וירא ישראל את היד הגדולה אשר עשה הוי״ה…

The maamar opens with the verse that closes the account of the splitting of the Sea: Israel saw G‑d’s “great hand,” feared Him, and believed in Him and in Moshe. The Alter Rebbe asks why the verse mentions awe before faith; the answer will be that each refers to a different level of the Name Havayah.

To answer, he turns to a verse in which the Name Havayah is said twice: “And he called: Havayah, Havayah.” The doubling shows that there are two levels of the Name. The first is the lower Name Havayah, the power that brings all the worlds into being from nothing (the Name itself is related to mehaveh, “brings into being”).

Creation is called “from nothing into something,” yet Scripture says “For all is from You,” so it seems to come from G‑d, not from nothing. The answer begins here: G‑d’s own essence has no relation to the worlds, and nothing compares to Him.

Therefore the worlds can receive their life and existence only through the Name Havayah, and this begins with tzimtzum, a contraction of the light. The contraction is the first letter of the Name, the yud, the smallest letter, a mere point.

After the contraction comes the expansion of G‑d’s light, the hei, a letter with length and breadth. The verse “For He commanded and they were created” speaks of the Name Havayah named at its start; “commanded” (tzivah) is read as connection, as in tzavta, togetherness. The text adds, without developing it, that “they were created” is a passive form.

The pattern of contraction and expansion that makes up the lower Name Havayah exists also in a higher Name Havayah. It too begins with a yud, a contraction.

This higher Name is G‑d’s will, which “arose in thought” that there be a lower Havayah and worlds. Just as a person pictures his work, how and what to do, before he makes it, the worlds existed in G‑d’s will before they came into being.

In the higher Name too the yud (contraction) comes first and then the hei (expansion). This level is called the hidden world (alma de’iskasya), because unlike the lower Name, which shows itself in the existence of the worlds, it is not seen or revealed.

This is why Pharaoh asked, “Who is Havayah?” He certainly knew the lower Name, the power that keeps all the worlds in being, but he did not believe in the higher Name, which is hidden; so his “I do not know Havayah” is read as a denial of the higher level.

The verse “Israel saw the great hand that Havayah performed in Egypt” is read as the higher Havayah acting by means of Egypt. Egypt is the level of the Zohar’s “log in which the flame does not rise”: such a log gives light only once it is struck, and so it was through Egypt that the higher Havayah was revealed.

The reason is that one cannot reach the higher Havayah except through “turning away from evil”: self-nullification and contraction, holding oneself back. That is why the prohibitions, the commandments of restraint, come before the positive commandments.

The Tikkunei Zohar counts the 365 prohibitions as shemi, “My Name” (350), with yud-hei (15). When a person contracts himself to turn away from evil, an arousal from below, this forms above the yud, the contraction, of the higher Name Havayah.

“Doing good,” such as giving charity, is an expansion outward, and it forms above the hei, the expansion, of the higher Name. So a person’s restraint and giving below build the higher Name Havayah above.

Israel saw the “great hand” at the splitting of the Sea, when G‑d “made the sea dry ground.” The sea stands for the hidden world: as the Sages say, everything on dry land is also in the sea, but there it is covered by the water.

Dry land stands for the revealed world. When the sea was turned into dry land, so dry that no moisture remained, it was like the moment of creation when G‑d said, “Let the waters be gathered.”

As then the dry land appeared, so at the Sea the hidden became revealed. Seeing this, they believed in Havayah: that the higher Havayah, the hidden world, can itself be revealed.

Now the order of the verse is explained. “They feared Havayah” refers to the lower Havayah, the revealed world, which can be grasped; awe applies to what one perceives, like the awe of shame felt by one who sees the king.

“They believed in Havayah” refers to the higher Havayah, the hidden world, which cannot be seen or grasped; toward it awe does not apply, only faith. So the verse moves from awe, which belongs to the lower level, to faith, which reaches the higher.

