מזמור שיר חנוכת הבית כו׳ ולא שמחת אויבי לי

The maamar opens with Psalm 30, “A psalm, a song for the dedication of the House, of David,” and asks who the “enemies” are whose rejoicing G‑d did not allow. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 8) relates that when G‑d was about to create man, the ministering angels objected with the words of Psalm 8, “What is man, that You should remember him?” Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 8, to which a Kehot note points, names three places where the angels contended with G‑d, over man, the Mishkan and the Torah, but tells them in the order the maamar follows: man, then the Torah (where the angels rejoiced when the tablets were broken after the Calf), then the Mishkan.

At Sinai, when Israel said “we will do” before “we will hear,” committing themselves before knowing what they would be told, the angels conceded; the Gemara (Shabbos 88a) tells that a heavenly voice asked who had revealed to Israel this secret of the ministering angels. But when, only forty days after G‑d had spoken with them “face to face,” Israel made the Golden Calf, the angels rejoiced that their first objection had been proved right.

The Mishkan (the portable Sanctuary in the desert) atoned for the Calf, gold for gold, and so the angels’ rejoicing was spoiled. The printed word שחחתם apparently reads שמחתם, “their rejoicing,” and the phrase echoes Yeshayahu’s “all joy has grown dark (ערבה).”

So the “enemies” in David’s psalm are not human foes but the accusing angels. The dedication of the House silenced them, because it showed that man, for all his failings, could become a dwelling for G‑d. The Siddur’s version of this maamar reads “when David prepared the building of the Beis HaMikdash,” since David prepared it and Shlomo built it.

Although the psalm speaks of the Beis HaMikdash and the angels’ disappointment came at the Mishkan, the two are one theme, so the verse fits. The parenthesis gives places where “enemies” is read as something other than plain foes: Erchei HaKinuyim, a lexicon of terms by Rabbi Yechiel Heilprin, the author of Seder HaDoros; the Gemara, which reads Psalm 127’s “enemies in the gate” as a father and son, or a teacher and student, who argue over Torah until they love each other; and Bereishis Rabbah 54, which reads “even his enemies” as one’s wife, the snake or the evil inclination. That Gemara is on Kiddushin 30b; the printed “(folio 72)” does not hold it.

Here the real question of the maamar is set: the angels claimed to stand higher than man, yet G‑d answered that man is more exalted. The rest of the maamar explains in what way the human soul surpasses the angels, and why the angels could still object.

¶6 Hold this: paragraph 6 gives G‑d's answer to the angels' accusation.

To answer, one must first know how angels and souls differ. Scripture often describes the angels singing, as when Yeshayahu hears the Serafim call “Holy, holy, holy,” but it never speaks of the souls singing.

The Alter Rebbe answers that the souls do sing, and constantly, since in the afterlife they keep rising “from strength to strength.” On each New Moon and Shabbos (as Yeshayahu says, “from New Moon to New Moon and from Shabbos to Shabbos”) they rise from the lower Gan Eden to the upper Gan Eden, then return, and rise again. Among the sources in the Kehot note, the Gemara (Chullin 91b) says that the ministering angels do not sing above until Israel sings below.

The Mishnah rules that animals wearing a shir (a collar or ring) may go out with it on Shabbos and be led by it; read as “song,” it says that every going out and rising is carried by song. In Torah Ohr, Bereishis (on Yuval, “the father of all who play the lyre”), the Alter Rebbe explains it so: every ascent from level to level, as from the lower to the upper Gan Eden, comes through song, which is self-nullification. This is explained in the great Likkutei Amarim, the teachings of the Maggid of Mezritch; what remains is only why Scripture never says it of the souls outright.

The difference is that the angels’ song is audible: Yechezkel heard it as a real sound, “a great noise” proclaiming “Blessed be the glory of Havayah from His place,” and the wings of the Chayos like “the sound of many waters.”

The morning blessing before the Shema describes the angels proclaiming “in unison, aloud” and the Ofanim (an order of angels) “with a great noise.” This is because angels have bodies, as Psalms says, “He makes His angels winds, His ministers flaming fire.”

