שמע ישראל הוי׳ אלקינו הוי׳ אחד ואהבת כו׳

The maamar opens with the first verse of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) and the start of the next verse, “And you shall love Havayah your G‑d.” Its first question: why does the verse say the Name Havayah twice, once in “Havayah is our G‑d” and again in “Havayah is One”?

Two more questions. In the daily recital, “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever” is said between “One” and “And you shall love”: why was this interruption instituted? And the word Shema has two senses: “gathering,” as when Shaul gathered (vayeshama) the people for war (I Samuel 15:4), and “understanding.” A maamar of 5640 cited in the Kehot note explains that the two are one: to gather all one’s faculties into contemplating how Havayah our G‑d is one.

Ve’ahavta can be read as a command (“love!”) or as a future (“you will love”). The Alter Rebbe reads it as a promise: one who contemplates deeply that Havayah is One will come to love G‑d “with all your heart,” which the Mishnah (Berachos 9:5) explains as “with both your inclinations,” so that even the evil inclination yields to that love.

The question is sharpened: every Jew recites the Shema morning and evening. If “And you shall love” is a promise that follows from it, why do people not actually arrive at that love?

The answer begins with Moshe’s words near the end of Deuteronomy (30:15–20): G‑d sets life before us and tells us to choose it, “to love Havayah your G‑d.” Choosing life is bound up with loving G‑d.

“For He is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:20) identifies G‑d Himself as the life one is to choose. Before he can serve G‑d, a person must first understand what his choice really is, as the next paragraphs explain.

If “choose life” were simply a command to want to live, it would seem unnecessary: everyone already loves life.

Worse, the ordinary love of life is really a love of this world’s pleasures, the opposite of loving G‑d. The evil inclination itself “loves life” in this sense, so how can choosing life be the same as loving G‑d?

The answer depends on what “life” truly means. To explain it, the Alter Rebbe turns to the second day of creation (Genesis 1:6), when G‑d commanded a firmament to divide between waters.

The next verse (Genesis 1:7) tells that G‑d made the firmament and divided between the waters below it and the waters above it. These upper and lower waters will be the key to two kinds of “life.”

Of all the acts of creation, only the firmament’s dividing is told twice: “let it divide” in G‑d’s command (Genesis 1:6) and “He divided” in its fulfillment (1:7). The maamar asks why this utterance is different.

The answer starts from Job’s words, “from my flesh I behold G‑d” (Job 19:26): the workings of the human body can teach about G‑dliness. In the body all vitality comes from the heart; voice and speech, for instance, are formed as that vitality passes from the heart to the lungs and from the lungs to the windpipe.

Even the brain, which thinks and reflects, receives its vitality from the heart. The Kehot note points to the Zohar (3:161b, 221b and elsewhere), that the heart is distributed to all the limbs.

So the heart sends out two kinds of life: a spiritual vitality that becomes thought and speech, and a physical vitality, the blood, which it sends to all the limbs.

The blood that builds the body comes from food, which is sorted in the stomach and the liver: the best part rises to the heart, and the waste is expelled through the intestines. This sorting into choice and waste is the heart of the analogy.

In the body a partition, the diaphragm, separates the organs of breathing (heart and lungs) from the organs of digestion. The Alter Rebbe calls it by the Kabbalistic term parsa, “partition,” preparing the comparison with the firmament between the waters.

Now the analogue: G‑d is called “the Rock of my heart” (Psalms 73:26), the “heart” from which all life flows, as it says, “and You give life to them all” (Nehemiah 9:6). And as in the body, His flow comes in two kinds.

The first flow is the “upper waters,” supernal delight: the delight in G‑d Himself of which Isaiah says, “then you will delight in Havayah” (Isaiah 58:14).

The second flow is the “lower waters,” the delights of this world, which correspond to the waste of digestion. They are drawn down past the partition, the “firmament” that divides the upper waters from the lower.

Now “choose life” is clear: it means choosing the higher life, the supernal delight that is the Tree of Life, and despising the physical delights that come from the lower waters, the Tree of Knowledge, where good and evil are mixed.