The phrase “the great, the mighty and the awesome” supports this: “awesome” (vehanora) comes with a vav, a letter drawn as a straight line downward, which stands for drawing down from above to below. Awe is possible only once the higher level has been drawn down. Moshe, “His servant,” is the level of Daas, knowledge that connects.

Moshe is one of the “seven shepherds” of Israel, and he draws faith down to the souls of all Israel. So he is called Ra’aya Mehemna, “the faithful shepherd,” a name that also means “the shepherd of faith”: he feeds and sustains the people with faith.

Scripture calls Moshe “faithful in all My house,” and he joins and connects the two Names Havayah, the lower and the higher. This explains the Sages’ question about awe of Heaven: “Is awe, then, a small thing?”

The Talmud answers, “Yes, for Moshe it is a small thing.” Through Moshe’s level the people were raised to the higher Havayah. That is why at the Sea they were told, “And you shall be silent”: silence is the level of the hidden world, beyond what words can express.

The verse “They will pass through the river on foot; there we will rejoice in Him” speaks of joy. In the present time joy at this level does not apply, because joy comes from revelation, and the higher level is not revealed now: the body conceals it, so we relate to it only by faith.

In the Time to Come, when death will be swallowed up, “eye to eye they will see”: the two eyes are the hidden world, the light that encompasses all worlds, and the revealed world, for both Names Havayah will then be revealed. The verse “and beneath are the arms of the world” is brought alongside this encompassing light. The prophecy that G‑d will strike the river into seven streams foretells a splitting like that of the Sea.

Isaiah foretells a highway for the remnant of G‑d’s people, “as there was for Israel on the day it came up out of the land of Egypt.” As at the Exodus and the splitting of the Sea, the hidden world will then be revealed.

This is why the psalm says “there we will rejoice” in the future tense: “there,” specifically, in the future, we will rejoice in grasping the higher Havayah.

Now, however, we relate to it only by faith. The present is the time for doing, as the Sages read “today, to do them,” with the reward “tomorrow”: today the work is “turning away from evil,” self-nullification and acknowledgment, an arousal from below that forms the higher Havayah above, as paragraph 5 explained.

This explains the Sages’ warning about one who does not bow at Modim, the blessing of thanksgiving in the Amidah. There are two modes of service: blessing (berachah), which means drawing down, and acknowledgment, described in the next part.

Acknowledgment (hoda’ah), the word behind Modim, is self-nullification, and so it is the level of teshuvah and good deeds. Therefore the Mishnah says that one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world is better than all the life of the World to Come.

The life of the World to Come comes from the lower Name Havayah, for the Sages teach that the World to Come was created with the yud. Teshuvah and good deeds, however, form the higher Havayah, as explained above, so they reach higher than the World to Come.

All this happens specifically through Moshe. In “And he called: Havayah, Havayah,” the one who called is Moshe: he calls and draws down from the higher Havayah to the lower. In the Torah’s cantillation there is a break (pesik) between the two Names, marking them as two distinct levels.

Through Moshe the two Names are joined and connected. That is why at the splitting of the Sea, Scripture says “Then Moshe and the Children of Israel sang”: Moshe led the song “for He is exalted, exalted,” words that refer to the hidden world, the “mountains of darkness,” a level so high that it appears as darkness.

After being raised at the Sea to this level, the revelation of the hidden world, the people did not want to move on. So the Torah says that Moshe “made Israel journey,” which the Sages read as against their will; and they came to the Wilderness of Shur.

Shur means seeing, so the Wilderness of Shur is the revealed world. Then they came to Marah, “bitterness,” alluding to the verse “her feet go down,” a descent; there G‑d showed Moshe a tree that made the bitter water sweet, and that tree is the Tree of Life.

So it was with all forty-two journeys in the wilderness, which correspond to the forty-two-letter Name of G‑d: each journey was an ascent from one rung to the next.

The journeys passed through combinations of the attributes, such as Chesed within Chesed and Chesed within Gevurah. That is why they set out sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the evening, morning corresponding to Chesed and evening to Gevurah, and all of it was through Moshe.