משה ידבר כו׳

The maamar opens with a verse from the Giving of the Torah, “Moshe would speak, and G‑d would answer him with a voice,” and will explain it in paragraphs 8 to 13. It begins with Avraham, whose attribute is Chesed and whose symbol is water: “Remember the father” opens the stanza about Avraham in the prayer for rain, which recalls him as one “drawn after You like water.” Water makes things grow, as milk makes a baby grow.

In Kabbalistic terms this growth is the stage called “the mochin of nursing”: as nursing makes an infant’s limbs grow, an abundance of divine light entering the vessels (the forms that hold and express it) makes the vessels themselves grow. The growth shows in their inner divisions, Chesed within Chesed, Gevurah within Chesed and so on, and in Chesed and Gevurah becoming included in each other.

Avraham’s task was to reveal G‑d in the world. Of him it is said that he “called in the Name of Havayah, G‑d of the world,” and the Alter Rebbe reads “called” as “drew down”: Avraham drew the Name Havayah into the world so that it would be openly revealed there.

This was needed because, as the worlds came down step by step, G‑d set a limit (in the Sages’ phrase, He “said to His world: Enough”). Only the higher worlds received open revelation; the lower worlds were left in concealment.

Avraham brought this revelation down to the lower world in several ways. He called out in G‑d’s Name, and he brought people to faith: “the souls they had made in Charan.” The letters that follow, shin-yud-ches, evidently stand for 318, the number the Torah gives (Genesis 14:14) for the trained men of Avraham’s household, whom the text joins to these souls.

He planted faith in their hearts and practiced kindness, which the text links with the eshel (tamarisk) he planted in Beer Sheva. Yet what reached below was small compared with what had to happen above: to bring even a little revelation down here, a great flow had to be drawn from above, so that after descending through all the worlds a little would still arrive.

Avraham’s service below also added light in Atzilus, the highest world. The text compares “And David made a name,” read as David “making” divine Names: the Names that by law may not be erased, such as Kel and Elokim, are the life-force of the divine attributes, so adding to them is adding light. Avraham did this through his “going and journeying,” which the text calls “running and returning,” the movement Ezekiel saw in the living creatures of the Chariot, and through his acts of kindness, adding Chesed and Chesed within Chesed.

The Alter Rebbe brings a teaching of his teacher, the Maggid of Mezritch, on Ezekiel’s words “When they stood, they let down their wings.” When people stand in prayer, the angels “let down” their wings, their love and awe, because next to the love and awe drawn down below, the angels fall from their level.

The Alter Rebbe asks how this can be: a person’s awe is physical and clothed in a body, so how can it outshine the angels? The answer is that the person draws down a new light.

When someone arouses love and awe he did not have before, he draws them from above, and this flow comes down through the chain of worlds, passing through the world of the angels. Because it is a light new to them, the angels “let down their wings.”

In the same way Avraham caused the lights within the vessels above to grow. The parenthesis gives the numbers: nine Sefiros from Chochmah down, nine times over, make 81; three times 81 is 243, the numerical value of Avram, and adding the five Chasadim gives 248, the value of Avraham. The text then speaks of G‑d as the healer of the sick: ordinarily every cause cleaves to its own cause, so nothing is cut off from its source.

But in exile the bride of the Song of Songs says “I am asleep,” and so she is “lovesick”: the concealment of G‑dliness makes her ill with longing, and drawing down revelation heals her. The Talmud’s statement that G‑d “puts on tefillin” is read as G‑d becoming, so to speak, Chochmah, the source that bestows.

“You have made them all with wisdom” is read to say that the level of making (Asiyah) was made so that Chochmah would be a source that bestows, flowing into it; this is G‑d “putting on tefillin,” since tefillin express binding and joining from above to below. The Talmud asks what is written in G‑d’s tefillin and answers with verses in praise of Israel, such as “Who is a great nation.”

This shows that Chochmah flows above all for Israel, to bring Chochmah into their souls. The angels are only messengers through whom the flow passes; its purpose is Israel.

All this was Avraham’s work. Moshe went further and drew G‑dliness down even into the three lower worlds, Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah. Avraham is the Chesed of Atzilus, but the Zohar distinguishes two kinds of Chesed, a higher and a lower.

Moshe’s higher Chesed is hinted in his name, given “for from the water I drew him.” That water is the “first Shemitah,” an earlier cosmic cycle; the parenthesis notes the views, a full cycle of seven thousand years or, as the Arizal’s writings explain, the World of Tohu. Moshe’s soul is rooted there and was only drawn down into Atzilus.

So Moshe could draw from a still higher source. The verse “And he called: Havayah, Havayah,” which opens the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, is read as Moshe calling and drawing down, from the mazalos (the sources of flow in the “beard” of Arich Anpin), the light that becomes Abba, the Chochmah of Atzilus. As Etz Chaim explains, Abba draws from the upper mazal, the eighth tikkun, called “notzer chesed.”

This flow comes from above the whole chain of descent. Within the chain, each level unfolds from the one above it, as in a person wisdom gives rise to understanding and emotion, and emotion to thought, and so on.

