ביאור על הנ״ל

This short maamar is an explanation (biur) of the preceding one, which opened with “To my mare among Pharaoh’s chariots.” It takes up that maamar’s themes, the female and male horses, the Exodus from Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea, and explains them step by step.

The maamar opens with the verse that tells how G‑d went before the Israelites as they left Egypt, in a pillar of cloud by day. The Midrash says that G‑d and His court went before them, and the Alter Rebbe identifies this with the Shechinah, the Divine Presence; at the splitting of the Sea, the verse says, the angel of G‑d that had gone before the camp moved and went behind them.

The preceding maamar spoke of Pharaoh’s female horses and male horses. Here they are defined: the female horses are an arousal from below, an initiative that rises from the lower worlds, and the male horses are an arousal from above, the divine flow that answers it.

In this language, the one who gives is called ‘male’ and the one who receives ‘female.’ The lower worlds only receive their life and flow from above, so they are called Nukva, the feminine, while the source above that gives to them is called the masculine.

In the analogy, the female’s arousal comes first, and it draws the male to give to her. The saying “it is the way of a man to seek out a woman” is from the Talmud, which uses it to explain why the Torah speaks of a man taking a wife: the one who seeks is drawn toward what he lacks.

Applied above, the lower worlds are the receivers, the ‘female horses.’ Their arousal from below comes first and calls forth the flow from above, the ‘male horses.’

Malchus of Atzilus, the lowest of the Sefiros of the highest world, is the divine power that creates and rules the lower worlds, and so it is ‘clothed’ in Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Because it stands at the lowest point, it always strives upward to receive from above. The verses “O Elokim, do not keep silent” and “so that glory may sing praise to You,” which continues “and not be silent,” are read here as describing Malchus, which never falls silent in its ascent.

This upward striving is an arousal from below, and it draws an answering flow of G‑dliness into Malchus. Malchus then passes the flow on through Avraham, the attribute of Chesed (kindness), and through souls and angels, so that it is revealed in the lower worlds, always in the manner of the arousal that called it forth.

Since the answer from above matches the arousal from below, the form of Malchus’s ascent shapes what comes down. At times the ascent is song, “I will sing to Havayah”; the maamar calls it shirah, a feminine form of the word, and the answering flow shir, the masculine form, matching the female and male horses. At times the ascent is zimrah, singing praise.

Zimrah is the praise of “so that glory may sing praise to You,” and at other times the ascent takes the form of a request. In every case the arousal from above comes in exactly the form of the arousal from below that called it forth.

The Exodus is now explained in terms of the worlds. Egypt, Mitzrayim, is read as meitzarim, ‘straits’ or boundaries, and the three lower worlds are ‘Egypt’ because everything in them is limited. Our physical world is limited in the plainest sense: in the Sages’ words, the distance to the heavens is a journey of five hundred years, and the world is to last six thousand years.

The spiritual worlds of Yetzirah and Beriah are limited too, not in space but in comprehension: their beings are created and new, so their grasp of G‑dliness has an end. Even the Gardens of Eden, where souls take pleasure in G‑dliness, are limited; the Lower Garden of Eden is in Yetzirah and the Higher in Beriah.

Atzilus is different: the Infinite Light is drawn into it without limit, because there G‑d’s ‘life-force’ and ‘organs,’ the lights and the vessels, are wholly one with Him. The boundaries begin only below Atzilus, where a separation, the ‘curtain’ (parsa), the ‘parapet’ and the ‘roof,’ divides it from Beriah and makes the worlds below it limited.

The Sages taught that wherever Israel went into exile the Shechinah went with them, beginning with Egypt, as G‑d promised Yaakov, “I will go down with you to Egypt.” The Alter Rebbe explains that this means Malchus of Atzilus, which is the Shechinah, is clothed within the limited worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Its confinement in those ‘straits’ is the exile of the Shechinah, the inner meaning of the exile in Egypt.

In its inner meaning, the Exodus is the Shechinah going out of its exile in the lower worlds and rising to be included in Atzilus. This rising is the arousal from below described above, and its purpose is to draw a flow of G‑dliness down below.

In response comes an arousal from above: G‑dliness is revealed in Malchus and spreads through it into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. It spreads there through the level of Avraham, Chesed (kindness), which the maamar here calls a finite being, so that limited worlds can receive it.

