ביאור על הנ״ל

This maamar explains the one before it in Torah Ohr, which opened with Haman’s words, “Let them bring the royal garment that the king has worn, and the horse that the king has ridden.” It now explains more deeply the ideas raised there: Torah and mitzvos, the garment, the horse and the crown, and Mordechai and Esther.

The Torah explains the mitzvos: it tells what they are and how they are done. It is the level of the higher Chochmah, a wisdom above anything the mind can grasp, and its source is higher still: Mocha Stima’ah, “the hidden brain,” the Chochmah within Keser (the level above intellect), where wisdom is not yet revealed even as “wise.”

The higher Chochmah is described as “wise, but not with a known wisdom,” yet it already holds the first openings of wisdom, called the thirty-two paths; Mocha Stima’ah is still completely “concealed.” The mitzvos reach higher than both: they come from Keser within Keser, the very highest point of the Crown.

The mitzvos come from Keser within Keser, but from its outer dimension. The inner dimension of Keser is so bound up with the Infinite One that it is not counted among the ten Sefiros at all, and it can be revealed only through its outer dimension, as a torch is known by the light it casts far away.

Light that reaches a distant place is dimmer than a candle lit right there, yet the very fact that it reaches so far shows how great its source must be. So too the outer dimension, precisely because it reaches so far, testifies to the greatness of the inner source behind it.

The same is true of wisdom: a wondrous, deep wisdom can be grasped only through a simple parable. Rabbi Meir, the greatest sage of his generation, devoted a third of his teaching to parables, and he was called Rabbi Nehorai, “the one who gives light,” because he illumined the eyes of the sages. His many parables are like the torch’s distant light: they show how deep his wisdom was.

Rabbi Meir’s wisdom could be revealed only through many parables. The same was true of King Shlomo, whose wisdom was so great that, to reveal the wisdom contained in the Torah, he spoke “three thousand parables.”

The Alter Rebbe reads the verse as three thousand layers of parable, each one a parable for the one before it, until a single point of Torah was understood. The deeper the wisdom, the more parables are needed to bring it down.

A small idea that can be grasped as it is needs no parable. So too the Infinite Light, which truly has no end, can be revealed only through an outer dimension, just as deep wisdom is revealed only through parables.

Above Keser and Mocha Stima’ah there is a “garment,” the level of which the verse says, “G‑d reigns; He has clothed Himself in majesty.” The analogy is a tallis placed over a person’s head and over the crown on it, wrapping him entirely from head to foot.

This garment includes the crown within it, just as the tallis covers the crown. It is the Infinite Light at its last level, the Malchus (sovereignty) of the Infinite One Himself, which shines equally on all worlds and is not subject to the step-by-step order of the descending worlds.

The chain of descending worlds begins only after the tzimtzum, when the empty space was formed and a thin line of light, the kav, was drawn into it; Keser and Mocha Stima’ah themselves come from that line. The garment, however, is the Infinite Light itself, which surrounds the whole vacated space as it was before the tzimtzum.

The surrounding light is what brings vessels into being: the surrounding light (Or Makif) shines on a vessel from outside and the inner light (Or Pnimi) from within, and together they polish it into shape. True creation, from nothing to something, can come only from the Infinite Light itself, which alone is all-powerful.

Had the worlds come only through a chain of cause and effect, nothing would ever have become a separate “something.” Even Chochmah, the very beginning of existence, which bears a name of its own, would have remained wholly nullified within its source, with no name at all.

The same is true of the emotive attributes that come from Chochmah, and all the more so of physical matter, which cannot be produced from anything spiritual by cause and effect. Physical existence comes only from the Infinite Light itself, which surrounds the whole vacated space.

Within that space the kav reaches all the worlds as memalei kol almin, the light that fills each world according to its measure, while the Infinite Light surrounds them all equally. Because it is omnipotent, it alone can make the vessel into a “something,” a separate physical thing.

The mitzvos come from the outer dimension of Keser within Keser, and there the Infinite Light itself shines. That is why the mitzvos are clothed in actual physical things and deeds.

Physical existence, the realm of action, came into being from the “royal garment,” the garment of the Infinite Light that surrounds all the worlds equally. This is the “royal garment” of Haman’s words in the Megillah, which the previous maamar explained.

