ביאור על הנ״ל

This maamar is a further explanation of the one before it in Torah Ohr, on the same verse of Isaiah: the “new heavens and the new earth” that “stand before Me,” and Israel’s “seed” and “name” that will stand with them.

The verse from the end of Isaiah is the theme of the whole maamar. The prophet promises that just as the “new heavens and new earth” of the future will endure before G‑d, so will Israel’s “seed” and “name.” Later the maamar will explain each of these terms: the new heavens and earth as a new revelation from beyond the ordinary order of the worlds, the “seed” as Torah and the “name” as accepting the yoke of the mitzvos.

¶25 “New heavens and new earth”: paragraph 25 explains what they are.

¶27 “Your seed and your name”: paragraphs 27–28 explain these.

The discussion begins with a well-known premise: before coming down into a body, the soul already stood in closeness to G‑d, loving and fearing Him. That was possible because a soul has intellect and emotions of its own, with which it can understand G‑dliness and respond with love and awe. So why did it need to descend at all?

The soul came down and was wrapped in a body and in the animal soul, which hide its G‑dly light. The “soiled garments” (an image from Zechariah’s vision of the High Priest) are the emotions that come from the side of kelipah, the forces of concealment: love and fear directed to worldly things instead of to G‑d.

Yet the descent serves a higher purpose. Through the Torah and the mitzvos, in which the Infinite Light is clothed, the soul refines (literally, “sorts out”) the good from the bad in the world and in itself, and so rises higher than it was before.

Through Torah and mitzvos the Infinite Light itself — not merely a glimmer of it — will be revealed upon the soul, as the Alter Rebbe explains elsewhere.

This needs explaining, for the Torah we have also came down through all the levels, until it deals with physical matters. The Talmud recounts that when Moshe ascended to receive it, the angels asked G‑d to “set Your majesty upon the heavens” — to keep the Torah, His majesty, in heaven. If the Torah has descended so far, how can it be greater than the pure love and awe the soul had above?

¶19 Hold this question: paragraph 19 answers it.

A second difficulty: the Tikkunei Zohar says that Torah studied without love and awe “does not fly upward.” Love and awe are the wings that carry the Torah up. It seems, then, that love and awe are far greater than the Torah itself.

¶20 Why Torah needs love and awe to rise: paragraph 20 explains.

The answer begins with a verse that divides creation into two kinds: “called by My Name” and “created for My glory.” Atzilus, the highest world, is truly “called by My Name”: it is itself G‑dly.

In Atzilus the Infinite Light itself dwells, and everything there is completely united with it. The Tikkunei Zohar expresses this: in Atzilus G‑d is one with His “life-forces” (chayohi), the lights, and with His “vessels” (garmohi), the vessels. Nothing there feels itself as separate.

The Alter Rebbe qualifies this: Atzilus is still not comparable to G‑d Himself. As is known from Kabbalah, even “Adam of Atzilus” (the Divine configuration of that world) counts, relative to G‑d’s essence, like the lowest, physical world. Atzilus is only a radiance of G‑d, not His essence.

What makes Atzilus unique is that this radiance is received there without any separation or division: everything in it is filled with that radiance, and nothing there exists as a thing in its own right apart from it.

The very name Atzilus shows this. It comes from the verse in which G‑d “set apart” (vayatzel) some of the spirit that was upon Moshe and gave it to the seventy elders; the Targum renders the word “and He separated.”

Moshe certainly did not give the elders all of his spirit, raising them to his own level. Rather, a portion of his spirit was brought down and fitted to their capacity, so that they could share his burden and become “one” with him: not one in their essential selves, but united with him through the portion of his spirit they received.

The elders were united with Moshe through the radiance of his spirit that came to them, though not in their essence.

So too Atzilus: the Infinite Light “emanated,” that is, set apart a radiance and light into that world, giving it the capacity to receive G‑d’s light in a state of unity. Everything there is united with the Infinite — not with His essence, but with the radiance drawn from Him.

The unity of Atzilus has two sides, matching the two halves of the Zohar’s phrase. “His life-forces” are the lights — the sources from which the Sefiros such as Chochmah and Chesed come into being.

Light as such is simple and undivided: on the level of the lights alone, there are not yet distinct attributes that could be named “wisdom” or “kindness.”

A pointer to a discussion elsewhere: the Zohar speaks of lights that “exchanged their places,” the light of Chesed resting in the vessel of Gevurah. It bears on the point just made, that a light in itself is not yet a defined attribute.

“His vessels” are the vessels, which give each light its bounds: only through its vessel is a light called “Chochmah” or “Chesed.” Yet in Atzilus the Infinite Light rests in the vessels in complete unity, so they are called the Chochmah of the Infinite and the Chesed of the Infinite.

