ואתה מרבבות קדש

The maamar opens with a phrase from Moshe’s blessing, “And He came from the holy myriads” (Deuteronomy 33:2), and first sets up a scale of numbers: units, tens, hundreds and up. Ayak Bechar groups the Hebrew letters by rank (alef, yud, kuf are 1, 10, 100; beis, kaf, reish are 2, 20, 200), so each rank repeats the one below it ten times over. The Alter Rebbe refers to Sha’arei Orah, Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla’s book on the divine Names, where Sha’ar (Gate) 1 takes up the Levites’ tithe and “tithe from the tithe” (Numbers 18:26) and the hundred silver sockets of the Mishkan (Exodus 38:27).

¶7 Hold the verse "from the holy myriads": paragraph 7 explains it.

The myriad, ten thousand, is the highest number with a name of its own in the Holy Tongue. Two verses use it as the great number: Rivkah’s family blessing her, “may you become thousands of myriads” (Genesis 24:60), and the promise that “a hundred of you shall pursue a myriad” (Leviticus 26:8).

Above ten thousand the Torah has no new word and counts in multiples: “the myriads of the thousands of Israel” (Numbers 10:36), Nineveh’s “twelve myriads” (Jonah 4:11). The Mishnah on the invitation to Grace after Meals likewise changes its wording with the size of the company only up to ten thousand: the myriad is the top rank.

Now the scale is mapped onto the Sefiros through the verse on Sarah’s lifespan, 100 + 20 + 7. The “seven” are the seven emotive attributes (middos) named in David’s blessing before the assembly: “Yours, Havayah, is the greatness (Chesed), the might (Gevurah), the beauty (Tiferes), the victory (Netzach), the splendor (Hod), for all in heaven and earth (Yesod); Yours, Havayah, is the kingdom (Malchus).”

The emotive attributes are levels set apart from one another, and two of them even oppose each other: kindness pours out, restraint holds back.

That is why the verse says “years” in the plural for the seven: they stay separate. For the twenty, the two “tens” of Chochmah and Binah, it says “year” in the singular, because they are “two companions that never part”: when a person grasps a halachah, the flash of insight and its working-out come together of themselves. At the opening of Re’eh in Likkutei Torah, the Alter Rebbe uses the same phrase of the Zohar to teach that the self-nullification of Chochmah and the contemplation of Binah must always go together in serving G‑d.

The Zohar on Chayei Sarah asks why the verse says “year” for the hundred and the twenty but “years” for the seven, and answers that each of the first two is one: the hundred, through the secret of the hundred daily blessings, and the twenty, because Thought and the “Jubilee” (Chochmah and Binah) never part. The first conclusion: each emotive attribute counts only as a unit.

The proof: seven attributes are “seven years,” one year each, so each attribute is a single unit.

Intellect, by contrast, is at the rank of tens, since Chochmah and Binah are “twenty.” The reason: when the mind gives rise to an emotion, not all of it enters the emotion, only a tenth of it; the mind as a whole is far greater than what the feeling holds.

A basic principle: the part of the mind that “dresses” itself in an emotion, supplying its reason and intelligence, is nothing compared with the mind’s own essence, which has nothing to do with feelings at all.

The Alter Rebbe refers to two other maamarim. In Likkutei Torah, Pinchas, on “My offering, My bread,” he explains that if all of the mind’s understanding entered the emotions they could not hold it; what enters them is a small, contracted glimmer, like the thin sinews that join the bones to the flesh. Hence each emotion is only the tenth within the intellect.

The divine Name Kel is tied to Chesed (“the kindness of Kel,” Psalms 52:3), and the Zohar calls it “the radiance of Chochmah”: the light of the intellect as it shines into the attributes.

A numerical proof: Kel (alef-lamed) is 31, a tenth of yesh (yud-shin), 310. In “Acquire wisdom, acquire understanding,” the word kenei (155) comes twice, 310, the value of yesh: so Chochmah and Binah together are yesh, and Kel, their light in the emotions, is their tithe. This is called Malchus within Chochmah, the lowest, outward-facing aspect of the intellect.

The same ratio repeats one rank up: the whole intellect, Chochmah and Binah (the “tens”), is only a tenth of what is above it, the “hundred.” So the Sages’ teaching that Adam’s stature was a hundred cubits fits: the full stature of man reaches the “hundred.”

Above intellect there are still more levels. In the soul, Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah relate to action, feeling and intellect, while Chayah and Yechidah, the two highest levels, are beyond intellect.

The five levels of the soul (Nefesh, Ruach, Neshamah, Chayah, Yechidah) match the five ranks: units, tens, hundreds, thousands, myriads, each lower level receiving only a tenth of the one above it. In Likkutei Torah, Balak (“How goodly are your tents”), the Alter Rebbe reads the letters beis, kaf, reish as units, tens and hundreds: in Asiyah (Nefesh) each Sefirah is a single point, in Yetzirah (Ruach) it includes ten, and in Beriah (Neshamah) ten of ten.

Above intellect is the supernal will, and within will itself there are two levels: ratzon (pure will) and chefetz (desire).