The way to make this choice is the Shema, morning and evening. The maamar reads the word Shema (שמע) as shem, “name” (שם), and the ayin (ע), which is written large in the Torah scroll, as the Zohar (3:236b) notes.

The ayin has the value seventy: the seven emotive attributes listed in “Yours, Havayah, are the greatness and the might…” (I Chronicles 29:11), each made up of ten. Shem, “name,” is the letters that express those attributes, a radiance that goes out from them to create something from nothing.

That G‑d’s Name gives life does not mean that creation touches the Name itself. The verse says “His Name alone is exalted,” beyond the world, while what is over earth and heavens is only “His splendor” (hodo) (Psalms 148:13).

“His splendor” is only a gleam of the radiance of the letters. This creative speech, “By the word of Havayah the heavens were made” (Psalms 33:6), unfolds in time, day by day.

Each of the days of creation had its own utterance: on the first, “Let there be light,” on the second, “Let there be a firmament.” And as the blessing before the morning Shema says, G‑d “in His goodness renews each day, continually, the work of creation.”

The phrase “the word (davar) of each day on its day” is read literally: each day of creation has its own “word,” the letters and speech that flow from the attribute belonging to that day.

So the first day’s utterance, “Let there be light,” comes from Chesed, kindness, the first of the seven attributes; the second day’s, “Let there be a firmament,” comes from the attribute of that day, and so on.

On Shabbos the creative speech returns to its source, as a person who finishes speaking or thinking returns to the source from which his words came. That is why the seventh day is called “a Shabbos to Havayah your G‑d”: a return to G‑d.

Now the first question is answered. “Israel” recalls the Midrash that “Israel arose in [G‑d’s] thought” before creation. The Name Havayah stands for contraction, expansion and drawing-down; in “Havayah is our G‑d” it is drawn down to be “our G‑d,” the Supernal Thought from which the souls of Israel came into being.

This is higher than “Havayah is One,” where the same process descends into divine speech, the root of the created world. The ches (eight) of echad alludes to the seven heavens and the earth, and its dalet (four) to the four directions; the Kehot note traces this to the Smak (siman 104), cited in the Beis Yosef (beginning of Orach Chaim 61), and see Berachos 13b.

The analogy is recalled: the heart’s vitality goes both to speech and to the brain’s thinking, and the vitality that reaches thought is the higher of the two.

This answers why the Name Havayah is said twice. “Havayah is our G‑d” is the higher drawing-forth, into thought, where the souls of Israel “arose in thought”; it is higher than the drawing-forth into speech, and higher even than the angels, who were made “by the breath of His mouth” (Psalms 33:6).

“Havayah is One” belongs to the order of creation: “one” can be said only where there are many things, heaven and earth and the six directions, and G‑d is One among them because they are all nullified to Him. The Kehot note adds that another transcript of this maamar calls this, in the name of Chovos HaLevavos (Sha’ar HaYichud, ch. 9), “the one that is counted.”

“Havayah is our G‑d,” by contrast, is drawn from G‑d as Yachid, the Singular One: not one among many, but singular and unique, the only existence. This is the source of the souls.

The prayer calls Yitzchak Avraham’s yachid, “only one,” the same word. This level is the “Life of life,” above even the spiritual life that sustains the worlds, of which it says “and You (ve’atah) give life to them all” (Nehemiah 9:6). Ve’atah is read as the letters from alef to tav (את) and the hei (ה, five): the five places in the mouth where speech is articulated.

“He sustains life,” from the Amidah, and “Singular One, Life of the worlds, King,” from the blessing Baruch She’amar, both teach that G‑d as Singular is above the life He gives: He is “Life of the worlds” only through the level of “King,” Malchus. “For with You is the source of life” (Psalms 36:10) says the same: the source of life is with Him, while He Himself is above it.

When a person contemplates that “Havayah is our G‑d” is the level of Yachid itself, he reaches the highest level of his own soul, Yechidah, “the singular one,” so called because it receives from G‑d as Yachid. The verse “One is she, my dove” (Song of Songs 6:9) speaks of this oneness. The Kehot note points to Etz Chaim (Sha’ar Drushei ABYA, ch. 1) for the name Yechidah.

