ביאור על הנ״ל

The heading presents what follows as an explanation (biur) of the maamar just before it. It goes on to treat the same verses, “And these are the ordinances” and “Six years he shall serve,” in Kabbalistic detail.

The maamar opens with the parshah’s verse, “And these are the ordinances,” and turns to Yirmeyahu’s prophecy that G‑d will sow Israel with two kinds of seed, “man” and “animal.” The letters of behemah (animal) add up to 52, the number called BaN (the Name Havayah spelled out to total 52), and it stands for the souls rooted in Beriah, the first world of separate existence.

The letters of adam (man) add up to 45, MaH (the Name Havayah spelled out to total 45), which stands for the souls of Atzilus, the highest world, still one with G‑d. Yechezkel’s vision bears this out: “a man” sits above the Throne, while the Throne itself is the World of Beriah, where the holy creatures bear animal faces such as the lion’s.

The angels of Michael’s camp, the lion’s face of the Chariot, roar like lions. Measured against the levels above them they count as being without Daas, like animals, although measured against what is below them their Daas is great.

Among the four faces of Yechezkel’s Chariot, the face of a “man” is Daas as it is clothed in Beriah; so Beriah has a “man” beside its “animal,” as the verse “Man and animal You save” pairs them. The “man” of Atzilus is higher: Chassidus reads adam (man) as from adameh, “I will be likened,” for Atzilus resembles the level it comes from.

Atzilus is only the hidden made revealed, not something new. Its name comes from vaya’tzel, used when the spirit that rested on Moshe was drawn forth onto the seventy elders: the same spirit that was hidden in him was revealed in them.

Like that spirit, Atzilus is nothing but a revelation of the Infinite One Himself, so that Chochmah and Binah exist “from above.” The words “not that You have a known righteousness” come from Elijah’s prayer, Patach Eliyahu, in the introduction to the Tikkunei Zohar: G‑d is not defined by the attributes.

The prayer continues that the attributes exist only “to show” how the world is conducted. So Atzilus is a revelation, and what it reveals resembles the supernal hidden level above Chochmah; nothing new is created.

That hidden level first comes to light in Chochmah. Beriah is different: it is a new existence, something from nothing, and so Avraham, speaking as a created being, says, “I am dust and ashes.”

For the “animal,” the souls and angels of Beriah, to rise, an influence must come from above, called “grass.” The parenthesis spells the word esev (עשב): the Name Ayin-Beis (72), drawn from the 288 sparks, with the letter shin, whose three strokes are three lines.

The verse “And I will give grass in your field for your animals” is read word by word: the “field” is the Field of Apples, a Kabbalistic name for Malchus, and just as grass grows from a spiritual power of growth in the soil, this light sprouts from the spiritual power of the Infinite One. “I will give” means the Infinite One Himself gives it, first to “the beasts on a thousand mountains” in the field, and then, as Tehillim says, grass grows “for the animal.”

Only after the field does the grass reach “your animals,” the lion-faced angels of the Chariot. Yet how much comes down depends on “the service of man,” echoing “grass for the service of man”: the service of the “man” of the level of MaH, who draws it down, and the service of people below.

In Kabbalistic terms, the flow from above, the “masculine waters,” matches the “feminine waters” raised from below. Here this is Torah and prayer: Torah study makes one’s prayer pure and refines it.

This “grass” is Daas: not bare knowledge but a felt connection that keeps the emotive attributes alive and steady. Daas has two levels, a higher and a lower.

Chanah’s verse calls G‑d “a G‑d of knowledges,” in the plural, pointing to two kinds of Daas. Higher Daas joins Chochmah and Binah; Lower Daas, which Kabbalah describes as extending “behind the shoulders,” spreads into the inner core of the emotive attributes.

Lower Daas becomes “food for the animal,” raising the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. The parenthesis adds that even Torah scholars of Beriah are still “animals,” since the Talmud itself is rooted in Beriah.