Ratzon is will with no reason or delight behind it, like G‑d’s answer to Moshe in the Talmud (Menachos 29b), “Be silent; thus it arose in thought before Me,” a decision beyond explanation. Chefetz is desire that comes with a reason and with delight.

¶5 Desire with delight: paragraph 5 shows why delight is the "myriad."

The Alter Rebbe refers to his explanation of “And I was beside Him as a nursling” (Proverbs 8:30), where he speaks of David, whom the Talmud (Sotah 35a) faults for calling the words of Torah “songs.” Then he reads “preserving kindness for thousands”: notzer (“preserving”) has the letters of ratzon (“will”), and from will, kindness spreads into alafim (“thousands”), a word that also means teaching, as in “I shall teach you (a’alefcha) wisdom.” In Likkutei Torah, Matos, he likewise explains notzer, the letters of ratzon, as the supernal will that precedes Atzilus.

The Midrash that “the Torah preceded the world by two thousand years” fits this: the Torah’s root is in the rank of “thousands.” In Torah Ohr, Yisro (“Their appearance and their work”), the Alter Rebbe explains “for thousands” as thousands of levels, contraction after contraction, all rooted in the letter alef. He also points to the Arizal’s Pri Etz Chaim on the Shabbos prayer Yismach Moshe (“Moshe rejoices in the gift of his portion”) and its “thousand parts of light.”

An observation from human experience: of all the soul’s powers, delight spreads the widest and takes the most forms.

Delight is present in every faculty: seeing, hearing, all the senses, thinking and feeling, and each is different in kind: the pleasure of a sight is not the pleasure of a melody or of musical instruments.

The pleasure of understanding is a kind of its own again. So delight comes in a great multitude of kinds.

Yet all the pleasures of this world come only from what “fell” in the breaking of the vessels, the primordial shattering by which holy sparks fell into the lower realms. The Garden of Eden, by contrast, is endless delight, so great that when Acher (Elisha ben Avuyah) died, Rabbi Meir said “it is better that he be judged” and then come to the World to Come (Chagigah 15b); and even the Garden of Eden is only a mere glimmer.

The parenthesis applies this to the scale: the radiance of the supernal delight is called “a myriad” (revavah) compared with the radiance of will, the “thousands,” because it is more abundant (rav) and higher, so that even a tenth of the delight is vast. The sentence breaks off with “etc.”

¶3 This places the delight from paragraph 3 at the level of myriad.

Daniel, in a night vision, sees the Ancient of Days (Atik Yomin) seated on the throne, a thousand thousands serving Him and myriads of myriads standing before Him. Atik is the source of life and of delight, so even the mere glimmer that spreads from it, the angels who serve and stand before Him, numbers in the myriads: the myriads belong to the rank of delight.

The Idra Rabba of the Zohar likewise says that thirteen thousand myriads of worlds dwell in the “skull” (gulgalta) of the Ancient One; and “Praise Him according to the abundance (rov) of His greatness” alludes to the same multitude. This closes the parenthesis.

Back to Sarah: she stands for Malchus, the Matronita (Queen). Her first name, Sarai, means “my sovereign,” rule over a limited sphere; as Sarah she became sovereign to the whole world, as the Talmud says (Berachos 13a): first a princess to her own people, in the end to all the world. So too Malchus is “a kingdom of all worlds,” and for it to spread further below, its power must come from higher above.

So she received the letter hei, whose lines run across and down, the power of spreading in length and breadth. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 47:1) says the yud taken from Sarai was divided, half to Sarah and half to Avraham; the Alter Rebbe refers to his discussion of Avraham’s hei.

The Zohar on Balak, on “I am black but comely,” describes Malchus making herself so small, out of great love for her Beloved, that only a single point is seen, a yud; then He comes to her, and she is built up and made again in her full form, a hei as before.

This explains Sarai with a yud (Malchus made small) and Sarah with a hei (Malchus spread out). And “the life of Sarah,” the life-force that Malchus gives the worlds, comes from the rank of “a hundred.”

The Talmud (Menachos 43b) rules that a person must recite a hundred blessings each day, deriving it from “What (mah) does Havayah your G‑d ask of you” (Deuteronomy 10:12), which the Sages read as me’ah, “a hundred.”

Malchus is called mah (“what?”), a word of self-effacement. Through the blessings the rank of “a hundred,” Keser (the Crown), is drawn into it, since spreading far below needs a source far above. In Likkutei Torah, Masei, the Alter Rebbe explains the hundred blessings the same way: through them mah becomes me’ah, with an added alef, drawn from the most hidden level.

Yet this drawing down reaches only as high as “a hundred.” The Torah’s root is in the “myriads,” far above it: this is the turning point of the maamar.

Now the opening verse is explained: the Torah comes “from the holy myriads.” Precisely because its source is so high, it can descend all the way into physical objects, a sukkah and tefillin: the higher the source, the lower it can reach.

¶1 This explains the verse opened in paragraph 1.