The Alter Rebbe argues that the verse cannot mean the angels’ souls, since a soul is a thinking, understanding being and would not be called “wind” or “fire.” The words must therefore describe their bodies.

The Ramban, at the end of his Sha’ar HaGemul, writes that angels have bodies made of the simple, spiritual elements of air and fire, not of physical matter; the Hebrew for the element air, ruach, is the very word the verse uses for “winds.” In Torah Ohr, Bereishis, the Alter Rebbe brings the same Ramban: some angels’ bodies are of air, like the camp of Michael, and some of fire, like the camp of Gavriel, while human bodies are of the four physical elements.

Having bodies, angels occupy space: the Gemara (Chagigah 13b) says the angel Sandalfon is taller than his fellow by a journey of five hundred years (the printed מלך reads מהלך, “journey”), and the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 68:12) says that an angel is a third of the world. In Likkutei Torah, Ha’azinu, the Alter Rebbe draws the consequence: because the angels are clothed in such bodies, even when they bow and are nullified there remains someone who is nullified, a separate existence.

Because angels have bodies, their song takes on sound and a prophet can hear it. The second sentence, as printed, speaks of “the song of the angels,” but the argument requires “the song of the souls,” which is not heard because souls have no body.

The souls’ song is pure understanding and grasp of G‑dliness, not sound. That is why the prophets, who heard sounds from on high, never describe it.

The same holds for sight: angels can appear to people whose vision is pure, as the three angels appeared to Avraham as men. Souls cannot, since they have no body to clothe themselves in. The Arizal (Etz Chaim 50:8) gives this very example: the pure of soul can see an angel clothed in its refined garment, as Avraham saw “three men.”

The Kedushah of the Amidah first quotes the angels’ praises, “Holy” (Yeshayahu), “Blessed” (Yechezkel) and “He shall reign” (Psalms), and then adds “And holy ones praise You every day, selah.” The Alter Rebbe reads the second phrase as the praise of the souls.

The order goes from lower to higher: first the angels, then the souls. Angels exist in space, and since space and time are created together as one, they exist in time as well.

So the angels sing only at set times: the Gemara (Chullin 91b) says once a day, or by other opinions once a week, a month, a year, or even once in all time. Souls, beyond space and time, praise “every day,” and selah, which the Sages read as “without interruption” (Eruvin 54a), means that their praise never stops.

The second section returns to the angels’ accusation. The angels knew the soul is higher than they are, but that is true of the soul in itself, before it enters a body.

Their objection was to the soul’s descent into a physical body, which makes a person liable to sin. They argued that the Torah belonged with them, who also have body and soul but whose body is spiritual and does not drag them down. In the Gemara (Shabbos 89a) Moshe answers the angels with the same point: “Is there an evil inclination among you?”

G‑d’s answer: the whole point is that the soul, drawn from the innermost level of the worlds and itself free of all matter, must come down into a truly physical body. Only in this way does G‑d have “a dwelling place among the lower realms,” which angels, with their refined bodies, cannot provide.

¶1 This answers the angels' accusation from paragraph 1.

This is why the building of the Beis HaMikdash silenced the angels: G‑d’s dwelling below is in people of flesh, and the Sanctuary served it. The verse says, “They shall make Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell in their midst.”

It does not say “in its midst,” in the Sanctuary, but “in their midst,” in the people: the Shechinah rested in Israel themselves. Yet a physical house of wood and stone was still needed for that presence to be revealed in them.

After the Destruction that holiness spread to every synagogue and study hall, which the Sages (Megillah 29a) find in Yechezkel’s “small sanctuary.” This prepares the next section on what the resting of the Shechinah is.

To explain how the Beis HaMikdash brought the Shechinah into Israel, the Alter Rebbe starts from a line of the festival Musaf prayer: since the Destruction “we are unable to go up, appear and bow down before You.”

The question is what “and bow down” means here, and why we should be unable to do it.