Such contemplation brings by itself the love of “And you shall love Havayah your G‑d with all your heart,” coming from Yechidah, the soul’s innermost point, present in every spark of a person: the spark that “arose in thought.”

Moshe’s words “And we dwelt in the valley opposite Beis Pe’or” (Deuteronomy 3:29), said in his review of the Torah in Devarim (Mishneh Torah), are read as a lesson: one must stand “opposite” Pe’or, in the opposite stance.

Pe’or was an idolatry whose worship sought to draw divine vitality down into the lower waters, the pleasures of this world. The Alter Rebbe compares it with the wayward son of Deuteronomy 21, “a glutton and a drunkard,” given over to indulgence.

Its worshippers relieved themselves as their service, which the maamar reads as drawing down the waste, the lowest of the lower waters. The Alter Rebbe cites Etz Chaim (Sha’ar 31, ch. 5); the Kehot note quotes it, through Or HaTorah: the service of Pe’or was to expel the filth to it, for that is its very nourishment.

“Valley” (gai), low ground, stands for humility, submission and bittul before G‑d, the very opposite of Pe’or. The verses (Deuteronomy 4:3–4) contrast Pe’or’s followers, who were destroyed and became as nothing, with those who cleave to G‑d.

“You who cleave to Havayah your G‑d are alive”: attachment to G‑d is true life. And vaneshev, “we dwelt,” literally “we sat,” alludes to the Shema, which is recited sitting; its aim is bittul, to the point of readiness to give one’s life at the word “One.”

In the time of the First Temple the souls were loftier, and contemplation alone, “Hear, O Israel … One,” was enough to bring them to “And you shall love.”

After the destruction, love can come only through “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom,” which stands for accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. The next paragraph draws the conclusion for the order of the Shema.

This answers the opening questions together. People today do not reach love through the Shema alone, because love now requires first accepting the yoke of Heaven, and that is why “Blessed be the Name of the glory of His kingdom” was placed before “And you shall love.”

Accepting the yoke means subduing the sitra achra, as the Mishnah says, “Nullify your will before His will” (Avos 2:4). G‑d’s kingship requires a people (am), and am is related to omemos, “dimmed” coals (Pesachim 75b): a people is a separate, “dimmed” existence, far from the King.

The worth of a subject’s submission lies here: he is a separate being with a will of his own, yet he sets it aside completely. Only what is done with such nullification of will is truly called “service” (avodah).

Nullifying the will is meant literally: doing the opposite of what the heart desires. In “turn away from evil,” it means “Sanctify yourself in what is permitted to you” (Yevamos 20a), refraining even from permitted things, which is the idea of a vow (Numbers 30:3).

A vow, the Mishnah says, is “a fence for abstinence” (Avos 3:13), and abstinence “brings one to holiness” (Sotah 9:15). The Alter Rebbe calls this the level of ahavah rabbah, “great love,” “with all your heart.”

Elsewhere the Sages say that cleanliness brings one to abstinence (Avodah Zarah 20b), with no mention of vows. The Alter Rebbe explains: before the destruction people attained the level of a vow itself, which the Raaya Mehemna describes as very lofty.

The Raaya Mehemna (Zohar 2:91b) says a vow is “above,” bound up with “the life of the King,” which recalls the maamar’s discussion of “life.” Today, however, we say “without a vow” (bli neder), as the Shulchan Aruch rules (Yoreh De’ah 203:4); the two sayings thus seem to fit two eras.

In “do good,” doing the opposite of one’s nature means going beyond habit. The Talmud (Chagigah 9b) says that one who reviews his learning a hundred times is not like one who reviews it a hundred and one times, and calls only the second one who “serves G‑d.”

The same holds for charity: the coin given beyond one’s habit is worth more. Going beyond oneself in this way is accepting the yoke of Heaven, and it leads to the higher love, “with all your might” (bechol me’odecha), love without limit.

Two verses about sowing show why: “Light is sown for the righteous” (Psalms 97:11) and “I will sow her for Me in the land” (Hosea 2:25). It is a rule that nothing becomes something new except by first losing its old existence.

A seed sprouts only after it rots in the ground, and then it yields many ears. The nullification of the old form is what makes growth and multiplication possible.