The flow spreads through the angels as well. Pharaoh tried to use the same principle in reverse, to draw down influence from the kelipos, the forces of concealment: he set the female horses first, an arousal from below, so that the male horses, an influence from above, would follow of themselves.

This follows the rule that the man goes after the woman. The same pattern applies in a person’s service of G‑d: in the Shema one contemplates “Hear, O Israel, Havayah our G‑d,” which corresponds to Abba and Imma, Chochmah and Binah; that is, how all things come into being from nothing, and how that ‘something’ is utterly nullified before the divine ‘nothing.’

Lengthy contemplation of this union of Chochmah and Binah, and of similar themes, produces an arousal from below. The soul goes out of the darkness and exile of the body into the love of “You shall love … with all your might,” a love without limit, and so it is included in Atzilus, the unlimited world.

The answering arousal from above is found in the second paragraph of the Shema, “to love Havayah your G‑d,” which the maamar reads as love drawn from above to below, so that Havayah becomes truly ‘your G‑d.’ That is why the same paragraph can go on to promise, “I will give the rain of your land.”

The promises of grass and rain are blessings drawn down from above into the physical world. The Shema ends with “I am Havayah … who brought you out of the land of Egypt” because the whole process is a going out from ‘Egypt,’ the straits and limits described above.

Now a limit is set. The arousal from above that answers an arousal from below, as at the Exodus, comes only from Chochmah of Atzilus, because an arousal from below cannot stir anything above that level.

The Kabbalistic saying “Abba founded the Daughter” means that Malchus, the ‘Daughter,’ is founded on Chochmah, the ‘Father.’ The analogy is speech, which flows from a person’s wisdom: since wisdom is its beginning and source, speech can rise no higher than wisdom.

In Atzilus, Chochmah is called Abba because it is the source and beginning of all revelation and of the whole chain of worlds, and Malchus is called the Daughter. Like speech, Malchus can rise and arouse, by an arousal from below, only up to its own source, Chochmah.

A child is drawn after his father because his father is his source. So the ascent of Malchus reaches Chochmah, the beginning of revelation, and no higher.

Through the arousal from below, “a spirit brings a spirit and draws down a spirit”: the spirit rising from below calls forth a spirit from above. This answering flow comes from Chochmah of Atzilus down to Malchus, and through Malchus into the lower worlds.

Above Chochmah is Keser Elyon, the Supernal Crown, which no arousal from below can reach at all. Keser is above the whole chain of descending worlds, which begins with Chochmah.

Within the chain, each level gives rise to the next: Chochmah, called ‘the beginning,’ to Binah, and Binah to the emotive attributes. Each is higher than the one after it, yet they belong to one order.

Because they are links in one chain, they bear some relation (erech) to one another. Keser is beyond all comparison with Chochmah, as the words of the prayer say of G‑d, “There is no comparison to You”; relative to Chochmah, Keser is ‘nothing’ (ayin), beyond any grasp.

The verse “wisdom is found from ayin” is read as saying that Chochmah comes forth from Keser, the true ‘nothing’ above the chain of worlds. Keser is identified with the Gulgalta (skull) of Arich Anpin, the configuration of Keser, and with the Malchus of the Infinite One, the last level of the Infinite Light itself. Like a crown resting on the head, it is above the head and not part of it.

The hand and the foot are lower than the head, yet they are part of the same body and connected with it. The chain of Sefiros is like this: lower and higher, but joined.

The crown, though, sits above the head and is not part of the body at all. In the same way Keser has no relation with Chochmah, so an arousal from below, which works within the chain, cannot stir it.

Keser is revealed only from above, by itself, without being called forth from below. The maamar gives Shavuos, the time of the Giving of the Torah, as an example of such a revelation of Keser.

The splitting of the Sea was such a revelation of Keser. When Moshe cried out, G‑d answered, “Why do you cry out to Me?”, and the maamar notes that “Havayah” here means Z’eir Anpin, the emotive attributes of Atzilus.

G‑d’s answer means that the matter did not depend on the level of Z’eir Anpin, which prayer can reach, but on Atika, ‘the Ancient One,’ the Gulgalta and Keser mentioned above, which no arousal from below can reach. This is the meaning of Moshe’s words to the people, “Havayah will fight for you, and you shall be silent”: they were to make no arousal from below.