Even though it is given a name, the Chochmah of Atzilus is not a limited, measurable wisdom. In the prayer of Eliyahu the prophet that opens the Tikkunei Zohar (“Patach Eliyahu”), G‑d is addressed as wise “but not with a known wisdom”: His wisdom is one with Him.

The Rambam writes that G‑d is the Knower, the Known and the Knowledge itself — His wisdom is not something apart from Him. That is why Atzilus is “called by My Name.” From Beriah downward, however, the worlds are only “created for My glory.”

“Glory” here means a garment. In Eliyahu’s prayer G‑d “fashioned garments” for the Sefiros; the Alter Rebbe reads these garments as Beriah and the worlds below it.

A garment is not one with the person who wears it; on the contrary, it covers him, so that he is seen only through it. So too the light of G‑d’s essence is hidden in Beriah and seen there only through its garment.

Yet Eliyahu’s word for “fashioned,” tikanta, also means “rectified” (tikkun): the garment is a benefit, for without it Beriah could not receive the Divine light at all.

Because G‑d’s light is revealed through this garment, the angels of Beriah — “the host of heaven” — bow down to Him: they are nullified before the light they perceive. The next words join the verse “and from there it was parted” (Bereishis 2:10), said of the river that leaves Eden, with the Aramaic turei de-peruda, “mountains of separation.” That is a Kabbalistic name for the realms from Beriah downward, where beings feel themselves distinct. So the angels there bow in nullification, yet still remain separate beings.

But since the light reaches them only through a garment, they remain separate beings. The verse about the river that “from there is parted” into four heads marks where separateness begins, the realm called in Aramaic “the mountains of separation”; unlike Atzilus, the beings of Beriah are not united with G‑d.

The angels’ service is described in the morning prayers: they stand “in the heights of the world” and proclaim G‑d’s holiness with awe. The Alter Rebbe adds an Aramaic teaching: “A lion has roared” refers to the angel Michael, who in Ezekiel’s vision of the Divine Chariot (merkavah) is the lion-face on the right; when he roars, the 370,000 lions of his camp roar with him.

The question: angels naturally perceive how their existence comes from G‑d out of nothing, and so they are nullified before Him. If that is simply their nature, how is it “service”? And why do they roar with such tumult — what new thing do they perceive, and what are they longing for?

The answer begins: Atzilus is the “World of Tikkun” (rectification), where lights and vessels are already one. Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, however, contain the fragments of the vessels of the prior World of Tohu (chaos), which shattered because their lights were too intense for them, and fell down into these lower worlds.

Because the lower worlds are made of Tohu’s broken fragments, they need “complete service”: effort that draws the rectified order of Atzilus into them, so that they too rise and become united with G‑dliness.

The ordinary flow of Divine life into Beriah — screened and clothed, level after level, as built into creation — is not enough, for by that natural order Beriah remains a realm of separateness, “the mountains of separation.” What is needed is a new light from above that lifts Beriah into the unity of Atzilus itself.

That is the meaning of “which G‑d created to make”: following the Midrash that all that was created in the six days still needs “making” (even man needs tikkun), the lower worlds were created in order to be rectified, completing what the order of creation left unrectified.

Kabbalah reads the list of kings of Edom “who reigned before a king reigned over Israel” as the World of Tohu: each king “reigned and died,” a collapse. The last, Hadar, is not said to have died, and marks the beginning of Tikkun. The Alter Rebbe associates Baal Chanan, the king before him, with Asiyah, the lowest world — showing that even Asiyah is destined for Tikkun.

This sums up all service in the lower worlds: they contain the broken vessels of Tohu and must be rectified so as to rise and be included in Atzilus — and this rectification comes only through service.

Even our coarse, physical world can be rectified, because its life-force derives from the “supernal dust” of Tohu — the lowest level of that very lofty world, which stands above Atzilus. The higher its source, the lower a thing falls, yet it retains the potential to be restored.

Rectification means “refining”: separating the good from the evil mixed with it, like smelting metal to remove the dross, so that the good can rise to its source.

The lower worlds differ in how much evil is mixed into them: in Beriah the good predominates, and so on down to Asiyah, where evil predominates and is intermixed with the good. Separating out the evil demands complete service at this level too.

This refinement is accomplished through prayer, whose whole order was instituted for it, by way of ratzo, the soul’s “running” toward G‑d. The maamar reads Job’s words of the worshipper: “if he sets his heart toward Him,” his spirit and soul long to be gathered to Him.

King David’s words “I leap over a wall” describe ratzo. The “wall” is the encompassing lights (makifim), which surround the worlds; the soul in its longing leaps even beyond them, seeking to cleave to G‑d’s own infinite essence.

