מים רבים לא יוכלו לכבות את האהבה ונהרות…

The maamar opens with a verse from the Song of Songs, which Chassidus reads as a love song between G‑d and the Jewish people. Its claim is that no flood of water, however great, can put out this love; the rest of the maamar explains what the “waters” are and why they cannot quench it.

The Alter Rebbe identifies the “many waters” with ordinary working life: the constant pressures of making a living and the stream of thoughts about worldly affairs. These can crowd out a person’s awareness of G‑d, yet they cannot actually extinguish his love for Him.

The love that survives is the “hidden love” (ahavah mesuteres) that every Jew possesses by nature, whether or not he feels it. It belongs to the G‑dly soul, which naturally strives upward to return to its Source, just as a flame reaches upward by its very nature without any effort.

The verse just before “many waters” describes this love as “sparks of fire, a flame of G‑d”: a fire whose origin is Divine. That is the G‑dly soul, which before coming into a body enjoyed the radiance of G‑d’s presence in the spiritual worlds and was wholly one with the Infinite One; its yearning to rise is the memory of that union.

Because the soul’s love is its very nature, it does not die when the soul enters a body and becomes busy with material things. The Alter Rebbe calls those material involvements the “many waters,” and insists that they cannot put out the soul’s constant longing to rise and dissolve into G‑d.

Then comes the maamar’s bold thesis: the soul does not merely survive its immersion in worldly affairs; through that very immersion it can reach a higher level than it had before it came down, even when it basked in the radiance of G‑d’s presence. The rest of the maamar explains how.

Isaiah compares G‑d’s promise never again to be angry with Israel to His oath after the Flood never again to bring “the waters of Noach” over the earth. The Alter Rebbe takes the prophet’s phrase “the waters of Noach” as a name for the “many waters” of worldly life, and refers the reader to Ir Gibborim, a work by the author of the Kli Yakar commentary on the Torah.

The name Noach means rest: the Zohar reads it as naycha d’rucha, the settled contentment of spirit that comes when work is finished. The proof is that the Torah says G‑d “ceased” on the seventh day, and the Aramaic translation of Onkelos renders that word with the root of Noach, “rested.”

The verse repeats the name, “Noach, Noach,” and the Midrash explains the doubling as rest for the higher beings and rest for the lower beings. The Alter Rebbe maps these onto two kinds of Shabbos: the weekly “lower Shabbos” we know now, which is not wholly rest, and the “higher Shabbos” of the Messianic future, “the day that is entirely Shabbos.” Both will be explained later in the maamar.

The Alter Rebbe now asks why G‑d brought a Flood at all. If the aim were only to destroy the wicked, He could have done it instantly and quietly; a year-long cataclysm of water must have served another purpose.

The answer, drawn from the Talmud, is that the Flood came to purify the earth itself, which had been corrupted by the violence done on it. That is why the punishment took the form of water specifically, since water is the medium of purification in Torah law.

The model is the mikveh, the ritual pool, which must hold at least forty se’ah of water to purify a person or vessel. The Flood, which lasted forty days, was in effect a mikveh for the whole earth.

Ezekiel’s promise that G‑d will “sprinkle pure water” on Israel shows that water is the instrument of spiritual cleansing. Because the Flood waters purified the world, they produced the “rest of spirit” that the name Noach denotes, and so they are called “the waters of Noach.”

Now the Alter Rebbe applies this to working life: the servitude of having to earn a living is also “waters of Noach.” The Midrash relates that when G‑d showed Avraham the future, he chose for his descendants the subjugation of exile rather than Gehinnom; the Alter Rebbe reads that servitude as the burden of making a living, which, like Gehinnom, cleanses.

He explains why such cleansing is a necessary stage. A soul cannot enter the Garden of Eden and enjoy G‑d’s radiance until it has passed through the purging of Gehinnom; hence the Talmud says of the sage Elisha ben Avuyah, called Acher (“the Other”) after he strayed, that it was better he be judged and purified so that he could enter the World to Come.

Beyond Gehinnom, a soul rising from the lower Garden of Eden to the higher must immerse in the “River of Fire” so as to forget the lesser delight it knew before. In the same way, the servitude of earning a living, painful as it is, cleanses the soul and lets it climb to the very highest level.

