposed to holiness, is subdued, G‑d’s glory rises in all the worlds, so overcoming the distance brings an elevation beyond what was there before.

The physical mitzvos are the 613 “paths,” and with the seven rabbinic mitzvos they number 620, the numerical value of Keser (the Crown). So being clothed in physical mitzvos connects her with the level of Keser.

¶8 The seven rabbinic mitzvos return in paragraph 8, in "you shall fear your G‑d."

Keser is the supernal will, higher than the “lower will” that arises from intellect and spreads into the emotions. The supernal will stands between G‑d the Emanator and everything emanated, and so the mitzvos, which express it, reach above the orderly structure of the Sefiros.

This is why the Shechinah is more “comely” than the daughters of Jerusalem. Those souls live in Atzilus itself and never descend into the lower worlds.

Yet even their existence comes from the letters of the Torah, for each of the 600,000 souls corresponds to one of its 600,000 letters, and letters are vessels, forms that contain light. The souls come from the inner side of those vessels, but they are still vessels; Malchus, through her descent, gains something more.

By descending, Malchus rises to the level of the lights themselves, above the vessels. And beyond that she rises to the very essence of the simple Infinite One, higher than any level she could reach without descending.

The text now explains “as the tents of Kedar.” Kedar was a son of Yishmael, and the Talmud’s phrase “Avraham, from whom there came forth [Yishmael]” is used in Kabbalistic terms: what separated off from Avraham’s holiness became “dross and refuse.” Yet even such a level must hold a small spark of holy life-force, or it could not exist at all.

That spark of life does not enter it directly; it surrounds it from outside, as an encompassing light (makif). The text compares this to the incense: of its eleven spices, ten are said to be clothed in the kelipos, while frankincense (levonah), whose name comes from lavan, “white,” stands above them as an encompassing light.

“Tents” are a picture of a surrounding light, a covering from above. So the Shechinah says: I too have a “tent,” an encompassing light that comes from the higher unity, the “sun” that has gazed upon me.

“The curtains of Shlomo” stand for still higher encompassing lights. There are two kinds: those that are revealed now, and those that will be revealed only in the days of Mashiach.

The higher kind is named after Shlomo, whose name comes from shalom, peace, as in Isaiah’s “let him make peace with Me.” Peace, in this sense, means bringing two opposites together.

The opposites are supernal lights, whose nature is to rise away from the worlds, and the lower places where they are made to shine. The Sages speak of peace in two “households,” above and below, and the text now explains each. The Sages teach that one who studies Torah for its own sake brings peace to the heavenly household, the angels, and to the earthly household, Israel. The maamar reads these two kinds of peace as two levels at which opposites are joined, the higher light with the lower world.

Peace below means that Malchus of Atzilus becomes “Atik,” the hidden inner source, for the World of Beriah. Peace above means that the Infinite One joins with Atzilus in the same way, so that even Chochmah, the highest wisdom, is as mere physical “action” before Him, as in “You made them all with wisdom.”

This joining of the Infinite with the worlds is brought about by Torah study for its own sake. Saying and reading the words of the Torah draws the higher light down.

The verse “Havayah is near to all who call upon Him in truth” is read as a reference to Torah, since Chochmah is called truth and the Torah comes from Chochmah.

“Call upon Him in truth” is read as “call Him into the truth,” that is, draw G‑d into the Torah. The name Shlomo ends with a hei, which the text links to the two letters hei in the divine Name Havayah, the higher (Binah) and the lower (Malchus).

Shalom and Shlomo in themselves refer to G‑d as clothed within the worlds, making peace among them. “The curtains of Shlomo,” though, are the higher encompassing lights, and nothing in the kelipos corresponds to them.

The “tents of Kedar,” the frankincense, have a holy counterpart, the encompassing light of holiness. The “curtains of Shlomo” have no counterpart at all, which is why they can be revealed only in the time to come.

The text sums up: the two kinds of blackness, and the comeliness that comes from them. It finds all this hinted at in the verse “Before the hoary head you shall rise, and honor the face of the elder, and you shall fear your G‑d; I am Havayah.”

“The hoary head” is white hair, which recalls Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days, whose hair was “like clean wool”; the white hairs are the many laws of the positive commandments. “The elder” recalls the beloved’s locks, “black as a raven,” in the Song of Songs; and the Sages read zaken, “elder,” as one who “has acquired” (kanah) wisdom.

The black locks are the laws that extend into the prohibitions, the “black” side of the mitzvos. “You shall fear your G‑d” refers to the rabbinic mitzvos, which the Sages treat as even weightier than Torah law, and “I am Havayah” shows that all these levels are one.

¶3 The seven rabbinic mitzvos from paragraph 3 return here as "you shall fear your G‑d."