That essence is beyond all worlds — beyond both memalei, the light that fills worlds, and sovev, the light that encompasses them. Compared to it, even Atzilus (the World of Berudim, the “speckled” world of Tikkun) counts only as the lowest level, “Adam of Asiyah,” and the earlier World of Nekudim is “Adam of Yetzirah.”

This ratzo is what separates evil from good. Psalm 92 says “all the workers of iniquity shall be separated” (yisparedu, plainly “scattered”), the root of the “separation” (perud) of good from evil that the maamar speaks of; Psalm 149 says those with “the exaltation of G‑d in their throats” hold “a two-edged sword”: praise of G‑d’s exaltedness is itself the weapon that cuts evil away.

All of prayer is “the exaltation of G‑d,” and so prayer is the means of separating good from evil. In Kabbalistic terms this is the refinement of mayin nukvin, the “feminine waters”: an arousal and elevation from below.

The complementary process is mayin dechurin, the “masculine waters”: a flow from above, from Atzilus, which brings the lower worlds to the full unity of Atzilus — where the lights and vessels are completely one with G‑d.

This flow from above comes through Torah and mitzvos, because they come from that supernal unity itself: the Zohar says “the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one.”

The Tikkunei Zohar calls the 248 positive commandments the 248 “limbs of the King.” As a person’s limbs are vessels for his soul, each mitzvah is a vessel for G‑d’s own light and life — truly His “limbs.”

They were clothed in physical things (leather tefillin, wool tzitzis) for a purpose: to elevate physicality itself and include its life-force in the supernal light. That is why the Divine life-force needed to descend so low.

Now the opening question can be answered: why Torah and mitzvos in this world surpass the soul’s love and awe before it came down.

¶4 This answers the question from paragraph 4.

The soul’s love and awe above are very lofty — higher even than those of the angels in each world, because angels derive from the external aspect of the worlds while souls derive from their inner aspect.

Nevertheless, a soul is a created being, brought into existence from nothing, and so it is not one with G‑d in the way Torah and mitzvos are. Torah and mitzvos, however, are G‑d’s own wisdom and will, one with Him as “He is the Knowledge” is one with Him. Therefore the Torah and mitzvos in this world bring a unity with G‑d that no created soul, however lofty, could achieve on its own.

Now the second question: why does Torah without love and awe not “fly upward”? Because the Torah descended and clothed itself in physical matters, it is bound to the world below and stands in a state of descent from G‑d’s countenance.

¶4 This answers the question about love and awe as wings from paragraph 4.

Love and awe draw the Infinite Light hidden in the Torah into revelation and full unity with G‑d. So love and awe are not greater than the Torah; they are the means that reveal the G‑dliness already within it. The Sages’ teaching about Torah study “for its own sake” is cited: G‑d says, “I account it as if they made Me.”

The Alter Rebbe takes “made Me” literally: Torah study draws down the vav of the Divine Name Havayah (Tiferes), and the mitzvos — summed up in charity — draw down its hei. Thus Torah and mitzvos “build” the Divine Name.

More generally, the three pillars of the world — Torah, service (prayer) and acts of kindness — draw down the three “lines” of the Sefiros, such as the right line of Chochmah, Chesed and Netzach. These correspond to the three verses beginning “Vayisa,” “Vayavo,” “Vayet” (Exodus 14:19–21), each of which begins with the letter vav, whose shape is a drawing-down of the yud at its head.

The Sages debated whether heaven or earth was created first; Beis Hillel said the earth came first. In service too, “earth” — the ratzo of prayer, the refining of mayin nukvin from below — comes first (the previous maamar links eretz, “earth,” with ratz, “run”), and afterwards “heavens,” the flow from above, mayin dechurin, drawn down by Torah and mitzvos.

Heaven is by nature a giver: the psalm describes G‑d covering the heavens with clouds to bring rain upon the earth, and the Land of Israel “drinks water of the rain of heaven.”

So the flow from above refines what the service from below raised up, until even Asiyah is included in the unity of Atzilus.

The order matters: the arousal from below (mayin nukvin, the ascent through prayer) must come first. Without it, the flow from above (mayin dechurin, through Torah and mitzvos) has nothing to act upon and cannot refine.

This two-stage work is our task throughout the exile, when evil is strong and must be separated from the good.

When Mashiach comes, the refining will be complete: death will be abolished and impurity removed, as the prophets promised. Then the whole of creation will be in the state of Tikkun, united with G‑d below just as Atzilus is above.

Yet even that is not the final goal. The ultimate purpose is the revelation of the World of Akudim (“bound”), in which all the lights were bound together in a single vessel; it stands above Atzilus. Isaiah’s words about G‑d’s servant, “exalted and lifted up and very high,” are cited for this revelation beyond Atzilus.

