זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק בדרך וגו׳

The maamar opens with the Torah’s command to remember how Amalek attacked Israel on the way out of Egypt, the passage read on Shabbos Zachor. It then brings the verse said after that battle and the Sages’ teaching on it: G‑d’s Name and Throne are not whole until the seed of Amalek is erased. Both the war and the “whole Name and Throne” are explained later in the maamar.

The Alter Rebbe turns the war with Amalek into a war inside every Jewish soul, in every generation. The ground for this is the Mishnah’s rule that each person must see himself as if he had left Egypt; the Alter Rebbe adds “and on each and every day,” so the Exodus, and the war that follows it, are present events for each person.

Because the Exodus happens in the soul every day, the daily mention of it, morning and evening, is not only a memory but describes something taking place now. And as Israel met Amalek right after leaving Egypt, each person’s daily going out is met by a war with Amalek.

Two verses show that Amalek attacked “on the way” out of Egypt: Moshe’s words in Deuteronomy, and G‑d’s words to Shaul through Shmuel before the war against Amalek. The maamar will return at its end to these words, “on the way, as you went out of Egypt.”

To explain this, the Alter Rebbe begins with the source of the souls. Knesses Yisrael, the Congregation of Israel, is the collective root from which all Jewish souls come, and it is called G‑d’s “heart.”

The proof is the verse “libavtini,” a verb built on lev (heart): the beloved has become, as it were, G‑d’s heart. The comparison is to the human heart: it is where the life-spirit is gathered, and from it life spreads through the whole body.

The heart does not only receive life; through it the life-spirit circulates through the body. Two verses about motion are borrowed: “goes round and round,” said of the wind, and “running and returning,” said of the angelic chayos and read here as chayus, life-force. In the same way, the source of souls is called Knesses Yisrael.

Knesses Yisrael is read as “the gathering-in of Israel”: it is where the life and flow that come from “Israel above” are gathered. The name Yisrael was given to Yaakov because he “strove with Elokim” and prevailed, so “Israel above” is a level that rules over Elokim.

That higher level is the light of the Name Havayah, which is above Elokim, the Name of concealment and limitation. Ezekiel’s vision of “a likeness like the appearance of a man” above the throne pictures this level that sits above the throne.

Each individual soul carries a spark of that collective “heart”: the “point of the heart,” the innermost core of the soul. By its nature it strives upward to cleave to G‑d, like a flame that rises by itself.

This point is the soul’s very essence, rooted in the highest holiness, “in the holy mountains,” and “a part of G‑d above.” Its whole desire is to be dissolved in G‑dliness, the light of Havayah. From it the soul’s faculties extend outward, intellect and emotion.

The soul extends still further outward into thought, speech and action, which are only its “garments,” the means it uses, not part of its essence. Even its intellect and emotions, which are part of it, are clothed in the intellect and emotions of the animal soul, which comes from Nogah, the realm in which good and evil are mixed.

The essence of the soul is the same in every Jew, but how much of it shows differs from person to person.

The verse “You have captured My heart with one of your eyes” teaches that even one “eye,” any single aspect of the soul that is revealed, however small, captures G‑d’s heart.

Some glimmer of the point of the heart must show in every soul, and it comes from the soul’s root, which is the “heart.” That is why the verse uses libavtini, a word built on lev: even a partial revelation comes from the level of the heart.

The Exodus is now read within the soul. “Egypt” is the state in which the point of the heart is in exile: it is present only in “smallness” (katnus), as simple faith, without understanding to carry it into the person’s mind and feelings.

The people in Egypt had faith: “And the people believed,” and the Sages call Israel “believers, the children of believers.” But G‑d promised more, to bring them up “to a good and broad land,” which the Alter Rebbe reads as the broadening of Daas: understanding wide enough to hold the faith.

