ובזה הנערה באה וגו׳

The maamar opens with Esther 2:13, which tells how each maiden in turn came to King Achashverosh: “And with this the maiden came to the king.” It reads “with this” as the pillar which, the Zohar says, stands in the middle of the Garden of Eden, by which souls rise from the lower Gan Eden to the upper Gan Eden.

So “came to the king” is the soul’s ascent through that pillar. A parenthesis takes up the Zohar in Pekudei, which reads “with this” as Yesod (foundation), and explains that there is no contradiction: the pillar is the Yesod of the Garden, as the Mikdash Melech, a commentary on the Zohar, writes on the passage in Vayechi.

Yesod is the Sefirah that connects the giver with the receiver, just as the pillar connects the lower Gan Eden with the upper one. The parenthesis also refers the reader to the discourse on “And you shall command,” earlier in Torah Ohr, where the pillar is called “all” (kol), the word in “from an abundance of all.”

Next comes the inner meaning of the pillar: bittul, setting aside one’s own sense of self. No one can rise to a higher level without first letting go of the level he holds, because only what is emptied of itself can become a vessel to receive more.

A parenthesis points to a discussion of the Zohar’s words “the daughter of the higher Chochmah,” with the stress on Chochmah, which Chassidus identifies with bittul. The Sages’ teaching that the angel Michael offers up the souls of the righteous on the heavenly altar belongs here: the soul alone lacks the strength to rise so high.

Because the soul cannot rise so high alone, it needs the angels’ help, specifically that of Michael, the angel of Chesed (kindness). The parenthesis points to the same Zohar passage in Vayakhel, where “four faces of an eagle” take up the souls worthy to rise and bring them into the pillar; the printed text reads מסדר, “arranges,” where the Zohar itself has מְשַׁדֵּר, “sends.” It also points to the discussion of “As an eagle stirs up its nest.”

The Talmud relates that when the sages ascend to and descend from the Heavenly Academy, angels go with each of them, except for the chair of Rabbi Chiya, which rises and descends by itself. The maamar calls this a true novelty: a soul that rises without the angels’ help.

Rabbi Chiya needed no help because his bittul was complete. The same is said of Esther when her turn came to go to the king: unlike the other maidens, “she did not ask for anything except what Hegai would say,” which the maamar reads as needing no help from the angels.

Hegai was the king’s chamberlain, the keeper of the women. The maamar reads his name as hegyon, “meditation,” in “the meditation of my heart”: speech still within thought, from which the angels receive. As a causative, “transitive” word, Hegai is what makes others speak, moving the angels, “the masters of song,” to speak and sing.

A second root for Hegai is hogah in “when he had been moved from the highway” (II Samuel 20:13), meaning moved from one place to another. So Hegai is what moves from thought into speech, as when a person thinks how he will say something, and it is the flow that comes from the chamber of the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of a world.

In the chamber of the Holy of Holies of Beriah, the first world of separate existence, the light of Atzilus, the world still one with G‑d, is drawn in to raise Malchus up; the Pri Etz Chaim says so in connection with the rule that the blessing of redemption must lead directly into the Amidah prayer. The parenthesis also refers to the Chanukah discourse “Sing and rejoice,” earlier in Torah Ohr, on “they will sing of Your righteousness” and on the Zohar’s “song in the evening and joy in the morning.”

Esther 2:14 says that each maiden came to the king in the evening and returned in the morning. Coming in the evening is “Come before Him with song” (Psalms 100:2), the ascent from below to above, which belongs to night, the concealment of the Infinite Light; the Chanukah discourse explains that this very concealment stirs the longing to rise.

Day is the opposite movement: the Infinite Light drawn down from above to below, “Serve G‑d with joy.” So coming in the evening and returning in the morning are the two movements Ezekiel saw in the living creatures, “running and returning” (ratzo vashov): rising toward G‑d, and returning to draw His light down.