The Alter Rebbe clarifies what “servitude” means here. It is not political subjugation or taxation: in the days of the Temple, too, Israel had a king who taxed them, even more heavily, taking a tenth.

The real difference is that when the Temple stood, G‑d’s blessing flowed down so abundantly that the Land of Israel literally was “a land flowing with milk and honey.”

That abundance was supernatural, as the Talmud describes at the end of Tractate Kesubos, so people had no anxiety about making a living. The “servitude” of exile, then, is the worry and toil of earning a living that came when that open blessing ceased.

The Alter Rebbe returns to the present: since the Temple’s destruction every person must labour and worry to make a living. This, he says, is exactly what the verse calls “many waters” and Isaiah calls “the waters of Noach.”

They are called waters of “rest” because they bring the soul to a higher satisfaction than it knew before it came into a body. Then it merely enjoyed G‑d’s radiance; now, through its struggle in the world, it can rise above that.

The Mishnah’s teaching that one hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world outweighs all of the World to Come expresses this. The advantage comes from “light out of darkness”: iskafya, subduing the sitra achra (the forces opposed to holiness), and is’hapcha chashocha, transforming darkness itself into light, produce a light greater than light that never met darkness.

Now he describes how this happens in practice. A person spends the day absorbed in business, the “darkness”; then in prayer he reflects on the Sages’ teaching that every blade of grass has a mazal, a spiritual force above, that tells it to grow.

The mazalos are the celestial forces (associated with the constellations) through which life-force is channelled to everything in this world. Moshe’s blessing to Yosef, which speaks of the produce ripened by the sun and the moons, shows that the heavenly bodies govern the earth’s growth.

The contemplation climbs the chain of influence: the mazalos draw from the seventy angelic “princes” appointed over the nations, those from higher angels (the “guardians of the Ofanim”), and so on upward, each receiving from the one above it, until all draw from G‑d’s Malchus, His sovereignty, the attribute through which He creates and rules the worlds.

Malchus is the power that brings all worlds from absolute nothingness into existence, as the verse “Your kingship is a kingship over all worlds” says. Yet this whole creative power is only the “radiance of the Shechinah,” the light that shines outward from G‑d.

Compared with G‑d’s own essence, that radiance is a mere glow. His essence is truly infinite and unchanged by creation, as the liturgy says: You were the same before the world was created and after it was created.

When a person contemplates this deeply, not superficially, his soul is set aflame with love and longing, “like sparks of fire,” recalling the maamar’s opening verse. He wants to break out of the darkness and concealment of the physical world and cleave only to G‑d.

The Psalmist’s cry “Whom have I in heaven? And besides You I desire nothing” expresses this love. Such a person does not want even the lower or higher Garden of Eden, the spiritual rewards of the souls, because they too are only G‑d’s radiance and not G‑d Himself.

The Talmud describes the World to Come as the righteous enjoying “the radiance of the Shechinah”; this love wants more than radiance. It wants to be absorbed into G‑d’s very essence, what the Zohar calls being “absorbed into the body of the King.”

This love is a form of teshuvah, return to G‑d. The Zohar says that those who return serve “with greater strength” than the perfectly righteous, because their love bursts out of the darkness in which they had been immersed in material affairs.

Since light born from darkness is greater, this love is called “with all your might (me’odecha),” the third and highest level of love in the Shema, meaning love without limit. It is unlimited precisely because it emerges from its opposite.

The Sages read G‑d’s verdict on creation, “very good,” as including even the angel of death: “good” is the angel of life, “very” is the angel of death. The Alter Rebbe applies this to the animal soul: the very opposition it presents is what makes possible the “very,” the limitless love of “with all your might.”

The reason is surprising: at its ultimate root, the animal soul stems from a level higher than the G‑dly soul. The proof is the Torah’s list of the kings of Edom who reigned “before any king reigned over Israel.”

In Kabbalah these Edomite kings represent the world of Tohu, a realm of intense lights that preceded the ordered world of Tikkun, to which the G‑dly soul (the “kings of Israel”) belongs. Tohu’s vessels could not contain its lights and shattered, hence the refrain “he reigned, and he died”; so the forces rooted in it fell very low, even though their origin is far above the G‑dly soul.

Because the animal soul’s root is in Tohu’s kings, even in its fallen state it has the power to dominate the G‑dly soul. Its root is “kingship,” and a king’s nature is self-exaltation; hence the animal soul’s forceful ego.