So too in the soul: when a person nullifies his will and subdues the sitra achra, he reaches “with all your might,” a love too great for any vessel. “With all your soul,” by contrast, is a love held in the mind, a vessel with limits.

“With all your might” has no vessel of its own; its vessel is Malchus, which the Tikkunei Zohar calls “the mouth” and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is called “the King’s command,” the rulings of forbidden and permitted, impure and pure, fit and unfit; the Kehot note points to Beitzah 28b, where the Talmud’s mnemonic is “the Mishnah is the queen.”

Isaiah’s promise, “So shall your seed and your name endure” (66:22), is read through the image of sowing. “Your seed” is the light that is sown and grows (Psalms 97:11; Isaiah 32:20). “Your name” is linked to “And David made a name” (II Samuel 8:13) and to accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven: the bittul that is like the rotting of the seed, which makes growth possible.

In a parenthesis the Alter Rebbe adds that through this bittul the Congregation of Israel is called tamasi, “my perfect one,” which the Sages, as Likkutei Torah cites them elsewhere, read as te’umasi, “my twin”: Israel draws the revelation down so that below is like above. Joel’s prophecy of a spring from G‑d’s House that waters the valley of Shittim (Joel 4:18) means that the lower waters will no longer be in the state of “from there it divided” (Genesis 2:10), cut off from their source.

The Alter Rebbe refers to his discussion of “There are sixty queens” (Song of Songs 6:8). This change comes through the yoke of Heaven and “with all your might,” which is compared to “a well of living waters”: the waters become “living” by passing through the earth.

Further discussion is in Parshas Chukas, on the song of the well, “Spring up, O well” (Numbers 21:17); through this the spring of the Time to Come goes forth and waters even the lower waters. The parenthesis closes, and the Alter Rebbe lists Midrashim on the verse “Hear, O Israel”: Devarim Rabbah at the end of Va’eschanan, Bereshis Rabbah 98 and Vayikra Rabbah at the end of chapter 4.

The list continues with the Midrash Rabbah on Shir HaShirim, on “and his desire is for me” (Song of Songs 7:11), and on Eichah, at the end of its comment on “The yoke … is bound” (Lamentations 1:14), and there the story of Miriam, on “therefore I will hope in Him” (Lamentations 3:24).

The list of Midrashim on the Shema continues: on “My portion is Havayah” (Lamentations 3:24), on “There is one” (Ecclesiastes 4:8) and “from one Shepherd” (Ecclesiastes 12:11), and on “There is one people” (Esther 3:8). Three of these verses contain the word echad, “one.”

Now the verse quoted at the beginning (Deuteronomy 30:15) is explained in full. “Life” is the flow above the partition, the upper waters; “death” is the waste sorted out below it, the lower waters.

“Evil” is worse than death: it is what Pe’or did, making the waste into a full-fledged existence of its own. Waste in itself is only refuse; making it a thing in its own right is worse than the waste itself.

Just as “evil” is lower than “death,” “good” is higher than “life.” The Mishnah (Avos 4:17) says that one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world is better than all the life of the World to Come.

So too, “Your kindness is better (tov, ‘good’) than life” (Psalms 63:4). All the worlds draw their life from just two letters, yud and hei: the Talmud (Menachos 29b) reads “with Yah, Havayah is the Rock of the worlds” (Isaiah 26:4) to mean that this world was created with hei and the World to Come with yud.

Those letters, the source of all life, are as nothing before G‑d’s essence. And though “wisdom gives life” (Ecclesiastes 7:12), G‑d is far above wisdom: He is “living, but not through life,” a phrase the Kehot note traces to the Rambam.

“For with You is the source of life” (Psalms 36:10) means that even the source of life is only “with” G‑d, secondary and nullified to Him. “Good,” then, is a level above even the source of life.

The text refers to its explanation of “in His goodness He renews” in the discourse “I am black.” It then returns to the question of paragraph 4: this is the meaning of the firmament’s dividing stated twice. In context, beside the division between “life” and “death” there is a further distinction, “good” that is above “life,” and drawing it down comes through “with all your might.”