This drawing down comes through the parshah’s “If you buy” (ki sikneh). Acquisition belongs to Atzilus, because an acquired thing stays what it was and only changes hands, as Atzilus only reveals what was hidden; so in the blessing over the moon, which names G‑d Maker, Former, Creator and Owner, “Owner” (Koneich) matches Atzilus. Atzilus is also like Yosef going in “to do his work.”

Onkelos renders “to do his work” as “to examine his account books”: though Yosef was busy with worldly accounts, he stayed a “chariot,” wholly given over to G‑d, at that very moment. That is a soul of Atzilus; “Creator,” by contrast, corresponds to Beriah, a new being from nothing, while man’s root is in Atzilus.

Even a person whose soul is from Beriah has, hidden within, the highest soul-levels, Chayah and Yechidah. The reason given is that the Patriarchs were the “Chariot,” wholly given over to G‑d as a chariot is to its rider.

Avraham’s words “G‑d, before whom I have walked” show that being a chariot means constant self-nullification. Yet one can live in that state while acting below, as Yosef did while doing his work.

In Beriah, by contrast, this comes about through “If you buy,” a drawing down from Atzilus. That drawing down comes through Moshe, whose root is Higher Daas.

Even the upper worlds need this drawing down. Moshe, the “faithful shepherd,” provides it, as Yeshayahu describes a shepherd who tends his flock, grazing it in good pasture and feeding it.

So Moshe is the one who draws down the “grass.” His level is MaH, which is Chochmah, read as koach mah, “the power of ‘what,’” the self-effacement of pure insight; and it comes from the illumination of the Forehead (Mitzcha) of Atik, the innermost level of Keser.

The name Moshe (משה) is MaH (מה) with a shin, whose three strokes are three lines, and Moshe refines the BaN, the “animal” level. His root is Higher Daas, above the whole chain of worlds, the knowing of which it is said, “Before You all hidden things are revealed.”

That knowing is not limited by the order of the worlds, so it reaches even coarse physical things, such as animals. Because Moshe comes from this Daas, which is higher than Atzilus itself, he alone can draw Daas into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah.

Moshe’s soul comes from the “first Shemitah,” an earlier cosmic cycle linked with Chesed, which is symbolized by water; so “I drew him out of the water” means from that first cycle. His words “And what (mah) are we, that you complain against us?” reflect that root, which is mah, utter self-nullification, and the Alter Rebbe reads them as saying that the people have no connection to that level.

The name Moshe alludes only to “I drew him,” not to “out of the water.” Onkelos renders it shechalteih, a word for drawing out: Moshe was drawn out from concealment, like the hidden ark of bulrushes in which he lay.

Because Moshe’s root is in that first cycle, he can draw down the “grass,” which comes from the 288 sparks that fell from the World of Tohu when its vessels shattered. Those sparks become food for the “animal.”

All of this is for Israel, who are called Ivri, “Hebrews,” from ever hanahar, “the other side of the river.” That river is the one that “goes out from Eden,” here Chochmah, “to water the garden,” gan, whose letters add up to 53, the number of the sections of the Torah.

“The other side of the river” is a makif, a light that surrounds, above the chain of worlds with its above and below. The globe illustrates it: a sphere has no top or bottom, people live on every side, and no one would say that those on the underside walk upside down.

This is the Kabbalistic level of the Circles (iggulim), as against the straight light (yosher). Only the straight, inner light divides into head and feet, as in the three cavities of the skull, which hold the three intellectual faculties; the Circles are sovev kol almin, surrounding all worlds alike.

Because Israel are Ivri, rooted beyond the chain of worlds, the “grass” of Daas is drawn down into them. The principle is that it is precisely the higher place that can come down to the lower one.

This is why the angels sing: to draw down holiness with “Holy, holy, holy.” Yet this sanctification comes from above and below together, from the angels and from Israel, for the reason that follows.

Israel “arose in thought,” higher than the angels, who are the level of speech, the outer vessels of Yetzirah. Even the angels of Beriah are only the Yetzirah, the speech level, within Beriah, for whatever they think, they speak.