The Alter Rebbe refers to three other maamarim, among them his explanation of Moshe’s song “Give ear, O heavens,” where the Torah falls “as showers (revivim) upon the grass.” Revivim shares its root with revavos, myriads: the Torah’s rain comes down from the holy myriads.

In the parenthesis: the life-force of the worlds, “the life of Sarah” (Malchus, which gives life to all), comes from the outer union of Chochmah and Binah, called Ayin and Yesh (“nothing” and “being”).

Through Torah and mitzvos, however, a person draws from the inner union of Chochmah and Binah, whose root is in Atik and in the Infinite One itself. The verse “How abundant (rav) is Your goodness, which You have hidden away” alludes to this, since rav and revavah come from the same root.

“Abundant in deeds” (said of Benayahu son of Yehoyada) is read the same way. Elsewhere, the Yesod of Arich Anpin, its channel of giving, is called “Your abundant goodness.” That is why the generations from Adam to Noach lived so long: their life was drawn from Arich Anpin. The Zohar (Part I, 37b) says that in those days the supernal spirit was drawn from the Tree of Life, so people lived many days.

Afterwards the verse limits man’s days to “a hundred and twenty years,” like Sarah’s “a hundred years and twenty years”: life is now measured by the rank of “a hundred.”

This also explains “abundant (rav) shall be the peace of your children”: peace in abundance, rooted in the myriads, as explained in the discourse “And all your children.”

Yet what the Torah reveals of the myriads now is only ve’asa, the Aramaic word for “and He came,” the language of the Targum (the Aramaic translation). Aramaic is the “back” (achorayim), the outer side: the inner reasons of the Torah, its inner dimension, are not yet revealed, and will be only in the Time to Come.

“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth” opens the Song of Songs, which the Sages read as the love between G‑d and Israel. A kiss is the cleaving of spirit to spirit, an image for the revelation of the Torah’s inner reasons; Tanya (chapter 45) explains the “kisses” as the bond of a person’s speech and thought with the word of G‑d through Torah study. For now we have only the “back,” ve’asa, as the next maamar, on “Torah [Moshe] commanded [us],” explains at length.

The same verse says G‑d “shone forth from Se’ir,” read as se’aros, hairs. Hair grows from the head but is a surplus, not part of the brain’s substance, which is why cutting it does not hurt. So too the Torah as we have it: the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 17:5) calls it “the fallen fruit of the supernal wisdom,” an outer extension of G‑d’s wisdom.

Union means drawing down the revelation of the Infinite Light itself, the One beyond number, so that “the glory of Havayah shall be revealed” and “eye to eye they shall see” (Isaiah), in the Time to Come. The initials of blessing, holiness and union (beis, kuf, yud) spell Bki, and rearranged, Yabok: hence the entry “Yabok” in the Pardes’s lexicon of Kabbalistic terms, and Me’orei Or, which the Kehot note quotes: “Bki” is a name of the Holy One, the secret of Yabok, the whole of Atzilus. The note reads the two places in Me’orei Or as letter beis, section 66, and letter yud, section 24 (the print has gimmel and 23).

He continues the list: the Ra’aya Mehemna on Mishpatim, the Zohar on Pekudei, and the glosses of the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) on the Zohar for Teitzei, on “and blesses with it.” As the Kehot note quotes him, the Ramaz writes there that blessing is Binah, holiness is Chochmah, and union is in Keser.

He also points to the end of his discourse on the libations, and to the Zohar on Balak: on “Bless Havayah, His angels,” it teaches that the angels may say blessing on their own, but “holy” only together with Israel. Holiness is drawn down through the Jewish people.

The Talmud (Chagigah 16a) reads ve’asa (ואתה) as os (אות), “a sign”: G‑d is “a sign among His myriad,” distinct from all His hosts. The Midrash on Song of Songs says the same, at the end of its section on “What is your beloved [more than another].”

¶9 "A sign among His myriad": paragraph 9 explains what it means.

The Alter Rebbe suggests this matches the Midrash on “You shall be holy” (Bereishis Rabbah 90:2): could it mean as holy as G‑d? No, “for I am holy”: “My holiness is above your holiness.”

Along the same lines: “from the holy myriads” is the level of “You shall be holy,” the holiness drawn down through the Torah.

“He is a sign among His myriad” is a higher level, “My holiness is above your holiness”: beyond even the holy myriads, because He is “One, but not in number”; so too “His understanding is beyond number.” In Likkutei Torah, Yom Kippur, the Alter Rebbe explains that the Midrash’s “like Me” cannot mean G‑d’s very essence; it refers to His light enclothed at the root of the emanated levels, Atik.

¶8 This explains "a sign among His myriad" from paragraph 8.

Compared with something outside number altogether, a myriad is no more than the other, smaller numbers.

That is the meaning of Daniel’s vision: the “thousand thousands” and “myriads of myriads” before the Ancient of Days are all alike before Him, and He is “a sign” distinct within them, as the Midrash on Song of Songs says.

The Alter Rebbe closes with two Zohar passages on “And He came from the myriads”: on Shemos, where the angels ask for the Torah and are answered, and on Terumah, where the revelation at Sinai begins from the “holy myriads,” the root of all the levels.