אלה תולדות יצחק וגו׳

The maamar opens with the verse that heads the parsha and at once pairs it with a verse from the Song of Songs about the left hand and the right hand. The left hand is linked to Yitzchak, whose mode of service moves “from below upward”: the created being rising toward G‑d.

The right hand is linked to Avraham, whose mode is “from above downward”: bringing G‑dliness down into the world. The two practices the Torah records of them, Avraham’s hospitality and Yitzchak’s digging of wells, will be shown to express these two directions.

The verse “And you shall love” is phrased as a command, yet love is a feeling, and it is hard to see how one can be commanded to feel. The answer begins with the verse that comes just before it, the declaration that Havayah is One.

When a person contemplates what “One” means, that G‑d is beyond any comparison with anything, he also understands the phrase from the first blessing of the Amidah, “our G‑d and the G‑d of our fathers.” “Our G‑d” (Elokeinu) stands for tzimtzum, G‑d’s self-concealment; “our fathers” stands for Chochmah and Binah, the first powers of intellect, which could only come into being after that contraction.

The quoted words come from the prayer of Eliyahu in the Tikkunei Zohar: “You are wise, but not with a known wisdom; You are One, but not in number.” Even divine wisdom has no comparison to G‑d’s essence, so before Chochmah can exist there must first be a contraction, the level of “our G‑d.”

Only after the contraction comes the letter vav of “and the G‑d of,” a vav being a straight line that draws downward, which brings the level of “our fathers,” Chochmah and Binah, into being. A Jew who grasps how everything below is only a contracted ray of the One will naturally long to be absorbed back into Him rather than remain in the darkness of this lower world.

That longing to rise and dissolve into G‑d is called ratzo, “running”; it must be followed by shov, “returning,” to life and service below, because G‑d wants a dwelling place precisely in the lowest realms, where light that comes out of darkness has an added quality. So the command “And you shall love” is not about rising upward but the reverse: drawing G‑dly love from above down into the world, and this answers why love can be commanded.

The Sages’ teaching that one should make G‑d beloved through one’s conduct is read as the task of drawing G‑dliness downward. Avraham did this through hospitality: he fed the passing Arabs who came to his tent.

After they ate and wished to bless him, Avraham told them to know Whom they were really blessing, the G‑d who provides. In this way even people far from G‑d came to recognize Him, which is the downward flow, from above to below, that marks Avraham.

Yitzchak’s wells show the opposite direction. The water was already there, hidden in the ground; digging removes what covers it. So too Yitzchak’s service uncovers the G‑dliness already hidden in the lower realms and brings it up into revelation.

Avraham had dug wells first, but the Philistines stopped them up, and Yitzchak reopened them and gave them the names his father had given. In the verse the first “names” is spelled with a vav (שמות) and the second without it (שמת), and the maamar now explains why.

The letter vav stands for the six emotive attributes (its numerical value is six). Once Yitzchak dug, the flow of the wells was never cut off again, so the emotions keep flowing; hence his “names” are spelled full, with the vav.

Avraham’s wells could be stopped, which means the forces opposed to holiness could draw nourishment from them, so his “names” lack the vav. The text points to a parallel discussion of the full spelling of “matzos” in another maamar, and then turns to the future.

The verse in Isaiah, “For You are our father,” is read, following the Gemara, as addressed to Yitzchak in the time to come. Then the greatest joy and laughter will come from Yitzchak’s mode, the ascent from below, which is unlimited.

Drawing down from above always has limits, since it must fit the capacity of what receives it. The doubled “Avraham, Avraham” at the binding of Yitzchak hints at two stages of that descent: the first brings Chochmah and Binah of the World of Atzilus into being, the “G‑d of our fathers” explained above.

The second stage extends into the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Yitzchak’s ascent, by contrast, has no end, as the prayer says, “and all will exalt You, Selah.”

The name Yitzchak means “he will laugh.” Heaven, the Gemara says, gives but does not take back: G‑d’s giving is the chain of worlds, bringing something out of nothing.

Man’s task is the reverse, turning the “something” of the world and of the self back into “nothing,” into self-nullification before G‑d. This reversal is the source of Yitzchak’s laughter and great delight.

The verse at the binding of Yitzchak calls Yitzchak the son “whom you love.” The maamar asks why Avraham’s love for Yitzchak is stressed, and answers that nature loves its opposite.

The verse from Proverbs shows that a weary, heated person longs for cold water; likewise one who is very cold wants warm water. Opposites attract.

Avraham, all drawing down, loves Yitzchak’s opposite mode of ascent. Yitzchak’s quality is called “the Fear of Yitzchak”: awe and self-nullification before G‑d.

That is why Avraham could not bring Yitzchak’s level down to the world: created beings cannot bear such complete self-nullification; they would cease to exist as separate beings.

The Gemara tells that G‑d stretched out His little finger among a group of angels and burned them; the revelation was too great for them to contain. If even angels cannot bear it, surely created beings below cannot.

At the binding, Yitzchak was placed “above the wood,” and the word for wood, etzim, also means trees. So he was above the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, a level beyond the worlds; only there could the Fear of Yitzchak be revealed.

Yaakov, however, says “the Fear of Yitzchak was with me.” Yaakov is the choicest of the Patriarchs because he includes both Avraham and Yitzchak, like the middle bar of the Tabernacle that ran from one end to the other.

Because he combined both, Yaakov could draw even the Fear of Yitzchak down below, which Avraham alone could not do.

In the present, the Fear of Yitzchak cannot become “our father,” that is, a level that flows down to us, since creation cannot bear it, as explained.

In the time to come, when death is swallowed up and the spirit of impurity removed, the obstacles will be gone, and Yitzchak’s level of awe will be revealed below and become “our father.”

Isaiah foretells that people will hide in clefts of the rock from the fear of G‑d: awe and self-nullification will be openly revealed in this world, and “all flesh shall see” G‑dliness.

The opening verse names Avraham twice and Yitzchak twice. The maamar explains this with an analogy from physical procreation: the male can emit seed without the female, but the female cannot initiate by herself.

The Sages say that when the woman emits seed first the child is male; even so, this happens only through the man’s arousal. The analogy prepares the point that the ascent from below (Yitzchak) depends on an arousal from above (Avraham).

Continuing the analogy: the formation of the child comes mainly from the male drop, the source of the “white”, which refines and sorts, so that waste is expelled and the child is formed.

So too above: Yitzchak’s ascent from below has no comparison to G‑d at all and could never reach Him by itself. It comes through “son of Avraham,” the light drawn down from above, which awakens in every person the ascent called raising the feminine waters (mayin nukvin).

This is why the verse calls Yitzchak “son of Avraham” and then repeats that “Avraham begot Yitzchak”: Yitzchak’s ascent must be “born,” brought forth into actual existence.

A creature has no comparison to its Creator, so complete self-nullification to G‑d can come only through Avraham. The letters of his name form אבר מה, the “limb” of Mah, the Name linked to Chochmah, and through Chochmah everything is refined.

Avraham’s Chochmah refines and gives birth to Yitzchak’s ascent, so that the person can grasp a revelation of G‑dliness while the waste is expelled, just as in the analogy of the male drop. The maamar closes by noting that the matter suffices for one who understands.