The Zohar reads “you shall be silent” as “do not arouse anything”: at the Sea G‑d did not want Israel to make an arousal from below. Had they done so, the answer from above would have been limited to the measure of their arousal.

An arousal from below reaches only Chochmah, while at the Sea Keser was revealed, which comes only of itself. Any arousal from below would have limited what was given, so Israel had to be silent.

This revelation split the Sea: “He turned the sea into dry land,” and what was concealed became revealed. As the preceding maamar explained, the creatures of the sea are covered while those of the land are seen; so too above, Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah) are the ‘concealed world,’ and Z’eir Anpin and Nukva, the emotions and Malchus, are the ‘revealed world.’

Within the chain of worlds, the concealed and the revealed are distinct levels, and one cannot simply become the other. Only Keser, above the chain, where “darkness and light are alike,” could turn the concealed into the revealed.

The verse “He turned the sea into dry land” continues, “there we will rejoice in Him,” and the maamar links this joy with the joy of a mitzvah, the joy in fulfilling G‑d’s command. That joy, too, is a revelation of Keser.

The joy of a mitzvah comes from the delight in the mitzvos as they are in G‑d’s Supernal Will itself, above reason. The saying “the Torah comes forth from Chochmah” refers to the explanation of the mitzvos, their reasons and details, which belong to Chochmah.

The root of the mitzvos, however, is in Keser, described in Kabbalah as ‘the whiteness of the Skull,’ from which 613 paths are drawn into Z’eir Anpin. These are “the paths of Havayah” of the verse, and, as the next paragraph says, they are the 613 mitzvos.

The 613 commandments of the Torah, with the seven mitzvos instituted by the Sages, make 620, the numerical value of the word keser (crown). Drawn down from Keser, the mitzvos are clothed in physical deeds, which serve as their vessels.

That is why the mitzvos are called “the limbs of the King”: they relate to Keser as the limbs relate to the soul. Just as one leads a person from place to place by taking his right hand, so through the mitzvos one can ‘move’ what is clothed in them.

A person’s soul cannot be grasped or held, yet because it is clothed in the body, when someone moves his hand the soul moves along with it. The limbs give a hold on what is in itself beyond grasp.

In the same way, Keser is above the chain of worlds, and no arousal from below can stir it. There is, however, one way to reach it, which the next words explain.

Keser is clothed in G‑d’s mitzvos, which are its vessels and limbs, and Chesed (kindness) is the King’s ‘right arm.’ Through acts of kindness done below, such as the charity the preceding maamar mentions, one ‘leads’ Keser by its right arm and draws it down.

In the same way Gevurah (restraint) and Tiferes (beauty), ‘the middle pillar,’ are drawn down through mitzvos. Tiferes corresponds to the mitzvah of Torah study, which is also rooted in Keser.

This is why it says of the Sea, “there we will rejoice in Him”: the joy of a mitzvah is a revelation of Keser. Keser was revealed then, and that revelation split the Sea.

Now the opening question is answered. At the Exodus, “And Havayah went before them” refers to Malchus of Atzilus, the Shechinah and the source of the souls of Israel, and the souls follow it. It went first because the Exodus was Malchus’s own ascent out of the lower worlds, an arousal from below.

Following Malchus, the souls of Israel also rose out of ‘Egypt’ and were included in Atzilus, drawn after the Community of Israel, Knesses Yisrael, a name for Malchus, the Shechinah. At the Sea, however, Keser itself was revealed to Israel, a level that Malchus cannot reach by its ascent.

The ascent of Malchus reaches only Chochmah, as explained above. The one exception is Ne’ilah, the closing prayer of Yom Kippur, when Malchus rises to Keser.

Even then it reaches only the ‘Beard’ (Dikna) of Arich Anpin, and not the Gulgalta, the ‘Skull,’ which was revealed at the Sea. So at the Sea, Israel stood higher than the Shechinah, Malchus of Atzilus.

In the Song at the Sea, “until Your people pass over, Havayah” is read as ‘until Your people pass beyond Havayah’: through the revelation of Keser, Israel came to be above the level of Havayah. Therefore the verse says that the angel of G‑d, which had gone before them, moved.

The ‘angel’ is the Shechinah, which at the Exodus went before the camp because the souls followed it. At the Sea it went behind them, because Israel, receiving the revelation of Keser, had risen above it; this answers the question with which the maamar began.