“And you shall know that I am G‑d”: knowledge, not only faith. When Daas broadens, the point of the heart is revealed with greater force; it flames up and spreads inwardly into all the soul’s powers, so that the person’s mind and feelings themselves are filled with it.

Faith alone stays “encompassing” (makif): it surrounds a person and holds true for him, but does not enter his understanding and emotions. The way to broaden Daas is shown in the Sages’ teaching on the Shema: “Whoever prolongs [the word] Echad, his days and years are prolonged.”

“Prolonging Echad” is read as lengthening and widening one’s contemplation of G‑d’s oneness, as far as one’s mind can reach. The theme of that contemplation is G‑d’s word “I, Havayah, have not changed”: He is exactly as He was before the world was created.

Even now that the world exists, “there is nothing else”: all of creation is as nothing before Him, since what gives heaven and earth their existence is only a glow and radiance of His Name. Because the worlds receive only a ray of His splendor, their existence makes no change in Him.

The contemplation leads to its conclusion: everything is nullified before G‑d, and every living soul longs for Him. The words “the Ofanim and the holy Chayos, with a great noise” come from the morning prayer before the Shema, which describes the angels’ stormy longing toward G‑d.

The more deeply and broadly a person dwells on this “with the eyes of his intellect,” the more his heart will grasp that he should want nothing but G‑d. Understanding in the mind is meant to reach the heart.

The psalmist states the result: nothing in heaven or on earth is wanted besides G‑d. The soul longs only to cleave to Him.

This is how “You shall love Havayah your G‑d with all your heart” is fulfilled. The Alter Rebbe reads “your G‑d” as the goal: that Havayah become yours, revealed in your heart, so that the heart becomes a dwelling and a vessel filled with G‑dliness.

The revealed love is described with “flashes of fire” from the Song of Songs and “a deep heart” from Psalms. Such love gives a person the strength to stand against every hindrance and to give up the will of the animal soul, setting his heart on G‑d from his innermost point.

Such a heart reflects “Knesses Yisrael above”: as the source of souls receives and gathers in the light of Havayah (“Israel above”), so a person’s heart becomes a vessel that gathers in the revelation of Havayah.

“With all your soul” carries the revelation beyond the heart into all the soul’s powers and into its three garments: thought, speech and action.

How does the revelation reach thought, speech and action? Through G‑d’s own thought and speech, the words of the Torah, being clothed in a person’s thought and speech. In the verse “these words which I command you,” the Alter Rebbe glosses “I” (Anochi) as “I, Who I am,” G‑d Himself.

“You shall speak in them”: the supernal speech is to be truly within one’s own speech. This raises a difficulty, since G‑d says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” How can His thought be clothed in human thought?

The answer is in the rest of the verse, “nor are your ways My ways.” G‑d’s thoughts are far from ours only while our ways are not His ways.

When a person walks in G‑d’s way, by contemplating deeply that “G‑d is One” and drawing that awareness into love (“And you shall love”), G‑d’s thoughts are drawn into his thoughts. The distance the verse describes depends on a person’s ways, and his service can bridge it.

The heart of the Shema is not only accepting that G‑d is One but having that truth revealed in the heart, which is the command “And you shall love.” The highest form of that love is “love in delights” (ahavah betaanugim), a phrase from the Song of Songs.

This love is above every other kind: not longing for G‑d from afar but delighting in Him. The Zohar reads “I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey” as prayer and the Shema, and the “honey” is the Shema.

Honey stands for sweetness and delight. Once G‑d’s oneness is revealed in a person’s heart, he sees that there is no life and no delight apart from G‑d, “for He is your life.” Since G‑d is the source of all life and all pleasure, delighting in Him is delighting in the source of every delight.

A person loves his own life not because of reasoning but from the core of his being. When G‑d is recognized as one’s true life, love for Him becomes like that: fixed in the heart as firmly as the love of life itself.

Such a person delights in G‑d and rejoices in serving Him, because closeness to G‑d is his good. The verse “Taste and see that G‑d is good” describes this tasting of G‑dliness.

