ויאמר משה אכלהו היום כו׳

The maamar opens with Moshe’s words about the manna on Shabbos: “Eat it today, for today is a Shabbos to Havayah; today you will not find it in the field.” The first question is why the manna alone stopped, when every other flow of blessing into the world continues on Shabbos; the Midrash says that even each blade of grass has a heavenly force that strikes it and tells it to grow.

A second question: they ate the manna every day, so what does Moshe add by saying “Eat it today”? The Alter Rebbe begins his answer with the verse in which G‑d first promised the manna, “Behold, I will rain down bread from heaven for you.”

The same verse calls the manna a test, “whether they will walk in My Torah or not.” This raises a third question: why did the manna come before the giving of the Torah, as though it tested whether Israel could receive the Torah at all?

Two more questions follow: what does a test about food have to do with the Torah, and why does the verse speak of “walking” in the Torah rather than “keeping” it? The rest of the maamar answers all of these questions.

The answer begins with what the Torah is: letters, 600,000 of them, matching the 600,000 root souls of Israel. The word otiyos, “letters,” is read as related to asa, “comes” (as in Isaiah’s “morning comes”), so letters are channels that bring divine light down from sovev kol almin, the light far above the worlds, into memalei kol almin, the light that enters each world and gives it life.

A horse carries its rider where he could not go on his own; so letters, which carry the light down, are called horses, as in the verse “When You ride upon Your horses.” The Alter Rebbe then recalls a known principle: the whole creation of the worlds from nothing is only a “glimmer of a glimmer” of G‑d’s light.

The verse “His Name alone is exalted” is read closely: G‑d’s “Name” is His Malchus, His kingship, the primordial thought “I will reign” from which the worlds came. Even this Name remains “alone,” exalted above the worlds.

What reaches the worlds is only “His glory,” a radiance from the Name, “upon earth and heaven.” When a person makes something, his power goes into what he makes and his mind takes on a thought he did not have before he began, and all the more so with the letters he speaks; G‑d’s creating is not like that.

With G‑d there is no such change, as the prophet says, “I, Havayah, have not changed”: He is exactly as He was before the world was created. That is why creation can involve only a glimmer of a glimmer, and not His Name itself.

Who brings the glimmer of a glimmer down into the worlds? The next verse of the psalm answers: “He has raised up a horn for His people… the children of Israel, a people near to Him.” Israel, who are close to G‑d, are the ones who draw the light down.

This is why the Sages say that G‑d “took counsel” with the souls of the righteous when He created the world, and why they call Torah scholars “builders,” occupied with the building of the world. It is also why they say that just as the world cannot exist without winds, it cannot exist without Israel.

The Alter Rebbe asks how the Sages’ comparison works: in what way are Israel like the winds? He reads ruchos, “winds,” as the directions of space, north, south and the rest, the six extremities that give the world its shape, since they set the boundaries of space.

Without the directions there would be no “place” in our sense, only the “place” of “Behold, there is a place with Me,” a place in G‑d’s presence that is wholly nullified before Him. Bounded space, as we know it, exists only through the six directions.

In the same way, the Infinite Light comes to be clothed in a world of place and boundaries only through Israel, who draw it down. So the world could not exist without Israel, just as it could not exist without the directions.

Israel draw down the light as the six extremities: on the high priest’s two shoulder stones the names of the tribes were engraved six on each stone. Since each of the six includes ten, and each ten includes ten, the number grows to 600,000, the root souls of Israel, and each soul has its own letter in the Torah, which it draws down.

This drawing down is described in the Song of Devorah: “Havayah, when You went forth from Seir… the earth trembled.” Seir is read as se’ar, “hair”: hair grows from the head and draws from the brain, yet it carries so little life that cutting it causes no pain.

Havayah is the Name that constantly gives life and brings everything into being from nothing. Its “going forth” in open revelation at the giving of the Torah came by way of Seir, the level of hair.

To bring light down from sovev kol almin, which is far above the worlds, the only fitting analogy is hair: a faint flow that still comes from the brain itself. This whole revelation came about through the giving of the Torah.

The verse goes on, “the earth trembled”: the world became nullified before G‑d. Israel are the ones who drew down “Havayah from Seir,” so that the earth trembled at Sinai when they received the Torah.

The angels too wanted the Torah, asking G‑d to “place Your glory upon the heavens,” as the Talmud recounts. The generation that left Egypt merited it instead, because their hard labor “with mortar and with bricks” subdued the sitra achra, the forces opposed to holiness.

Yet the Torah is not given only once: every day we bless G‑d as the One “Who gives the Torah,” in the present tense. And every day, the Alter Rebbe says, applying the Mishnah’s “in every generation,” a person must see himself as if he had just left Egypt.

The daily prayer was arranged for the same purpose: to subdue and nullify the will of the animal soul, so as to love G‑d in the Shema “with all your heart and with all your soul.” The Zohar calls this “being absorbed into the body of the King,” becoming wholly one with G‑d.

This is why the Song of Songs speaks of eating: “I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey.” Food that is eaten is digested and becomes blood, the life (nefesh) of the body and part of the eater himself; so the soul is to be transformed into G‑dliness itself, absorbed like food into “the body of the King.”

Digestion is selective: the best of the food becomes blood and the waste is expelled. This is because food comes from the domain of the seventy “princes,” the angelic ministers that in the tradition preside over the seventy nations, so it must be refined and its good separated out.

Prayer refines a person in the same way. Proverbs says “a man according to his praise” is tested like silver in the crucible; through praise in prayer the dross is removed, the good is absorbed into G‑dliness in the love of “with all your heart,” and the waste is cast out in the Shemoneh Esreh, in “Forgive us” and the confession “We have trespassed.”

