אשה כי תזריע וילדה זכר כו׳

The maamar opens with the first verse of Parshas Tazria (Leviticus 12:2) and the Talmud’s teaching on it, found in Berakhot 60a and Niddah 31a: when the woman emits seed first, the child is a male. The Alter Rebbe takes the verse’s word tazria, “emits seed,” literally, and the maamar sets out to explain why the woman’s seeding should produce a male.

The philosophers explained the rule mechanically: if the woman emits seed first, the man’s seed comes after it and lies “above,” and the upper, later seed prevails, so the child takes after the man and is male. If the man emits seed first, the woman’s seed comes last and prevails, and the child is female.

The Alter Rebbe objects that this forces the words. “A woman emits seed first” suggests that the male comes from her own seed, not that her seeding merely comes first so that the man’s later seed can decide the matter.

A second proof comes from the Talmud in Niddah 31a, on the verse listing the children Leah bore (Genesis 46:15). There the sons are called “the sons of Leah,” after their mother, while Dinah is called “his daughter,” Jacob’s.

The Talmud explains the verse by the same rule: the sons are ascribed to Leah because the woman emitted seed first, so the male comes from the woman’s own seed. The parenthesis adds the Midrash Rabbah on Tazria (Vayikra Rabbah 14:9), which says outright that the female is from the man and the male from the woman.

Now the inner explanation: the male is Chesed, the giving, expansive attribute, hinted in the verse “He remembered (zachar) His kindness (chasdo),” since zachar, “remembered,” is also the word for “male.” The female is Gevurah, measure and judgment, hinted in Shmuel’s rule “the law of the kingdom is law,” read here as saying that the kingdom, Malchus, the feminine attribute, is din, judgment. The Talmud also relates that Sarah became a niddah, a woman in her menstrual state, on the very day the angels came to announce her son, and the Alter Rebbe calls this the level of Gevuros.

The Talmud (Bava Metzia 87a) notes that the verse says both “flour” and “fine flour,” and learns that a woman is more begrudging toward guests than a man (literally, “her eye is narrow”); in the Alter Rebbe’s telling, Abraham asked for fine flour and Sarah gave flour. He explains this by her root in the Gevuros, the attributes of measure and restraint.

The Alter Rebbe now turns to how a child is formed from both parents. The Talmud (Niddah 31a) teaches that the father supplies the “white,” from which come the bones, sinews and brain, and the mother the “red,” from which come the skin and flesh.

This raises a difficulty: the father’s contribution is Chesed and the mother’s is Gevurah, and these are opposites: Chesed is likened to water and Gevurah to fire, and water puts out fire. The question is how two such opposite influences can combine in one child.

The answer rests on a known principle: each of the ten Sefiros contains all ten within it. So Chesed is not Chesed alone; it includes a Chesed within Chesed, a Gevurah within Chesed, a Tiferes within Chesed, and so on.

Gevurah likewise contains a Chesed within Gevurah and a Gevurah within Gevurah. The familiar example is the counting of the Omer: seven emotive attributes, each including all seven, make up its forty-nine days.

An example of Gevurah within Chesed: a father who strikes and disciplines his son does so out of love, so that the son will return to G‑d and study His Torah, yet the blows truly hurt. The motive is Chesed while the act is Gevurah, and so it is with G‑d: “Whom G‑d loves He rebukes.”

The reverse, Chesed within Gevurah, is the mother, who is of Gevurah, yet lavishes every good thing on her son and nurses him a great deal. It is kindness in form, but it is not for his good at all.

This explains how the parents’ opposite natures can combine. In their union the father, who is Chesed, gives from the Gevurah within him, and the mother, who is Gevurah, gives from the Chesed within her.

Because each gives from the element that matches the other’s nature, the two can join. Pure Chesed (Chesed within Chesed) and pure Gevurah (Gevurah within Gevurah) would have nothing in common and could not join at all.

This resolves the Talmud’s rule. As paragraph 4 showed, the mother’s bestowal comes from the Chesed within her, so when her seed comes first, the bestowal that leads is Chesed.

Chesed is the male, so she gives birth to a male. When the man’s seed comes first, the leading bestowal is his, which comes from the Gevurah within him, and Gevurah is the female, so she gives birth to a female.

Now the verse can be read plainly: “when a woman emits seed,” it is through her own seeding that she gives birth to a male. The philosophers’ reading, that the man’s later seed decides, is not what the verse says.

The same idea is restated in the terms of Kabbalah. The Names Mah (45) and Ban (52) are two ways of spelling out the letters of the Name Havayah, named for their numerical values, and the male is drawn from Mah, the female from Ban. The parenthesis refers to the end of the discourse beginning “The voice of my beloved,” where this is discussed in connection with the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs.

As with Chesed and Gevurah, each Name includes the other. What the man bestows is “Ban of Mah,” the Ban within his Mah, and because it is of the Name Ban, the feminine, it results in a female, just as his bestowal from Gevurah did.

The woman, who is herself the Name Ban, bestows the Mah contained within her Ban, just as she bestows from the Chesed within her Gevurah.

Since her bestowal is of the Name Mah, the masculine, it results in a male. The parenthesis refers the reader to the Zohar on Tazria (Part III, 42b, 43b and 45b), which discusses this verse.