The “good and broad land” of paragraph 7 is now completed: it is also “a land flowing with milk and honey.” The “honey” is the delight of the Shema, the revelation of G‑d’s oneness and love in delights, and it comes through the “good and broad land,” the broadening of Daas.

Now the question: how can a person reach such love, if he begins in “Egypt,” the state in which the point of the heart is hidden?

In that state the point of the heart is “small,” covered by the animal soul’s garments, which draw it toward the life and pleasures of the body. To such a person those pleasures feel like real life and real delight, each according to what he knows in himself.

The change needed is total: the heart must turn from one extreme to its opposite, until the love of G‑d is as fixed in it as the love of life.

The answer lies in the route of the Exodus. G‑d did not lead Israel straight from Egypt to the Land of Israel but around, through the desert; the inner journey, too, passes through a “desert” stage before it reaches the “good and broad land.”

Jeremiah describes Israel’s following G‑d through the desert as “your going after Me.” The Alter Rebbe identifies the desert with “after G‑d” (acharei), from the same root as achor, “back.” Holiness has a “front” (panim), where G‑dliness is openly revealed, and a “back” (achor), where it is present but not shown.

Scripture speaks of G‑d’s “back”: Moshe is told, “you shall see My back.” It also speaks of a scroll written “front and back.” And in Kabbalah there are holy Names in the “back” form, achorayim. So the “back” is still holiness, only less revealed.

The G‑dly soul too has a front and a back. Its “front” is the inner heart in which G‑d’s oneness is openly revealed, so that G‑dliness is the person’s very life and delight, as Nechemiah says, “the joy of G‑d is your strength.”

The “back” is the state in which G‑dliness is not felt as life and delight. The person still turns his heart toward G‑d and loves Him, but by compelling it.

The verse says “to do it, to love,” and the Alter Rebbe reads it as love that is “made”: produced in the heart by contemplating G‑d’s oneness, that He is the Life of all life and the source of all delight, so that it is fitting to love Him. This love too comes through contemplation, but, as the next paragraph explains, it rules the heart without filling it.

Even so, a love that is “made” does not fill the whole heart; other desires remain beside it.

This love governs the heart from above, through the mind’s rule over the heart, without changing the heart itself. That is iskafya: the sitra achra, the side opposed to holiness, is subdued but not transformed, unlike is’hapcha, in which the heart itself is changed.

Within this there are many levels. A person may arouse a love strong enough that he truly wishes to shed the animal soul’s garments of Nogah and to serve “with all your heart and with all your soul,” his thought clothed in G‑d’s thought.

Still, he has not shed those garments completely, to the point of loathing evil. He only forces the soul, through contemplation, to “come out of its sheath,” its covering.

At such times the garments of Nogah are “asleep” in him: the evil is subdued and inactive, but still there. This is the Mishnah’s “with all your heart: with both your inclinations”: with the good inclination, through the soul’s natural love, and with the evil inclination, by subduing the sitra achra.

He has not yet reached is’hapcha, turning darkness into light, which would mean having only “one heart,” with no opposing desire left.

The Sages tell that on his deathbed Yaakov feared that one of his sons might be unworthy, and they answered with the Shema: “Just as in your heart there is only One, so in our heart there is only One.”

Yaakov is “Israel,” the highest level: he has “one heart,” wholly given to G‑d, and he delights in Havayah, as described above. His “only One” is the level of transformation, is’hapcha.

The tribes, Yaakov’s sons, stand for all Jewish souls to the end of time, including the beinonim, the “intermediate” people whose evil is subdued but not transformed. They too can truly say, “in our heart there is only One.”

Their “only One” comes through iskafya: by subduing the opposing desires they too reveal G‑d’s oneness with all their heart and soul, and their thought too is clothed in G‑d’s thought.

This, then, is “the path a person should choose for himself,” in the Mishnah’s words: to contemplate G‑d’s oneness as deeply as he can, so that his heart can be bent toward G‑d.