Going up to Jerusalem and appearing in the Temple are plainly impossible now, “because of the hand” that was sent against the Sanctuary, as the same prayer continues. But one can bow to G‑d anywhere, as we do daily in the Aleinu prayer, “we bend the knee and bow down”; so why does the prayer say that bowing needs the Beis HaMikdash?

¶8 Hold this question: paragraph 8 explains why bowing needs the Beis HaMikdash.

The answer begins by defining bowing: to set oneself aside and submit to G‑d, as a subject bows to a king and accepts his service and his command. There are, however, two kinds of such submission.

Outer bowing subdues the body and its behavior, but the person remains a separate self with desires and thoughts of his own. He submits, but he is still there.

Inner bowing is the Mishnah’s “Nullify your will before His will” (Avos 2:4): no will of one’s own remains at all. The Aramaic saying “a son is his father’s leg” pictures this (the Talmud, Eruvin 70b, has “an heir is his father’s leg”): a leg has no will of its own and simply goes where the body goes.

This inner bowing Israel received on the three pilgrimage festivals, when they came to “appear” in the Temple where the Shechinah was revealed. The word Shechinah comes from shochen, “dwells”: G‑d’s presence as it dwells openly among the lower realms, while the Holy One, blessed be He, as He is in Himself, is holy and set apart.

¶7 This answers the question from paragraph 7.

Through that revelation all the souls were nullified like a candle before a torch, the image that runs through the rest of the maamar.

When a small flame burns beside a great torch, its light no longer shows as a separate light; it merges into the torch’s light and they become one. So the soul, in the presence of the revealed Shechinah, merged into its source.

The word yera’u, “they shall appear” (literally “be seen”), can also be read yir’u, “they shall see”: as the Gemara (Chagigah 2a) puts it, “as one comes to see, so one comes to be seen,” an inner revelation in both directions. Panai, “My face,” here means both G‑d’s light that fills all worlds and His light that encompasses them, united as the Holy One and His Shechinah. In Kabbalistic and Chassidic usage, “the Holy One, blessed be He” names the light that encompasses all worlds, and His Shechinah, the indwelling Presence, names the light that fills them. The “face” seen in the Beis HaMikdash was the union of the two, the transcendent light shining openly within the immanent.

Each Jew received the revelation according to his own capacity, which is why the verse says pnei, “the face of,” a plural form (panim). The heart of the mitzvah of appearing was the bowing, and by bowing alone one would in principle fulfil the obligation, were it not for the verse’s demand that one not come “empty-handed,” which adds the offering.

The self-nullification of each festival carried a person through until the next, so that the whole year was lived in that bittul.

Since the Destruction we cannot bow in the Temple, but a faint glimmer of its holiness has passed to the synagogue and study hall, the “small sanctuary.” This is why the prayer says we are unable to bow: the full inner bowing belonged to the Beis HaMikdash.

The glimmer is felt in prayer, when a person clings to his Creator and wants to set himself aside before the King of the world.

Each does so according to his capacity: for some it is only outer bowing, a matter of forcing oneself. The Gemara teaches (Berachos 6a) that a person’s prayer is heard only in the synagogue.

The reason is that the Shechinah’s presence spreads there. The Gemara’s saying that the Shechinah rests on every gathering of ten (Sanhedrin 39a), and the law that Kaddish, Kedushah and other “matters of holiness” need ten men, reflect that ten gathered together draw down Knesses Yisrael above, the “gathering” of all the souls and their source; through this presence a person comes to bow and be nullified like the candle before the torch. (The printed אכל apparently reads כל, “every.”)

Only souls can merge like this, as a flame leaves its wick and is absorbed in the torch, because the Shechinah, Knesses Yisrael, is the very source of the souls of Israel. Israel are “children to Havayah your G‑d,” and like a son who is his father’s leg they are part of Him.

Angels, clothed in limiting vessels, remain separate beings, and when they come down into this world they can even fall. The sources in the Kehot note read the Nefilim (“the fallen ones”) of Bereishis as such angels: in the Yalkut, two angels who had objected “What is man?” came down to earth and were overcome by the evil inclination, and the Zohar (1:23a) says that Aza and Azael, who accused man, fell through that very accusation.