It is called royal because it comes from the Malchus of the Infinite One, the last level, which wraps around all the worlds. The Torah, by contrast, is rooted in Mocha Stima’ah, the inner dimension of Keser, where the light that surrounds all worlds (sovev kol almin) is not revealed.

Each therefore has its own superiority. The Torah is greater in that it comes from the inner dimension of Keser; the mitzvos are greater in that their source, the outer dimension, is where the Infinite Light itself is revealed as sovev kol almin.

Here a parenthetical gloss begins. It points to the opening of Mishnas Chassidim, a work of Kabbalah arranged like the Mishnah, where the tractate on Adam Kadmon (“Primordial Man,” the first configuration of light after the tzimtzum) says that Keser joins the higher with the lower: in its inner dimension it holds the highest level of the lower, and in its outer dimension the lowest level of the higher. So the maamar’s words are well understood: the outer dimension of Keser reveals the surrounding light, while Mocha Stima’ah, its inner dimension, does not.

The gloss raises a difficulty. Earlier the maamar said that the inner dimension of Keser is not counted among the ten Sefiros at all, which makes it higher than the outer dimension; how, then, can the outer dimension hold a revelation that the inner one lacks? It also seems to go against section 4 of Mishnas Chassidim, which says that when the Sefiros are counted by their outer dimension the count begins from Chochmah, since the outer dimension of Keser is not of their kind but is their root.

The answer is that the “inner dimension of Keser” that is not counted among the Sefiros means what Etz Chaim, the classic work of the Arizal’s Kabbalah, describes as the two levels of Keser, called Atik (“the Ancient One”) and Arich Anpin (“the Long Face”). There it is explained that only Arich Anpin is counted among the ten Sefiros.

Atik, the lowest level of the Infinite One, is not counted among the Sefiros, and this is the inner dimension the maamar meant when it said that the inner dimension of Keser is not counted. Atik is the principal, truest inner core of Keser.

Mocha Stima’ah is also inner, but it is the inner dimension of Arich Anpin, the second level of Keser, and it is the Chochmah within Keser. So when the maamar said that sovev kol almin is not revealed in Mocha Stima’ah, it meant that Atik is not openly revealed there.

An aspect of Atik, its Gevurah (restraint), is clothed within Mocha Stima’ah, but its light comes there through contraction, the “measuring line” that gives light by measure. In the outer dimension of Keser, the Skull (Gulgalta) of Arich Anpin, it is the Chesed (kindness) of Atik that is clothed, and that is beyond any measure.

This agrees with Mishnas Chassidim; even so, in the outer dimension the revelation is only outward, not inward as in Mocha Stima’ah. The gloss also refers to Etz Chaim, Sha’ar Mochin deTzelem, where the outer dimension is identified with the skull.

The gloss ends by quoting the Ramaz (Rabbi Moshe Zacuto) in his notes on the Zohar, Parshas Emor: the Keser of Arich Anpin still belongs to the world of the Infinite One, as every Keser relates to the level above it. Atzilus proper begins only with Mocha Stima’ah, the Chochmah of Arich Anpin.

The maamar turns to the second item in Haman’s words, “the horse that the king rode upon,” and links it to the prophet’s words to G‑d, “When You ride upon Your horses,” which the previous maamar connected with the giving of the Torah. The Sages said that at night G‑d rides upon His swift cherub and roams through eighteen thousand worlds.

These eighteen thousand worlds correspond to the eighteen blessings of the Amidah prayer, which the Sages paired with the eighteen vertebrae of the spine. Through the spine the head’s wisdom reaches the thighs and legs, since the spinal cord extends down to the sciatic nerve, which spreads through the legs.

Because the eighteen blessings draw Chochmah down the spine, one bows at the word “Blessed” in the first blessing. Bowing bends the head, which holds Chochmah, and bending it draws that wisdom down into the body.

The eighteen blessings of prayer, however, work in Atzilus, through the souls of Israel, whose prayers rise by day. The angels sing, and receive their nourishment, specifically at night.

The verse about the woman of valor, who “rises while it is yet night and gives food to her household, and a portion to her maidens,” is read as feeding the angels and the heavenly chambers (heichalos) at night. Her “maidens” are linked with the seven maidens given to Esther in the king’s palace.

Among the angels the flow divides into eighteen thousand: the verse speaks of “twice ten thousand,” twenty thousand, and “thousands that are not” takes away two thousand, leaving eighteen thousand. These are eighteen thousand kinds of comprehension, each angel receiving according to its capacity.