Through such contemplation he is able to love G‑d, to stand against every obstacle and to break his desires, with the mind ruling the heart: this is iskafya. And from iskafya he will rise to is’hapcha, the transformation of the heart.

In the end the inner point of the heart is revealed, as in the priestly blessing, “G‑d will make His face shine.” Isaiah’s “your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way” is read the same way: from the “back” of holiness comes the way into the “face,” the inner revelation of G‑d.

That is why the Shema is called “accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”: a yoke is borne whether or not one feels like it, which is iskafya, “walking after G‑d.” Hosea’s “They shall walk after G‑d; He will roar like a lion” describes this following of G‑d from the “back.”

The “yoke” accepted in the Shema is G‑d’s Kingship, Malchus. A king needs a people, am, a word the Alter Rebbe links to omemos, “dimmed,” as of embers that have lost their glow: a people consists of those who are distant from the king and separate from him. The psalm names G‑d’s “mighty acts” together with “the glory of the majesty of His Kingship,” and the next part explains that the one is what makes the other possible.

G‑d’s Kingship requires His “mighty acts” (gevuros): many powerful contractions that hide His infinite light, so that creatures seem to exist on their own, separate from Him, a “dimmed” people over whom He can be called King.

In truth all is nothing before Him; the concealment exists so that there may be Kingship. A person’s service must match it: the arousal from below must also be one of contraction and holding back, his own “might” (gevurah) to overcome every obstacle, in turning away from evil, not straying after the heart, and shutting his eyes from seeing evil.

On the side of “do good” the effort is to go beyond one’s habit: the Talmud says that one who reviews his learning a hundred and one times, not a hundred, is called “one who serves G‑d.” Through such self-overcoming a person fulfills “You shall surely set a king over you,” making G‑d King over himself.

The maamar returns to its opening: through this service G‑d’s “Name” and “Throne” become whole. The Name is Havayah, whose four letters stand for levels of revelation.

The first two letters, yud-hei, are above the chain of worlds, the “hidden world,” described as “wise, but not with a known wisdom”: G‑d’s wisdom that cannot be grasped. The last two letters, vav-hei, are the “revealed world”: the vav, a drawing down, brings the light into the final hei, the revealed world.

Jeremiah’s “I fill the heavens and the earth, says (ne’um) G‑d” is read as telling what fills creation: G‑d’s “saying,” His word.

That “word of G‑d” is the level of Malchus, through which G‑d speaks the world into being. It comes about through an arousal from below: in “You have avowed G‑d this day,” the word he’emarta comes from the root “to say,” and it is read as “you made Him One who says.” By accepting His Kingship, Israel bring about His word that rules the world.

The arousal from below is the revelation of G‑d’s oneness with all one’s heart and soul, and the clothing of one’s thought in G‑d’s thought. It is G‑d’s revelation in the heart, below, as it is in the mind, above. At first the mind rules only “over” the heart, from above, which is iskafya.

Later the Daas of the mind descends into the very inside of the heart, until its innermost core is “inlaid with love” for G‑d alone, a phrase from the Song of Songs. This is is’hapcha, transformation.

This arousal from below brings an arousal from above: the yud-hei of the Name, the hidden world, descends and is revealed in the revealed worlds of vav-hei. The joining of the two halves of the Name is “the Name is whole.”

“The Throne is whole” refers to G‑d’s throne of Kingship, which a person sets up by “setting a king over himself.” The text adds “He seats kings on the throne” and the verse “G‑d sits as King forever”: both speak of sitting on a throne, which the next part explains.

“Sitting,” said of G‑d, means lowering Himself from level to level. A person who sits lowers his body, his “back”; so G‑d’s “sitting” on the throne is His descent.

G‑d’s revelation is lowered into the “back” when a person forces his heart, in iskafya. So too the physical mitzvos, the King’s commands carried out in physical things, are called the “back.”

