תוספת ביאור

This heading marks a short supplement to the discourse just before it, which compared the mitzvos to a seed and the souls of Israel to the earth whose power of growth brings out the fruit hidden in the seed. Here that analogy is worked out in more detail.

A seed has none of the fruit’s taste or fragrance, yet everything that will make up the fruit is already inside it, compressed and hidden, so that it looks like a bit of plain wood. This is the starting point of the analogy: something can be wholly present in a form that shows nothing of it.

The second example is the father’s drop, which already contains the whole body, all its 248 limbs, in general form. The Talmud’s teaching that the father supplies the “white” from which bones and sinews form, and the natural science of the time, are cited in support; yet the drop has fallen so far into physicality that it bears no comparison to the person, just as a seed bears no comparison to a fruit.

The seed becomes a fruit only when it is sown and its own power merges with the earth’s power of growth. That power’s whole work is to bring the fruit hidden in the seed out of concealment into revelation.

The fruit that grows has taste, fragrance and beauty, all of which were so deeply hidden in the seed that nothing of them could be sensed. The earth reveals what was truly there but could not be perceived.

The earth does more than reveal: from a single seed it brings forth a great many fruits, a blessing out of all proportion to the one fruit from which the seed came.

Even so, the taste, fragrance and appearance of all the new fruits come from the seed itself, where they were truly present. What the earth adds is revelation and multiplication, not the substance of the fruit.

The fine fruits could never have grown without the seed; they came from it alone. The sentence then turns to why the earth is still needed: while these qualities were in the seed, they existed only in a lowly form.

In the seed, taste, fragrance and appearance had become physical and descended, so the seed was like plain wood. Without the earth’s power of growth they would never have grown or come into view at all.

So the power of growth does two things: it brings what is hidden in the seed into revelation, and it multiplies it, yielding far more than the one fruit from which the seed was taken.

The same structure holds for a child, who comes into being from the father’s drop through the mother. The child’s essence is in the drop, but the drop has descended, by a leap that leaves no comparison, from the stature of a human being to that of a physical drop.

Because of that descent, the drop on its own produces nothing; only when it is received within the mother does anything come into being. Otherwise it would simply remain a physical drop.

Being received in the womb is what brings about the growth and development into a complete child with all 248 limbs. This power of growth is found specifically in the mother, just as, in the example of the seed, it is found in the earth.

Still, the child’s essence and root come from the drop, which is why a mother can bear a child of higher stature than herself: she bears a male, while she herself is of “the world of the feminine.” In the Kabbalistic terms of the preceding discourse, the male is the level of the giver (mashpia) and the female, Nukva, the level of the receiver; what grows within the receiver can stand above her because its root lies in what was given.

Now the analogy is applied. The Torah and the mitzvos are called “sowing,” as in the phrase “He sows righteous deeds” from the morning prayers, and as in the reading, given elsewhere, of “Six years you shall sow your field” as the six orders of the Mishnah.

Here is the difficulty that the analogy answers: mitzvos are physical acts, so how can they bring about, in the Time to Come, a revelation of the Infinite Light, which has no end or limit? A limited deed seems unable to produce a limitless result.

The answer is that the mitzvos are rooted very high: they are the 620 “pillars of light” drawn from Keser, the very level of the light that encompasses all worlds. The number 620 is the numerical value of the word keser (כתר), and it equals the Torah’s 613 commandments together with the seven rabbinic ones. In this world, though, the mitzvos are enclothed in physical things, such as wool for tzitzis and parchment for tefillin.

In their physical form the mitzvos are like the seed: the whole power of the fruit is within them, but so hidden that nothing of it shows, as if they were plain wood.

The souls of Israel, each person who keeps a mitzvah, wraps himself in tzitzis and puts on tefillin, are the “land of desire” of which the prophet speaks. Like fertile earth, they make the hidden fruit of the mitzvah grow into revelation, until the 620 pillars of light themselves are revealed.

This is why the Congregation of Israel, the source of all the souls of Israel, is called “a woman who fears G‑d,” from the closing chapter of Proverbs. Like the mother in the analogy, the Congregation of Israel has the power to make grow, so that what is planted becomes a living “child” within her and through her.

The Congregation of Israel has this power because she embodies the fear of G‑d, which is self-nullification: setting aside one’s own “something” to become “nothing” before G‑d, and turning bitterness into sweetness. This bittul is what makes the souls of Israel a “land of desire.”

In Kabbalistic terms, this “land” is Malchus of Atzilus, whose root is the Malchus of Ein Sof, that is, the Malchus of Adam Kadmon, the primordial level above Atzilus. Because its root is in the Infinite, it has the power to make grow, a power that is itself infinite, as shown by the single seed that becomes countless fruits.

Since Torah and mitzvos, as they now are, are only a seed that needs the souls of Israel in order to grow, the souls stand above them in this respect: they are called “the first of its harvest” and “masters of the Torah.” But once the fruit has grown, at the time when Israel will “fill the face of the world with produce,” the light that is revealed is higher than the souls of Israel themselves.

That higher light is Yesod of Adam Kadmon, far above Malchus of Adam Kadmon, the root of the souls. The mitzvos are rooted in Yesod of Adam Kadmon, so what grows from them surpasses the “earth” in which they grow.

The souls of Israel bring forth a revelation higher than themselves, just as the mother bears a son higher than herself. The maamar now explains the two kinds of makifim, the “encompassing lights.”

The first kind of makif surrounds rather than enters, yet it still gives life and is felt; this is the “near makif.” Its example is Daniel’s vision: the men with him did not see it, yet “a great trembling fell upon them,” and the Sages explain that this was because “their mazal saw”: the root of their souls above them, which is itself an encompassing light.

Though the vision never entered their awareness, it stirred them inwardly through their mazal, an encompassing light that still affects what it surrounds. There is also a second makif, utterly separate from the worlds, whose light is so great that it does not shine in them at all.

The light that encompasses all worlds, which the mitzvos draw down now, is only the near makif. The separate makif is not reached by this drawing down in the present.

The separate makif will shine only in the Time to Come, when “the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll.” The maamar reads this as the near makif being drawn down into full revelation, like an inner light; then the great, separate makif will also be drawn down.

When the separate makif too shines and gives life, the result will be the Resurrection of the Dead. The reader is referred to the discussion of the verse “A great shofar will be sounded,” where these two makifim are explained.

There the two are identified: the Supernal Will, which is Keser and the light that encompasses all worlds, is the near makif; above it is the “Will of all wills,” far beyond the level of will. This is why the psalm says to praise G‑d “according to His abundant greatness”: His greatness contains a level that has no end.