Because souls are rooted in thought, they can be clothed in a body without falling, unlike the angels who brought accusation against mankind, came down into bodies and fell. A soul in a body still remembers G‑d.

Still, once in a body the soul is called “Yaakov,” and its rank is below the angels; “Yisrael” names its higher level. In the body it works at the level of action, which the angels lack, for action is a different kind of power from speech.

Speech clothes thought so fully that while speaking one can think only of what one is saying, but action is not like that. Thought and speech, Beriah and Yetzirah, are “garments,” and it is from them, in the Kabbalistic phrase, that “souls fly forth.”

Atzilus is called “bodies,” like the power of sight that spreads into the eye itself, while Beriah and Yetzirah are only garments. So the Kedushah joins above and below: Israel are both above, rooted in thought, and below, in the body, and the angels, who are speech, stand between them as intermediaries.

The three “Holy”s correspond to the Names El Sha-dai, El Ado-nai and El Havayah. By gematria, El (31) is the thirty-one locks of hair and kadosh (410) the 410 strands, recalling the nazirite, “holy,” who lets his hair grow; all belong to the three cavities of the skull of Arich Anpin, the outer level of Keser, and all are drawn down through Moshe, who is Daas, the inner core of the emotive attributes.

When G‑d called “Moshe, Moshe” from the burning bush, the cantillation has no break between the two names, as the Zohar notes, unlike the call “Avraham, Avraham.” This is because the Avraham of Beriah is not of one kind with the Avraham of Atzilus: in Beriah he is a new, created being, “dust and ashes.”

Moshe, however, is the same in Atzilus and in Beriah, because he is the inner dimension: the kav, the thread of the Infinite Light that runs equally through all the worlds. The parenthesis refers to the Ramaz’s commentary on the Zohar, Terumah, folio 134b.

The parshah’s “Six years he shall serve” (ya’avod) is read as ibbud, the tanning of hides: the soul’s garments must be processed and washed white, like the ewes “that come up from the washing.” The six years are the world’s six thousand years, the time when garments are made, and Avraham “came into days,” the supernal days that clothe the soul.

The same is said of “the days of David drew near,” and the Zohar, in its passage on Avraham’s days, says, “Fortunate are the masters of teshuvah.” But a question arises: does the making of the soul’s garments not depend on mitzvos and good deeds?

Seemingly, then, what do days have to do with garments? The answer begins with Avigayil’s blessing to David, that his soul will be “bound up in the bundle of life.”

A stone is bound into a sling so that it can be thrown high, and garments likewise lift the soul. Garments also act as a screen, letting one look at a bright light that cannot be seen without one.

Torah and mitzvos as they are above are a bright light, too bright to be seen directly. They must take on material form and come down from above time into time, which is why time, the days, are the garments.

So that the garments do not stay below, they need the “tanning” and washing described above. Moshe, the faithful shepherd, provides it, feeding and watering his sheep and also washing them, and he does it through prayer, whose love and awe are the “wings” that lift it upward.

The verse goes on, “in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing,” and the Zohar, speaking of the servant, reads “for nothing” as without the mitzvos; here the seventh is the seventh millennium, after the six thousand years. One Talmudic opinion holds that mitzvos will be nullified in the Time to Come, but we do not rule so; rather, the mitzvos will take another form.

Then there will be sacrifices, as described in Yechezkel (chapter 43, according to the Kehot note), and service will no longer rise and fall as it does now, going “from strength to strength.” Instead there will be rest, for life everlasting.

The maamar ends where it began: mishpat (ordinance) is linked to “the former manner (mishpat),” which the Targum renders “the former way” (hilchesa), so mishpatim are halachos, from hiluch, going; and “before them” (lifneihem) means into their inner being, the inner core of the emotive attributes, drawn from Moshe. This came after the giving of the Torah, when Israel asked Moshe, “You speak, and we will hear.”