This flow to the angels comes through the cherub (keruv), which the Sages explained as ke-ravya, “like a child,” so it has a human face. A grown man has “a large face,” and the cherub has “a small face,” the face of a child.

The word adam (man) has the numerical value 45, the value of the Name Mah, the Name Havayah spelled out with alefs. The letter alef itself is drawn as an upper yud and a lower yud joined by a vav.

The vav joining the two yuds expresses the joining of higher and lower, as in “He makes peace in His heights.” This joining comes about through the self-nullification (bittul) drawn down to them.

A “large face” receives more from the intellect (mochin): an adult differs from a child in the measure of his understanding, as the verse says, “a man is praised according to his intellect.” The maamar identifies this intellect with self-nullification (bittul): as it says later, Chochmah is lowliness, koach mah, “the power of ‘what.’”

This is why an old man’s mind is calm and settled: he has more self-nullification. A young man is hot-blooded, because self-nullification has not yet been drawn into him as much.

A “small face” is this youthful level, the level of the angel Metatron, who is called “a youth” (na’ar). Through this cherub the flow reaches the eighteen thousand worlds.

The verse about G‑d’s chariot of thousands continues, “the L‑rd is among them, [as at] Sinai, in holiness.” Just as G‑d’s flow reaches the angels in the eighteen thousand worlds, so at Sinai G‑dliness was drawn down into physical action through the Torah.

This drawing into the physical comes through “horses”: the word sus (horse) equals 126, twice 63, the value of the Name Sag (Havayah spelled out to total 63), which is higher than the Name Mah. The text writes this 63 as gimmel-samech, Sag’s letters reversed, which spell gas, “coarse,” as the next paragraph takes up. To bring light down into physical action needs a light from very high above, as only a great torch can light a far place.

A horse can carry its rider to places he could not reach himself, and it runs faster than a man. The cherub, with its human face, is like a man running: it does not run as far or as fast as the horses.

The garment and the horse can come about even through “Haman.” The Sages found Haman hinted in the words hamin ha-etz, “from the tree?”, and he stands for coarseness and arrogance; yet this coarseness, once refined, can enter holiness, as the Sages said that some of Haman’s descendants studied Torah. Refined, it becomes the holy elevation of the heart, like the king of whom it says, “his heart was lifted up” in the ways of G‑d.

A person must keep his eyes lowered and his heart raised. The eyes stand for Chochmah, the quality of Moshe, the humblest of men, for Chochmah is self-effacement: its letters are read as koach mah, “the power of ‘what [am I]?’”

The heart, however, must be raised, as Scripture says of King Yehoshafat that “his heart was lifted up in the ways of G‑d.” The horse, whose numerical value is twice Sag, shares this quality: the letters of Sag (samech-gimmel), reversed, spell gas, “coarse.”

The horse’s power to run, to carry light far down, also comes from the refined level of Haman. Descent is for the sake of ascent: the fall makes penitents (baalei teshuvah) possible, and through their teshuvah even willful sins become like merits.

The royal crown does not come from this source. It is “the crown with which his mother crowned him,” given through Israel’s “we will do and we will hear,” and saying “we will do” first is the level of action, which comes from the light that surrounds all worlds equally.

After “we will do” comes “we will hear,” the drawing of the Torah’s wisdom inward, into understanding. This belongs only to Israel, whom the prayers call those “who sanctify Your Name,” because they have self-sacrifice (mesirus nefesh).

Self-sacrifice is why Israel alone draw down Keser, described as six hundred and twenty pillars of light, a pillar joining above and below; the previous maamar explained the number as the 613 mitzvos of the Torah and the 7 of the Rabbis, and 620 is also the numerical value of keser. On Purim this was revealed again, when “the Jews took upon themselves” what they had begun at Sinai.

The verse says “the Jews” specifically because in Mordechai and Esther’s time the Jews were ready to give their lives rather than abandon their faith. The Sages found Mordechai’s name in mor dror, the “free-flowing myrrh” of the anointing oil, rendered in Aramaic mira dachya, “pure myrrh”; above, in the realm called “the world of freedom,” it is mor dror.