Within that chain the spiritual is far from the physical, as a physical deed is far from spiritual speech. Above the chain nothing compares to G‑d at all, so the spiritual and the physical are truly equal before Him; this is why Moshe could reach even the physical world.

Moshe drew this down through his self-nullification, called mah (“what”), after his words “and what are we”; mah is also the Name of 45, explained in paragraph 7. The verse calls G‑d “a G‑d of knowledges,” in the plural: there are two perspectives, from below looking up and from above looking down, and before G‑d they are the same, because what is below takes up no space before Him.

Therefore Moshe could draw the Infinite Light into Asiyah and into mitzvos done with physical things, such as separating terumah and tithes from produce. The image is Ezekiel’s “wheel within a wheel”: the higher, outer wheel encompasses and reaches further down, and this can be sensed and seen in the ofanim (“wheels”) of Asiyah.

The same holds in the highest realms too. Through this self-nullification “And you shall not profane” is fulfilled, the word techalelu, “profane,” being related to chalal, an empty space: this world forms no interruption at all, since “all before Him is as nothing,” just as nothing interrupts before the creation of the worlds, or after “the days of the world.”

Rav Yehudah, one of the sages of the Talmud, studied with this self-nullification: the Talmud speaks of “the awe of his Master upon him,” and his teacher Shmuel said of him, “This one is not born of a woman.” Because his study was of this kind, the text adds, he was exempt from prayer.

Torah studied with such self-nullification draws G‑dliness inward, as an inner light, while the mitzvos draw it as encompassing lights and garments. These correspond to Mah and Ban, two ways of spelling out the letters of the Name Havayah, whose sums are 45 and 52.

This is the meaning of “For Havayah your G‑d is a consuming fire”: Havayah is Mah, the inner light of Torah, and “your G‑d” (Elokim) is Ban, the encompassing light of the mitzvos. Together they are like fire placed both around a pot and inside it, burning from within and from without, as paragraph 9 will apply.

Now the opening verse is explained. “Moshe would speak” means a flow from above downward, through Moshe’s self-nullification (mah), which draws the Infinite Light even into Asiyah. Avraham too served G‑d by “going and journeying.”

But Avraham’s service came through his own love and awe, and even when he later drew down from above, it all came by way of his love and awe. Moshe’s drawing down is different, because it comes through the Torah, which is G‑d’s own wisdom.

The power of the Torah and mitzvos reaches down here too, as a “consuming fire” from within and from without, to burn away the animal soul.

The whole purpose of this drawing down is the future, when the Sages’ saying will come true that “Holy” will be said before the righteous, as it is said before G‑d. Then Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah will be transformed into Atzilus.

Isaiah foretells that “the heavens shall vanish like smoke” and that G‑d will create “new heavens and a new earth,” and the “new heavens” are the secrets of the Torah. The inner and encompassing lights will then no longer be those of the lower worlds but those of Atzilus.

Now the second half of the verse, “And G‑d would answer him.” Elokim denotes rulership, as the Alter Rebbe notes, citing the part of the Tanya called Chinuch Katan, and here it means Malchus of the lower worlds, into which the Torah is drawn: the orders of the Mishnah correspond to Malchus’s attributes, Zera’im, the first order, being the Chesed of Nukva. “Would answer” means responding, as in the Mishnah’s rule that one who has the Hallel recited for him by those who cannot fulfill his duty “responds after them what they say.”

“Would answer him” means a response from below that matches the flow from above. Moshe’s self-nullification, which leaves no “empty space” (“And you shall not profane”), draws the Infinite Light into Malchus of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, and Malchus answers by being transformed, so that the lower worlds themselves become Atzilus. This can happen because all of the Torah is a drawing down into Malchus.

The Kabbalists taught that Talmud is in Beriah, Mishnah in Yetzirah and Scripture in Asiyah. This seems backward, since Scripture is the most exalted of the three.

The answer is that the teaching speaks of how far each draws down, not of its rank. Scripture draws all the way down into Asiyah, while Talmud draws only as far as Beriah; and just as Talmud draws into the Malchus of Beriah, so with the others.

This also explains the teaching of Tanna DeBei Eliyahu that when a scholar studies, “the Holy One, blessed be He, studies opposite him.” “The Holy One, blessed be He” can denote Malchus, because “blessed” (baruch) implies being drawn down; “studies opposite him” is the Torah that the student draws into Malchus.

This is “And G‑d would answer him.” Above, one cannot speak of G‑d “studying opposite” anyone, for the Torah is already there and, as the prophet says, “I, Havayah, have not changed”; that is the source from which the student draws. The words are related: shoneh, “studies,” also suggests change, and above there is none: “I have not changed (shanisi).”

The saying refers to Malchus, into which the student draws Torah that was not in it before. Because something new happens there, the Sages could say that G‑d “studies opposite him.”

The Talmud reads “G‑d would answer him with a voice” as “with the voice of Moshe.” A voice carries the breath of the heart outward, so the measure of what is drawn down depends on the measure of one’s self-nullification.

So the drawing down of Rav Yehudah or of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is not like ours. All study the same combinations of letters, but what each draws down varies with his self-nullification.