The World of Akudim is the “inner dimension of Atik” (Atik Yomin, “the Ancient of Days”: the inner level of Keser, the root of the Divine will), which has never been revealed. Its revelation will bring “new souls,” souls that were never part of the mixture of good and evil and so need no refining.

All souls until now were included in Adam, the first man, and so they need refining and rectification. They descended from the outer dimension of Atik through the ordered chain of levels.

What already exists within that order is, by definition, nothing new. Truly “new” souls must come from above the chain of descent — from the inner dimension of Atik, which has never been revealed within it.

The rule of the chain of descent is that only the outer aspect of a higher level becomes the inner core of the level below it. The inner aspect of the highest level never descends at all — so its revelation would be something utterly new.

The new light of the future, above the whole chain of descent, is the World of Akudim, which preceded Atzilus.

Atzilus, the World of Tikkun, is arranged as the chain of descent requires: divided into distinct attributes, Chochmah, Chesed and so on. Eliyahu’s words “You are wise” describe the Infinite Light drawn into Chochmah; “not with a known wisdom” means that in Atzilus this wisdom is still one with Him.

“You are wise” means that the Infinite One is clothed in the attribute of wisdom; likewise for understanding and the other attributes. The verse “Havayah is righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His deeds” likewise names distinct attributes.

These attributes of Atzilus are the sources of the Chochmah and Chesed of Beriah, which are a “known,” definable wisdom and kindness.

The World of Akudim, by contrast, holds all powers “bound together” (akud) in a single vessel, with no division into separate attributes at all.

This revelation is what Isaiah calls “the new heavens and the new earth.” The word “I” (“which I am making”) is emphatic: this renewal comes from the Emanator Himself, since only the Infinite One can bring about something genuinely new.

¶2 This explains the “new heavens and new earth” of the verse in paragraph 2.

Still, the prophet calls it “heavens and earth.” Since Akudim is a revelation — the source of the source of the whole chain of worlds — it must contain something that resembles the structure of that chain, like heaven and earth.

Since heaven and earth exist in the chain of descent, they must have a counterpart in Akudim. But there the order is “heavens first”: the flow from above takes the lead. A parenthesis contrasts this with the order from below, where ratzo, the upward yearning, comes first. It cites the teaching that when G‑d divided the waters on the second day of Creation, the lower waters wept at being set far from Him, longing to be near the King.

This is the Kabbalistic term “it reaches and does not reach”: “reaches” — the light seeks to give; “does not reach” — the vessel below cannot contain it. In service from below the order is reversed: first comes ratzo, as the “lower waters” wept to be close to G‑d.

That is why these heavens and earth are said to “stand” — always: Akudim exists even now, only hidden, and in the future it will be revealed. “Before Me” (lefanai, related to penim, “inner”) means that it belongs to the innermost level, the inner dimension of Atik.

Isaiah adds that Israel’s “seed” and “name” will endure like the new heavens and earth. “Seed” is the flow from above through Torah. Torah clothed in physical matters is like a seed planted in soil: the seed itself decays, yet its inner power makes the plant grow.

¶2 This explains “your seed and your name” from the verse in paragraph 2.

A seed produces only its own kind, as the Torah says of the plants of Creation, “after its kind.” So too the Torah’s power produces growth of its own spiritual kind.

Although the Torah is clothed in physical matters — and one opinion in the Talmud even holds that the mitzvos will be annulled in the future — its light is what makes things grow, refining and raising the good from below.

“Name” is accepting the yoke of Heaven through the mitzvos. By accepting G‑d’s sovereignty, Israel have His Name called upon them. The evening prayer praises Israel for accepting His sovereignty “willingly.”

A king, as opposed to a ruler, reigns by the people’s consent. The Kabbalistic term “crown of sovereignty” (keser malchus) expresses this: the crown the people place on the king is their will, and Keser is the level of will.

Sefer Yetzirah says the Sefiros’ “beginning is wedged in their end”: Malchus, the last Sefirah, draws from Keser, the first — the level of will. That is why accepting G‑d’s kingship is called “your name.”

“Your seed” and “your name” — Torah and mitzvos — are the flow from Atzilus that refines what rises from Asiyah and includes it in Atzilus.

One might therefore think that once the refining is complete in the future and the higher light of Akudim is revealed, Torah and mitzvos will have no further ascent, but will stay at the level of Atzilus, their source.

So the prophet promises that in truth Torah and mitzvos too will “stand” in the new heavens and earth.

Even after all refining is done, Torah and mitzvos will rise further still, into the World of Akudim, higher than Atzilus. This answers the maamar’s theme: the enduring value of Torah and mitzvos in the future.