Not all eating is the same. A verse in Proverbs sets the righteous one, who eats “to satisfy his soul,” against “the belly of the wicked,” which “shall want”; the Alter Rebbe applies these to the eating of Shabbos and the eating of the weekday.

Weekday eating is a work of refinement (birur), done through Chochmah, as the Aramaic phrase says: the food becomes blood, the soul’s life, and with that strength a person prays, so food that was under the rule of the “princes” is transformed. Because it is refined, it leaves waste behind, “the belly of the wicked shall want.”

Shabbos eating is different: it is “to satisfy his soul,” the delight of “And you shall call the Shabbos a delight.” The Zohar reads the next verse, “Then you shall delight upon Havayah,” as the meal of Atika Kadisha, the Holy Ancient One, the inner delight above intellect; such eating draws no waste and needs no refining.

Prayer differs in the same way. Weekday prayer works by refinement, as explained above, while Shabbos prayer draws down delight.

The reason lies in what Shabbos is: “for on it He rested.” A person resting from work is the analogy: while he works his mind is absorbed in the task, and when he rests it returns to its source, to itself.

The Torah calls Shabbos “a Shabbos to Havayah”: Havayah, the Name that brings everything into being from nothing by way of Seir, returns on Shabbos to its source. Then one can “delight upon Havayah,” reading “upon” as “above,” a delight higher than the level of Havayah; and since there is no refining on Shabbos, “Forgive us” is not said.

These two modes, refining on weekdays and delight on Shabbos, come about through the manna. The manna came with the dew (“the layer of dew went up”), and dew, the Talmud says, is never withheld; it stands for an arousal from above, G‑d’s own initiative, higher than anything human effort can call forth.

This arousal from above gives the soul the strength to make its own arousal from below. When we praise G‑d as the One who “causes the dew to descend,” the descent is for the sake of ascent: it comes down in order to lift the soul up.

Now the opening question about the test is answered. The manna came as “each day’s portion on its day,” and the test was Moshe’s command not to leave any of it over until morning.

The Talmud says that one who has bread in his basket and still worries about tomorrow is “small in faith.” Being unable to trust G‑d for tomorrow is a state of katnus, spiritual smallness.

The deeper purpose was that Israel should “walk in My Torah,” moving through the letters of the Torah from below to above and from above to below; this is why the verse says “walk” and not “keep.” The Alter Rebbe begins with the letters of the Torah that draw light down from above.

There are also letters that go from below to above, and these too are called horses, so there are male horses and female horses; in the maamar “To my mare” earlier in this parsha, the letters that draw down from above are called male and those that rise from below female. Sefer Yetzirah likewise describes the same letters combined in one order for the male and in another order for the female.

This upward “walking” through the letters reaches all the way to the Infinite One Himself. That is why it must be “each day’s portion on its day,” new every day and never old; aging belongs to the world, for the Talmud says that “I have been young and also grown old” was said by the Prince of the World, the angel appointed over it.

Before G‑d there is no old age, for “I, Havayah, have not changed.” So “the eyes of man are never satisfied”: these are the eyes of “your eyes are doves” in the Song of Songs, the soul’s gazing (le’istakla) toward G‑d, which can never have its fill.

This is the manna: it came from the “supernal dew,” the level of “I, Havayah, have not changed,” which is above time.

Because it came from above time, it had to be “each day’s portion on its day,” always new. And so “today you will not find it in the field”: the “field” is the world of the six extremities, the directions of space, up and down, east and the rest.

On Shabbos, “a Shabbos to Havayah,” even the Name Havayah, which brings the worlds into being, rests and returns to its source, so the manna does not come down into the “field.” In its place there is “then you shall delight upon Havayah,” an arousal from above that does not depend on any arousal from below.

The priestly blessing, “May Havayah lift up His face to you,” describes this. Below there is both “face” and “back,” an inner, wholehearted giving and an outer one; when G‑d lifts up His face, there is no “back” at all.

This explains “Eat it today”: on Shabbos the eating is “to satisfy his soul,” the delight of Shabbos. On weekdays the dew also comes down, but “at night,” as the “drops of the night” on the beloved’s locks in the Song of Songs; and locks are hair, the faint flow described above as Seir.

The weekday mode, the night dew, is “Havayah, when You went forth from Seir,” the flow through hair. On Shabbos there was instead “the layer of dew went up,” by day; this is “Eat it today,” and so the manna alone did not come down on Shabbos.

Other flows into the world continue on Shabbos, because the ascent of the worlds on Shabbos takes place only in their inner dimension, pnimiyus. In their outer dimension, chitzoniyus, Shabbos and weekdays are the same.

The other flows reach this world from the outer dimension of the worlds, through the mazalos, the heavenly constellations, and the angelic “princes.” The manna comes from a very high place, from the level of dew.

That is why the verse says the manna came down with the night dew. Its source is above the ordered chain of cause and effect, so it can reach the world only through the “drops of the night,” the level of hair.

The manna’s descent is a small likeness of the giving of the Torah, “Havayah, when You went forth from Seir.” The other flows, which come through the constellations, belong to the chain of cause and effect.

Those flows are the outer dimension of the worlds, which does not change on Shabbos, since the ascent of Shabbos is only in the inner dimension. This is the meaning of “for today is a Shabbos to Havayah.”

What rests on Shabbos is the mode of “when You went forth from Seir”: descents and contractions that are above the ordinary contractions. Because the manna comes down through this mode, it cannot come down on Shabbos.

For something as lofty as the manna to come down into the “field,” into actual physical food, it needs great contractions, the “drops of the night.” On Shabbos these contractions rest and rise, so the manna does not come down.