Torah Ohr · Sefer Shemos · Shabbos February 6
פרשת משפטים
Parshas Mishpatim
7 maamarim of the Alter Rebbe on the parsha, in the Hebrew of the Kehot edition, with every marei makom opened right where it appears. Each small section with a faithful English translation and a short explanation.
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The maamarim 7
- ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם כי תקנה עבד עברי וגו׳ “And these are the ordinances that you shall set before them” Moshe, whose root is the Higher Daas of the light that encompasses all worlds, draws Daas, a knowledge of G‑d that is felt as vividly as seeing, into every Jew, even the souls called “animal”; he does it through the halachos of the Torah, which reach into the inner being of each soul.
- כי תקנה עבד עברי וגו׳ “When you acquire a Hebrew servant” G‑d is “Creator” when He brings something into being from nothing, above all cause and effect, and “Acquirer” when He draws what already exists from concealment into revelation. So too, bringing Daas to the souls called “the seed of animal” is an acquisition: revealing the very great knowledge already present in their root “beyond the river.”
- שש שנים יעבד “Six years he shall serve” The Torah and mitzvos of each day become “days,” garments that bring what is above time down into time, so that the soul can grasp G‑dliness and rise into the source of life. The garments must also be “tanned” and washed, through prayer in which Daas transforms the emotions: this is the servant’s six years, the six thousand years before the rest of the seventh millennium.
- ביאור על הנ״ל “An explanation of the above” The souls and angels of Beriah are “animals,” created anew and, relative to the levels above them, without Daas, and they rise only through the “grass” of Daas that Moshe draws down to them. Moshe can do this because his root is Higher Daas, above the whole chain of worlds; and as the inner kav of Or Ein Sof, equal in every world, he is the same in Atzilus and in Beriah.
- ויראו את אלקי ישראל ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר כו׳ “And they saw the G‑d of Israel, and under His feet” G‑d, who has no body, is “like the appearance of a man” only as He clothes Himself in the souls of Israel, and through the Throne, the garment that conceals Him, only His “feet” reach down into the separate worlds. There, the letters of the world’s languages, refined through self-sacrifice in prayer and Torah, become “the brick of sapphire” under His feet, while the revelation of His “hands,” above the Throne, belongs to Moshe and the Patriarchs.
- ביאור ע״פ ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר כו׳… “And under His feet, like the work of a brick of sapphire” Moshe, a soul of Atzilus, knew only “stones,” the essential self-nullification of the Name Mah, while the elders, souls of Beriah, saw “under His feet”: “the brick of sapphire,” the letters of the Name Ban, the self-nullification of beings that exist. Such bricks are made below, when the seventy languages and the speech of daily life are “fired” in the Shema and raised to holiness.
- לא תהיה משכלה ועקרה בארצך את מספר ימיך אמלא “None shall lose her young or be barren in your land” Love and awe of G‑d cannot be manufactured: they grow as G‑d’s gift from a supernal “land of life,” while a person’s part is to plow and sow, by contemplating G‑d until He becomes “your G‑d,” by making himself an empty, clean vessel, and by prayer that reaches above the Name of creation. Feelings produced “in your land,” from one’s own self, either die at once or never come.
The Rebbe’s maamarim on this parsha 3
The Rebbe built 3 of his maamarim (5711–5745) on the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim of this parsha. Each maamar’s page summarizes them, with what the Rebbe adds; or see them all together.
Learn it in seven days Sunday to Shabbos
The Rebbe asked that all the maamarim of the week’s parsha be learned in that week, spread over its seven days. Here is the parsha in seven portions of about equal length.