Scripture’s scroll written “front and back” shows that the Torah too has a “back.” Yet the physical mitzvos are “the 248 limbs of the King”: one who holds a person by one limb holds the whole person, and one who does a mitzvah, however physical, grasps G‑d Himself and draws Him near.

“G‑d has made one opposite the other”: whatever exists in holiness has a counterpart in kelipah, the forces that conceal G‑dliness. Kelipah too has a front and a back, and it draws its nurture and its hold from the “back” of holiness, where G‑dliness is least revealed.

Amalek, called in Bilam’s prophecy “the first of nations,” is the “nape” (oref) of kelipah. His name is read as am malak, “a people that nips,” from melikah, the way a bird offering was slaughtered: by nipping at the back of the neck.

Israel’s virtue is the matching trait in holiness. When Moshe asked forgiveness for the people, his reason was “for it is a stiff-necked people.” Israel are the “nape” of holiness: they have the strength to “walk after G‑d” even when they do not feel Him.

That strength is the power to force the heart, to break the desires and stand firm against every obstacle. It is called the “nape” because the neck joins the head to the body, so that the mind can extend into the body.

Through that link the mind’s understanding reaches the heart and can turn it completely around. So the “back” of holiness, “after G‑d,” becomes the way to the inner revelation.

Amalek is the opposite: the hard nape of kelipah. Even when a person’s heart understands how G‑d should be served, this force keeps the understanding from moving him.

It does more than fail to bend the heart toward G‑d; it drives a person to do the very opposite of what he understands. That is why Amalek attacked “the stragglers behind you”: his hold is in the “back” of holiness.

This trait is sheer brazenness (chutzpah), without reason or understanding, doing the opposite of what one knows. That is the meaning of the reading of the name Amalek as am malak.

Melikah, nipping, was done “opposite the nape” of a bird offering. Amalek “nips” the nape of holiness: he cuts the link between the head, the mind, and its extension into the heart, so that understanding no longer moves the heart.

Amalek’s war shows the trait. He knew and saw all the miracles done for Israel, and still his heart emboldened him to attack them. His was not ignorance but defiance of what he knew.

Pharaoh was different. He said, “I do not know G‑d”: he lacked knowledge, and the wonders of the plagues would have humbled his heart had G‑d not hardened it.

The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was itself a punishment, as the books explain. So too with the idolaters: their failure to recognize G‑d’s holiness is concealment, since the kelipos in which they are sunk hide holiness from them. With Amalek, by contrast, the knowledge was there and he defied it.

Amalek, “the first of nations,” is the root of this brazenness. “The seed of Amalek” is read as what he sowed within Israel: the same trait of acting against what one knows.

Therefore the war with Amalek is “from generation to generation.” In every generation a person goes out of “Egypt” and must first walk in the way of “after G‑d,” the “back,” where Amalek has his hold.

In exile, when a person serves G‑d from the “back,” it is G‑d who says, “I will surely blot out the memory of Amalek”: the war is G‑d’s. A person cannot by his own strength defeat Amalek, the cut between mind and heart, and bring about the stirring of his inner heart.

His part is the toil of contemplating G‑d’s oneness as far as he can, and prayer for G‑d’s mercy, which is what the blessings of the Shemoneh Esreh ask for. As David said, “the war is G‑d’s.”

When a person reaches “the good and broad land,” the broadening of Daas, and its “milk and honey,” love in delights, the second verse applies: “you shall blot out the memory of Amalek,” you yourself, and “you shall not forget.”

“You shall not forget” means not being in a state of forgetting. Forgetting belongs to the “back,” and Amalek’s hold is only in the “back,” as in “the stragglers behind you.”

That is why Amalek attacked “on the way, as you went out of Egypt,” at the stage of “after G‑d.” When G‑d “gives you rest … in the land,” the stage of inner revelation, Amalek has nothing to hold on to.