להבין ענין משמח חתן וכלה ומשמח חתן עם…

The maamar sets out to explain two of the wedding blessings, the one that ends “Who gladdens the groom and bride” and the one that ends “Who gladdens the groom with the bride.” The parenthesis points to the end of Parshas Vayigash in Torah Ohr, where the change from “and” to “with” is discussed. The Alter Rebbe begins by identifying the groom and bride, following the Arizal’s Pri Etz Chaim, as the supernal Yaakov and Rachel.

Knesses Yisrael, the source of the souls of Israel, is the Sefirah of Malchus of Atzilus, which enclothes itself in the three lower worlds to give them life. She is called Rachel after Isaiah’s “ewe (rachel) that is mute before her shearers”: the shearers are the created beings, who experience themselves as yesh, independent existence, the very opposite of the Infinite, and yet she must descend to give them life.

The name kallah (bride) speaks of her longing: she yearns to rise and to be included (lehiskalel) in the Infinite Light. She descends to the created beings only against her will, in the state of “I was mute with silence” (Psalms 39:3). The parenthesis refers to two other discourses in Likkutei Torah, in Parshas Pinchas and Parshas Masei.

Yaakov is the groom. The word chassan is linked with the Talmud’s saying “Go down a step (nechis darga) and take a wife” (Yevamos 63a): the groom is the one who “descends a level” to the bride. He is also like the middle bar of the Mishkan that ran “from end to end” (Exodus 26:28), which the Zohar identifies with Yaakov, who holds on to both sides.

So Yaakov stands for the flow of the Infinite Light from the very top of all levels down into Rachel, the bride who receives it. Their union is the drawing of the light that encompasses all worlds (sovev) into the light that fills all worlds (memalei), so that what is beyond the worlds comes into them.

The name Yaakov (יעקב) has the same letters as yibaka (יבקע), “shall break forth,” as the Arizal writes in Etz Chaim. The Alter Rebbe cites gate 31, following the Shklov printing of 5560 (1799–1800); in later editions it is gate 32 (Kehot note). The verse “He split rocks in the wilderness” shows the meaning of the root: splitting open.

Isaiah 58:8, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,” gives the image: dawn breaks through the darkness of night and lets the light shine. “And as the dawn rose” (Genesis 19:15) is quoted for the same picture of dawn coming up out of the night.

In the same way, Yaakov breaks through a hidden level within the Infinite Light, which Psalms calls “He made darkness His hiding place” (Psalms 18:12). This level is higher than both the light that fills the worlds and the light that encompasses them.

The parenthesis explains why this level is not the encompassing light: even sovev is still called a “light,” an Or Makif that relates to the worlds from around them, whereas what is above it is “darkness,” utterly hidden. Yaakov’s breaking-through brings even this hidden level into open revelation. The reader is referred to the discourse on “I am black, yet comely” (Song of Songs 1:5).

This explains how Isaiah’s verse continues: “and your healing (aruchascha) shall speedily sprout.” The Alter Rebbe hears in aruchascha the word for “long,” alluding to Arich Anpin, “the Long Countenance,” a configuration of Keser, drawn down into Malchus; the Midrash at the end of Parshas Behar likewise connects the word with “you will lengthen [your] days.” The form of address, “your,” shows that this is the Arich Anpin within Knesses Yisrael herself.

Arich Anpin is called “long” because it extends downward without limit or end. The reader is referred to the discourse on Moshe’s plea, “And now, I pray, let the strength of my L‑rd be great … G‑d is slow to anger (erech apayim)” (Numbers 14:17–18), where erech, “long,” is the same word.

Now the Alter Rebbe explains “shall sprout.” Creation, from above to below, is “something from nothing,” and so too is growth, which moves the other way, from below to above.

The earth’s power of growth makes the seed sprout, and what grows is also like something from nothing, since the planted seed bears no comparison at all to the fruit that comes from it.

The words “He sows tzedakos (righteous deeds), makes salvations sprout,” from the blessings of the morning prayers, follow the same pattern. “Sowing tzedakos” is Yaakov: he breaks through and lets the Infinite Light shine down into tzedakos, which is Malchus.

The Zohar passages cited identify tzedakos with Malchus. Through this “sowing” from above, “salvations” sprout from below to above, as growth that comes up out of the receiver.

This upward growth is aruchascha: Arich Anpin is drawn all the way down until it brings forth, from below, self-nullification (bittul) and inclusion in G‑d. The parenthesis compares it to “Better one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world than all the life of the World to Come” (Avos 4:17), and to “there is one who acquires his world in a single hour,” discussed in the discourse “How beautiful are your steps.”