The third section explains why a special dedication came first. For G‑d to “dwell” in the Beis HaMikdash, as Shlomo said at its dedication, David and Shlomo first held a chanukas habayis, a dedication of the House.

Chanukah, dedication, is from the same root as chinuch, training or initiation, as in the verse “Train a youth according to his way.” When one initiates a child into learning, one does not give him only the learning, which will now be his every day, but adds something extra, some sign of closeness or a gift, to mark the beginning. In Likkutei Torah, Nasso, the Alter Rebbe uses this same picture for the dedication of the altar: every beginning is hard, so it needs an addition beyond the regular.

So too at the dedication of the Mishkan and the Beis HaMikdash there was something beyond the regular daily offering of two lambs: in the Mishkan each prince brought his own great offering of burnt-offerings and peace-offerings.

At the dedication of the Beis HaMikdash Shlomo offered a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. These extra offerings stand for extra supernal lights that came down together with the revelation of the Shechinah at the start.

Not only the Shechinah came down, which would remain, but with it an additional, higher revelation. The text refers to the discourse on “This is the dedication of the altar” in Likkutei Torah, Nasso, where the princes’ one-time incense offering on the outer altar drew down an encompassing light, and to the Chanukah discourse in Torah Ohr, where the princes’ great gift gave the daily offerings the power to draw down light each day.

The Torah’s account of the Mishkan’s dedication lists the offering of each of the twelve princes of the tribes separately, day by day, beginning with Nachshon of Yehudah and Nesanel of Yissachar.

All twelve offerings were identical, so the Torah could have written the first in full and then said “Nesanel did likewise.” Why does it repeat the same list twelve times?

The answer: these verses were written for all generations. G‑d knew that the Beis HaMikdash would be destroyed and the offerings would cease, and that then the words of our lips would take the place of bulls, as Hoshea says, and as the Sages teach that studying the laws of an offering counts as bringing it.

That is also why on Chanukah we read the princes’ offerings: Chanukah too was a dedication of the altar.

The Greeks had made thirteen breaches in the Temple’s lattice wall (the soreg), as the Mishnah in Middos records, and the holiness had left; when the Hasmoneans won they had to dedicate it anew. Reading the princes’ section of the Torah draws down the resting of the Shechinah, by the known power of the Torah reading.

The twelve repetitions are one for each tribe: each tribe has its own “torch,” its own root above, into which its souls are to be nullified like candles. Each needed its own drawing-down.

Now the maamar returns to “A psalm, a song,” which seems to say the same thing twice. Mizmor comes from zemer, instrumental music: the sound that comes out of a harp or lyre.

Shir is song of the voice, not clothed in an instrument. So mizmor, instrumental music, stands for the song of the angels “who stand at the heights of the world,” as the morning prayer describes them: they belong to the outer dimension of the worlds and are composed of “matter and form,” light and vessel.

Their song is like music sounding through an instrument: it is carried by a vessel, because they are of matter and form. The phrase “with thanksgiving and the sound of music” is from Yeshayahu.

Because their vessel holds them back, angels cannot reach the complete bittul of a candle absorbed in a torch. That is why their self-nullification is felt as sound and “great noise”: the vessel makes it audible.

Shir, song of the voice alone, is the song of the souls in Gan Eden, who ascend by song in complete self-nullification because they have no matter or vessel. (The printed ובשיר apparently reads ושיר, “and shir.”)

The parenthesis sends the reader to Likkutei Torah on the Song of Songs, where shir is the rising of every level and its absorption in its source, and to the Torah Ohr discourse “Vayehi Mikeitz” (Torah Ohr, Mikeitz 2), where “at night His song is with me” is the song of the Torah’s inner meaning, G‑d’s own delight.

