מראיהם ומעשיהם כאשר יהיה האופן בתוך האופן

The maamar opens with words from Ezekiel’s vision of the Divine Chariot: the wheels (ofanim), which are also a class of angels, looked “as though a wheel were within a wheel.” The Alter Rebbe pictures a small wheel set inside a large one: at the top the large wheel is higher, but at the bottom the small wheel is higher, so above and below trade places.

Ezekiel also says “the spirit of the chayah was in the wheels,” in the singular, though he saw four chayos, the living creatures that carry the Chariot. The Alter Rebbe explains that the spirit moving the wheels comes from a place so high that above and below are equal before it, and only what is that high can descend and spread all the way down.

The singular “chayah” refers to the level that includes all four chayos. Each of Ezekiel’s chayos had the face of a man, the face of a lion on the right, the face of an ox on the left and the face of an eagle; the lion and the ox each belong to one side, while adam, man, is the whole that includes them all.

Unlike the lion and the ox, the level of adam is not on one side or the other. Its name, adam, is linked to adameh, “I will be likened,” from Isaiah’s “I will be likened to the Most High”: this level resembles the adam, the figure of a man, whom Ezekiel saw upon the Throne.

What was said of the wheels holds for every level of creation, from the very highest down. Like a large wheel around a small one, each higher level is a circle that surrounds everything beneath it.

The forty-nine days of counting the Omer, from Pesach to Shavuos, belong to the seven Names of G‑d that may not be erased. Like the light that fills all worlds, they spread out into an order with an above and a below, a head and a foot; on Shavuos, the fiftieth day, the fiftieth gate beyond them is revealed.

The fiftieth gate includes and encompasses all forty-nine, so above and below do not apply to it at all. In it the Torah was given, with commandments to do and not to do, carried out in physical action, which draw the Infinite Light down into the physical world; this is the “crown of Torah.”

A crown sits on top of the head, and as a circle it has no head and foot. So what flows from this level spreads below just as it is above, like the outer wheel, which is highest at the top and also lowest at the bottom.

The fiftieth gate is drawn down through Moshe, as the verse of the Giving of the Torah says, “Moshe would speak.” The Talmud reads “You made him a little less than G‑d” as teaching that of the fifty gates of understanding all but one were given to Moshe, so he stood next to the fiftieth and could draw from it.

For the same reason it was Moshe who drew down the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. The Zohar reads “And he called: Havayah, Havayah” as Moshe calling out, and so drawing down, the Name Havayah.

In this reading of the verse, Havayah passed before Moshe, and it was Moshe who called. The Thirteen Attributes are the sources from which the chain of worlds unfolds, beginning with Atzilus.

“Keeping kindness” (notzer chesed) is one of the Thirteen Attributes. The letters of notzer can be rearranged to spell tzinor, a channel, and ratzon, will; notzer also means to guard, as one keeps an idea hidden in thought before it is revealed.

The kindness that is “done” in this world, as in the “doing kindness” of the Ten Commandments, is different: “doing” means putting in order, as in the verse about a woman taken captive, “she shall do her nails,” that is, attend to them. This is the Chesed of Atzilus, Avraham’s level, and the order of the verses shows the difference: in the Thirteen Attributes, “keeping kindness” comes before “visiting the iniquity of the fathers.”

The Thirteen Attributes end with “and cleanses” (ve’nakeh), and “visiting the iniquity of the fathers” comes only after them. In the Ten Commandments, though, “doing kindness” comes after “visiting the iniquity of the fathers,” because it is kindness that works within the ordered chain of worlds.

“Keeping kindness,” by contrast, is a kindness far above that order. It is not part of the chain itself, but its source and root.

Both verses that speak of these two kindnesses go on to say “to thousands” (la’alafim): “keeping kindness to thousands” and “doing kindness to thousands.” The Alter Rebbe reads “thousands” as thousands of levels, each following the one before.

For example, after this world comes the lower Gan Eden, and between them is the river of fire (nehar dinur), in which the soul must immerse. It makes the soul forget its physical memories, for as long as it remembers physical things it cannot take delight in Gan Eden.

The same holds higher up: rising from the lower to the upper Gan Eden requires another river of fire, to forget even the understanding and delight of the lower Gan Eden. The Talmud tells that Rabbi Zeira, on going up to the Land of Israel, fasted a hundred fasts to forget the Babylonian Talmud.

He did so even though he had learned it with awe and love, so purely that fire had no power over him. The Talmud relates that he would sit in a heated oven unharmed, until one day his legs were singed and he was nicknamed “the little one with the scorched legs.”

So the “thousands” are ascending levels, each higher than the one before. Going the other way, from above to below, the light comes down through one contraction after another.

Only after many contractions can there be the upper Gan Eden, a delight that created beings can receive. These levels are called alafim, “thousands,” because their root is the letter alef: the Name Mah is the Name Havayah with its letters spelled out using alefs (yud-vav-dalet, hei-alef, vav-alef-vav, hei-alef), whose numerical value is 45, mah.

This alef is the first letter of the Name Ehe-yeh, “I will be,” which the Zohar explains as “I am ready to be revealed”; the Alter Rebbe adds “destined.” In Hebrew an alef at the start of a verb marks the first-person future, as in e’eseh, “I will do,” so the alef stands for what is about to be revealed.

Moreover, every descent of light has the form of an alef. The letter is drawn as a yud above, a yud below and a vav between them.

The vav, a line drawn downward, stands for the drawing down, and the upper yud, a mere point, for the contraction that must come first. Without a contraction nothing could be revealed in a different, lower form; everything would remain one.

After coming down, the drawing down contracts again into a point, like the lower yud of the alef. That point becomes the start of a further contraction and drawing down.

So the whole chain of worlds is a series of alefs, one after another, and this is the “thousands” (alafim) of the verses. It applies both to “doing kindness,” Avraham’s level, the Chesed of Atzilus, and to “keeping kindness,” Moshe’s level.

Avraham’s “doing kindness” reaches only as far as Atzilus, the world where G‑d and His life-forces are one, because it comes from the seven Names that may not be erased, the forty-nine days of the Omer. Even there, there are thousands of levels.

Moshe’s “keeping kindness” comes from the fiftieth gate, which is Keser, the Crown. The word keser has the numerical value 620, so Keser is called the 620 “pillars of light,” and like a pillar it joins above and below.

That is why Moshe could draw it down even into Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah, the worlds of separate existence, of which the Torah says “from there it divides.” In the Talmud, Rav Safra addressed Rava as “Moshe,” for Rava was of Moshe’s level, while Rav Yosef exclaimed “Master of Avraham!”: each recognized his own level.

The heads of yeshivos in every generation are of Moshe’s level, since that level is what draws down awe and love. The closing parenthesis refers to the maamar in Likkutei Torah on “And Moshe spoke to the heads of the tribes.”