Isaiah continues, “and your righteousness shall go before you.” Lefanecha (“before you”) is read as coming from pnimiyus, inwardness, and veholach (“shall go”) as drawing forth: the verse speaks of drawing the inner part of the heart to G‑d, as in Tanya, Iggeres HaKodesh 4 and 8. All this comes from the “sowing of tzedakos” from above.

The parenthesis refers to further discourses: on “Return, O Israel” (Hosea 14:2), where the sower “carrying the measure of seed” (Psalms 126:6) is discussed, and on the Song of the Well (Numbers 21:17), with “a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters” (Song of Songs 4:15). It also refers to the Zohar on “living waters shall go out” (Zechariah 14:8).

Section 2 asks what brings about Yaakov’s “breaking forth” in the first place. The answer is joy, which is the revelation of what is innermost, as in the Priestly Blessing “May G‑d make His face shine” (Numbers 6:25): the face shows what is within.

The analogy recalls the Jerusalem Talmud’s story of Rabbi Abahu, whose face shone because of a Tosefta, a teaching of the Sages, that he had just learned. The delight of discovering a new insight filled him.

The delight in his mind was so strong that it could not stay inside: it shone and showed itself in his face. The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation on the counting of the Omer, “And you shall count for yourselves” (Leviticus 23:15), where joy is likewise called a revelation of the inner dimension, like a face that shines.

So too above. “Yaakov is the cord of His inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:9) describes the state after the breaking-through; what arouses the breaking-through in the first place is “Strength and gladness are in His place” (I Chronicles 16:27), the King’s delight in His very essence.

The parenthesis compares this to the discourse on “To My mare” (Song of Songs 1:9), where “like a groom coming out of his canopy” (Psalms 19:6) is explained: the groom’s going out is drawn from the canopy itself, the encompassing level. It also refers to the discourse for Shemini Atzeres on the blessing “Who has sanctified us with His commandments.”

Hence the wedding blessing “Gladden, O gladden the loving companions, as You gladdened Your creature in the Garden of Eden of old” (Kesubos 8a). The “loving companions” are the groom and bride, Yaakov and Rachel.

The doubled “gladden” refers to the joy that causes the breaking-through, so that the light “descends a level” as a groom does. Delight is the cause, and joy is that delight revealed, as explained in the discourse on “I will greatly rejoice” (Isaiah 61:10).

The request “as You gladdened … of old (mikedem)” asks for joy that comes without any arousal from below, as at the creation of the world. Then nothing came before G‑d’s giving: He created the world because “He desires kindness” (Micah 7:18).

This is an arousal from above that no arousal from below precedes. The Sages say that there is no sadness before G‑d (Chagigah 5b); the Alter Rebbe quotes it as “before HaMakom,” “the Place,” and stresses the word: within time and place there can be sadness, but above, in the “place with Me” (Exodus 33:21), there is “strength and gladness in His place.”

Isaiah 61:10 says “like a groom who dons priestly glory,” using the verb yechahen, related to kohen, priest. The Priestly Blessing is an arousal from above that does not depend on an arousal from below, for if it were earned, there would be no need for a blessing.

So “May G‑d lift up His face toward you” (Numbers 6:26) means raising the flow high above, to a level that an arousal from below cannot reach. The groom too is yechahen, “priestly,” so that the breaking-through comes like the joy of creation “of old,” without an arousal from below; the reader is referred to the discourses on “Thus shall you bless” and “I am black, yet comely.”

In the time of exile this flow is called “Who gladdens the groom and bride.” The vav, “and,” is a drawing-down from the groom to the bride: the bride receives from above.

The last blessing, which begins “Speedily … may there be heard,” refers to the Time to Come. Then “a woman of valor” will be “the crown of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4), and “the light of the moon shall be like the light of the sun” (Isaiah 30:26): sun and moon equal in stature, using “one crown,” the equality the moon spoke of in the Talmud (Chullin 60b).

Then the blessing is “Who gladdens the groom with the bride,” one joy for both, because the encompassing light will be revealed below. As in a circle, where no point is higher than another, groom and bride will rejoice equally, with no above and below at all.

The Alter Rebbe refers to the Arizal’s Etz Chaim, the Gate of the Moon’s Diminution, chapters 1–2, on the moon’s future equality with the sun. He also refers to his explanation on “The children of Yehudah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together” (Hosea 2:2), and to the end of the discourse “Vayigash” in Torah Ohr, which explains “and” and “with” in the two blessings.

A summary of the maamar. Rachel is the bride and Yaakov the groom, named for “shall break forth” (yibaka); aruchascha and “shall sprout” describe the growth from below to above, the “salvations” of self-nullification and inclusion.

What arouses the breaking-through is the King’s “strength and gladness,” joy “of old,” without a prior arousal from below. Now the joy comes to the groom and afterwards to the bride; in the Time to Come the groom will rejoice “with the bride,” in one joy.