The Zohar (1:148b) asks why the verse says “Your pious ones shall sing for joy” and not “Your Levites,” who are the singers of the King. In Likkutei Torah, Va’eschanan, the Alter Rebbe explains that the Levites’ song is sung aloud with the mouth, while the Kohanim’s is in the will of the heart, for the Kohen’s service is done in silence; he adds that the difference between mizmor and shir is the same, so here too shir stands above mizmor.

The Pardes of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, in its gate of Kabbalistic terms (Erchei HaKinuyim), says under shir that shir is in Chochmah, the level of wisdom.

In the Beis HaMikdash was revealed the Shechinah, G‑d’s kingship, which is the source of both souls and angels: “Your kingship is a kingship over all worlds.”

So the psalm of the dedication says both “psalm” and “song”: at the source of both angels and souls, both kinds of song were revealed together.

This was mirrored in the Levites’ service: some sang with the voice, some played instruments. The Gemara (Arachin 11a) weighs whether the essence of the Temple song is vocal, with the instruments serving only to sweeten the voice, or instrumental.

Some psalms reverse the order, “A song, a psalm.” The reason lies in what each is: mizmor is outer and clothed in a vessel, shir inner and without one, and the order shows which way they meet.

Higher and lower can join in two ways: the higher comes down, or the lower rises up. “A psalm, a song” is the lower, the angels’ mizmor, rising to be absorbed in the higher shir.

“A song, a psalm” is the higher shir coming down to the mizmor. The Zohar (3:56b; the text prints 58b) asks about “A song, a psalm, of the sons of Korach” (Psalm 48) and answers that it is “a song that is doubled,” a song praised above other songs, and that so too is “A psalm, a song for the Shabbos day.”

The Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, quotes Rabbi Chaim Vital that the “doubled song” is the union of Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the divine masculine and feminine.

The Zohar takes up the Shabbos psalm again at the end of the parsha (3:79b), and the Mikdash Melech links its “A psalm, a song” to the Mishnah’s closing words in Tamid: a song “for the time to come, for the day that is entirely Shabbos.” Toward that higher Shabbos the lower rises, so to it one sings “a psalm, a song,” in that order.

The same is true of “A psalm, a song” at the dedication of the House: the order shows the angels’ mizmor rising to join the souls’ shir.

A second meaning: zemer also means pruning, as in “you shall not prune (sizmor) your vineyard.” Pruning cuts into pieces, as an instrument divides the melody into small separate notes, while the voice’s shir flows undivided; and the same contrast holds above between angels and souls.

Psalm 30 opens “I will exalt You, Havayah, for You have lifted me up (dilisani).” The Alter Rebbe reads dilisani as hinting at why souls surpass angels, and gives it three meanings: raising up, poverty (dal, poor), and, as the next paragraph says, drawing water.

The third meaning comes from the account Yisro’s daughters gave of Moshe: “he even drew (dalah dalah) water for us.” All three readings are true, and each names an advantage of the soul over the angels.

First, exaltation: the soul’s source is the inner dimension, higher than the angels’. So its bowing and self-nullification in its source are complete, truly a candle merging into a torch.

The second advantage, from dal, “poor”: the soul is “naked,” with no body or limiting vessel of its own. The angels, by contrast, have bodies, the “winds” and “flaming fire” of the verse discussed at the start.

The third advantage, from dalah, “drawing water”: souls were drawn from their source in Chochmah, the “sea of wisdom.” Rivkah’s “she filled her jug (kad)” is read as a jug drawn from that sea, and kad has the numerical value twenty-four, the number of books of Scripture.

The soul’s foundation is “in the holy mountains,” supernal Chochmah, which is also where the Torah was drawn from, “a jug from the sea.” Torah and souls come from the same source.

Two verses show it: “He set a Torah in Israel,” and “And this was formerly (lefanim) in Israel,” where “this” is Torah, as the Sages say. In Torah Ohr, Mikeitz, the Alter Rebbe explains this verse as the Torah that is in the inner dimension (pnimiyus) of every Jewish soul, hearing in lefanim, “formerly,” the sense “within.” That is why souls are more fitting than angels for the Shechinah to rest among them and to receive the Torah: the answer to the angels’ accusation with which the maamar began.