Below, the same quality is called mira dachya: mor (myrrh) suggests bitterness and severities (gevuros), drawn into a realm of pure and impure. This is the Torah as it comes down into this physical world, where it is in exile and bitterness, clothed in worldly matters.

The Sages said that the books of the Prophets will one day be nullified, and in the same teaching that the Megillah of Esther and the halachos will not, as the maamar goes on to explain. The Alter Rebbe compares this nullification to the sun’s radiance within the sun itself: the radiance is bright on its own, but within its source it is not even noticed.

The Prophets draw their prophecy from Netzach and Hod, and in the Time to Come their revelation will no longer stand out as a special advantage, because the Infinite Light itself will be openly revealed. Then, as the verse says, “the glory of G‑d will be revealed, and all flesh will see.”

The Megillah of Esther is different: it is the level of “I will surely hide My face on that day,” a hidden revelation. It stands for Malchus, which conceals itself at the top of the World of Beriah and becomes its Atik, the hidden source within it.

“That day” refers to Binah, and the revelation of Atik is in Binah. So Atik is called “I will surely hide [My face] on that day”: a hidden level that shows itself in Binah while remaining concealed.

“My face” is the Keser of Malchus, its highest point. Malchus has nothing of its own: it receives everything from above, from ten “Kingships,” the Malchus within each of the ten Sefiros.

This is why ten verses of Kingship (Malchiyos) are said in the Rosh HaShanah prayers. The highest point of Malchus, its Keser, receives from the Malchus of Keser; this is “My face,” which hides itself at the top of Beriah and becomes its Atik.

Of the Time to Come the prophet says, “Behold, this is our G‑d”: what is now “that” (hidden, spoken of from afar) will become “this,” pointed to openly. Even so, the level of Esther remains hidden.

Esther is Atik, “the Hidden of all hidden ones.” Abba and Imma (Chochmah and Binah) are themselves called “hidden,” and Atik is hidden even compared with them.

Because Esther is beyond even the future revelation, her light will never be nullified, and the same is true of the halachos, which are Mordechai, mira dachya. Mordechai raised Hadassah, that is, Esther, and Esther is the power that raises the souls in Gan Eden.

Before coming to the king, the maidens were prepared for “six months with oil of myrrh,” which the previous maamar read as the soul’s entry into Gan Eden. Here the oil is Chochmah, and the myrrh, with its strong scent, is the soul’s elevation through the severities (gevuros) of Abba.

The next six months were “with spices,” which are the severities (gevuros) of Imma. The verse goes on, “And with this the maiden comes [to the king],” and “this” is the pillar that joins above and below, by which the soul rises from one Gan Eden to the next.

When a soul enters the lower Gan Eden it must forget the sights of this world, and when it rises to the Upper Gan Eden it must forget even the delight of the lower Gan Eden. Each higher level holds a new and wondrous delight beyond the one before.

All this delight comes from the reasons of the Torah, the “kisses of his mouth” for which the verse yearns; Rashi explains it as Israel’s plea that G‑d keep His promise to appear again and reveal the secret of the Torah’s reasons. The purpose of the mitzvos is that the souls come to know and grasp the reasons of the halachos and their mysteries.

In this the souls will take a wondrous, mighty delight, and this is the level of Mordechai, mira dachya. Therefore the halachos, too, will never be nullified: like the torch whose light reaches far away, they testify to their very great source.

Haman ended up dressing Mordechai in the royal garment and leading him on the king’s horse. This is because the encompassing light (makif) reaches even Haman: as is known, of the eleven spices of the incense, the frankincense is the makif, the level called “the G‑d of gods,” the name by which, the Talmud says, even the nations call Him.

So the supernal garment, the Malchus of the Infinite One, and the horse from the Name Sag can pass through Haman. But the crown, drawn from the kav into the inner dimension, is beyond his reach: Haman has no dominion there.

The crown comes only through Israel, “who sanctify Your Name,” through their “we will do and we will hear,” their self-nullification before the Infinite One. It never comes through the coarseness of Haman, even once that coarseness is refined into holiness, which is why the verse has Haman give Mordechai the garment and the horse but not the crown.

A closing gloss refers the reader to Etz Chaim, Sha’ar 10, chapter 2, to the passage that opens, “Know that the inner light (Or Pnimi).” It adds that this is specifically “through” (al yedei), that is, by means of something else; in the last paragraph the maamar said that the crown comes about only “through” Israel.