A second sign of the higher root: man, the highest creature, draws his life from animals and food and cannot live without them, while they do not need him. The dependence of the higher on the lower shows that the lower has a loftier source.

The Alter Rebbe restates the principle: at the root of their root, these forces are far higher than the souls. That is why the G‑dly soul had to descend and be enclothed specifically in the animal soul.

By working through the animal soul, engaged in the worries of livelihood, the “many waters,” the G‑dly soul can reach the love of “with all your might.”

That limitless love is higher than the state the soul enjoyed before it came into the body, when it only delighted in G‑d’s radiance.

It is achieved only through iskafya and is’hapcha chashocha, subduing and transforming the darkness. Because the animal soul’s root is higher, subduing it releases that higher light; and this process of iskafya is what will ultimately bring about the resurrection of the dead, when the physical body itself is elevated.

This explains the Mishnah quoted earlier: an hour of teshuvah and good deeds in this world surpasses the World to Come, since only here is there darkness to transform. And it explains why the “many waters” are named after Noach, “rest.”

From the waters of livelihood comes the ark, the teivah, which in Hebrew also means “word.” The ark is the words of prayer; G‑d’s call to Noach to enter the ark with his household is a call to enter wholly into the words of prayer, where the day’s struggles are elevated.

The verses describe the waters of the Flood swelling and rising fifteen cubits above the mountains. The Alter Rebbe reads this as the animal soul’s temporary dominance over the G‑dly soul while a person is immersed in business; but this very dominance is what later produces the greater light of prayer.

“The ark went upon the face of the waters,” and it was the waters themselves that lifted the ark high. So too the words of prayer are raised precisely by the “waters” of a day of material struggle, and they rise to the highest levels.

The practical conclusion: businesspeople often assume they cannot pray as well as full-time scholars, “those who dwell in the tents” of study. The Alter Rebbe says the opposite is true: their prayer can reach higher, because their light comes out of darkness.

The Alter Rebbe now explains why the “rest” of Noach is Shabbos. The Torah says that on the seventh day G‑d “ceased from all His work,” and cessation from creative work is what Shabbos is.

During the six days of creation G‑d’s Malchus, His creative sovereignty, spread outward and downward into ever more worlds and creatures; each day began with a new utterance, starting with “Let there be light.”

The further utterances, the firmament and the vegetation, continued this outward flow, which is why those days are called “days of work.” On Shabbos the flow reverses: the worlds ascend back toward their Source, just as a person who stops working withdraws from his tasks and rests.

The same pattern happens in a person’s week. The day spent in the pressure of business is outward “work”; when, through prayer, those involvements are transformed and raised up into G‑dliness, the result is naycha d’rucha, rest of spirit.

That is why weekday prayer is a kind of Shabbos: each weekday prayer carries a glow of Shabbos, an ascent of the worlds. But the Alter Rebbe adds that all this is only the “lower Shabbos,” the rest that follows toil, as opposed to the higher Shabbos he now introduces.

Beyond the weekly Shabbos there is a “higher Shabbos”: the Messianic era, called in the Mishnah “the day that is entirely Shabbos.” The Alter Rebbe now returns to Isaiah’s verse about G‑d’s oath never again to bring “the waters of Noach.”

The waters served to purify, but purification is not needed forever. In the future, when the world is refined, the “waters” of servitude and preoccupation will no longer be needed, and so G‑d swears not to be angry with Israel or rebuke them again.

The Alter Rebbe acknowledges what he has shown: the “many waters” produce the advantage of light from darkness, the limitless love of “with all your might.”

Yet there is a still higher love, “great love” (ahavah rabbah), which is not produced by human effort from below but is given from above. It surpasses even the love born of struggle with the “many waters.”

The Song of Songs describes it as “His right hand embraces me”: the right hand is Chesed, G‑d’s kindness, embracing the soul by His own initiative. This love will be revealed in the future, as Isaiah promises that even if mountains move, G‑d’s kindness will not depart.

That is supernal Chesed, the great love from above. The bracketed addition reads Isaiah’s words about the servant who “shall be very (me’od) high” as saying that in the future the love of “with all your might (me’odecha)” itself will come from a yet higher level, so that the gain of the “waters” will be raised by the gift from above.