In the previous section we looked at the Alter Rebbe's description of the service of the angels in the blessing of «Yotzer Or». Up to the words «and they say with awe», he had not yet told us what exactly the angels say. They open their mouths in holiness, in purity, in song and in melody, and only now do we finally arrive at the bottom line: what they actually say. And what they say is: «Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh» (Holy, holy, holy).
When we see this expression, that the angel says «Kadosh», we might mistakenly understand that with this declaration the angels are telling over and defining what the greatness of the Creator is: that He is holy, and so on.
(In any case, the Creator has no need for anyone to be telling Him this constantly. He created the angels and gave them the ability to say it, and all of this is so that we should contemplate all this greatness and draw the obvious conclusion from it: that even though there are so many angels, and such lofty ones, the Creator of the world is not impressed by any of it. As it were, He says: all of this I do not need. Whom do I need? That one Jew who is wrestling with his drives and overcoming them. That is the conclusion of the whole matter.)
And indeed, in other places the title «kadosh» does describe a particular content. The prophet tells of the Shunamite woman, in whose home Elisha the prophet would pass through, and she says to her husband: a great man passes by us from time to time, and he is a holy man who passes over us constantly, and therefore let us make him a small upper chamber, and so forth. Here she is describing a person and saying that he is holy.
The Gemara brings this verse and immediately asks: how did she know that he was holy? In other words, in what was his holiness expressed, for with the word «kadosh» she is describing something specific. And the Gemara brings two opinions. According to the first, she saw that no fly ever flew over the food he was eating; she sees that with him the matter is different than with any other person, that flies do not even come near him. And the Gemara brings a further example as well.
From here we see that sometimes saying «kadosh» about a person is a description of something, and one can ask: in what is his holiness expressed? Based on this, we might have thought that here too, when the angels say «Kadosh, kadosh», they are offering some sort of description, and one should stop and ask them: what do you mean that He is holy? In what does the holiness find expression? Begin to describe and spell it out.
Therefore the Alter Rebbe adds and clarifies, «כלומר», that is to say: the word «kadosh» here does not come to describe or define anything. Rather, this is its meaning, that the Holy One, blessed be He, «שהוא מובדל ומופרש מהן», «is separated and set apart from them», and elevated beyond them, and they have no grasp, no comprehension and no definition whatsoever of His greatness, «ואינו מתלבש בהן בבחינת גילוי», «and He does not clothe Himself within them in a manner of revelation».
The angels are saying: as spiritual and as elevated as we are, and the Serafim stand and say this in an exceedingly lofty world, called in Kabbalah and Chassidus the World of Beriah, which is the level on which these angels stand, nevertheless «Kadosh», He is above our comprehension.
And immediately the Serafim continue: «Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Hashem Tzevakos, the whole earth is full of His glory». That is to say: relative to us He is holy and separate, and we have no ability to grasp Him at all, we reach nothing, we are as naught. But the information of where He is to be found, that we do have: «אלא מלא כל הארץ כבודו», «but rather, the whole earth is full of His glory».
And what is «earth»? It is written in the inner dimension of Torah that «earth» «היא כנסת ישראל למעלה וישראל למטה כנ"ל», «is Knesses Yisrael above and the Jewish people below, as mentioned above». The root of the souls of Israel is called Knesses Yisrael and is called «earth», and likewise the Jewish people below are called «earth». (A lengthy explanation of this matter is found at the beginning of the Alter Rebbe's Torah Or, on Parshas Bereishis, and this is not the place for it.)
So already in the first blessing we see how great the angels are and how great their bittul, their self-nullification, is, and immediately they say that the glory of the Creator of the world is found specifically by the Jewish people. And it is the very highest angels, the Serafim, who say this.
Immediately afterwards the text mentions angels who are found in lower worlds: the Chayos HaKodesh in the World of Yetzirah, and the Ofanim in the World of Asiyah. The lower angels do not even have the capacity to attain what the Serafim attain. The Serafim at least know and feel how far above them He is, while the Ofanim and the Chayos HaKodesh do not even have that perception.
In the language of the Tanya: «וכן האופנים וחיות הקודש ברעש גדול וכו' ברוך כבוד ה' ממקומו», «and so too the Ofanim and the Chayos HaKodesh, with a great noise, etc., Blessed be the glory of Hashem from His place». And the reason: «לפי שאין יודעים ומשיגים מקומו», «because they do not know and do not comprehend His place». They raise themselves up toward the Serafim, praising and saying «Blessed be the glory of Hashem from His place». «Baruch», blessed, is from the language of drawing down and blessing, that the glory of Hashem be drawn down. And from where? «From His place», from wherever it is that He is. They cannot even describe; they cannot even say «Kadosh». «From His place» is, grammatically, the third person, a place they do not even know. The Serafim can still say: there He is, except that He is beyond us. The Ofanim and the Chayos HaKodesh cannot even say that much, only «from His place», wherever He is, and they have no ability to grasp Him at all, «וכמו שכתוב כי הוא לבדו מרום וקדוש», «and as it is written, for He alone is exalted and holy».
If we would only contemplate what we say in the first blessing before Shema, there is in it an expansion of the mind in appreciating how great the creation of the Creator of the world is: how great the creation, how many worlds there are, how many angels there are, and they too have no comprehension of His greatness. And if such great creations have no comprehension, we learn from this how lofty the matter is.
It is comparable to a small child standing before something and saying: I do not understand what I am seeing here. And then he notices that standing next to him is an adult, a great sage of distinguished appearance, and he too says: I do not understand what is going on here. The moment the child sees that the great man says «I do not understand», the greatness of the thing rises in his eyes. Fine, I said I do not understand, I am a small child, and perhaps if I were older I would understand. But once I saw that this great and distinguished sage also says that he does not understand, it is a sign that what is happening here is so great and so lofty.
This is what each person says in the blessing of «Yotzer Or»: the greatness of the Creator of the world is infinite, and even the greatest angels, called Serafim, say that as far as they are concerned He is «Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh», separate, and they have no comprehension of Him. And they themselves are holy, great and elevated, for «kadosh» is a relative title, and they are holy and lofty relative to us. And if they, who are so far above us, say of Him «Kadosh, kadosh», one understands from this how truly infinite He is.
After all this, we must arrive at the next station, the second blessing. This greatness, this Ein Sof, whom did He choose? Every single one of the Jewish people. And in what did He choose? In the small deeds that we do, in the small struggles that we withstand. This is what He wants and this is what He chose. How much, then, must we appreciate the great tzimtzum, the great contraction, that the Creator of the world made, as it were, for our sake. The infinity and the vast expanse He placed, so to speak, to the side, and for whose sake? What is His purpose? The Jewish people.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: «ואחר כך», «and afterwards», after we have understood the matter in the first blessing, how great and wondrous He is and how the angels do not comprehend Him, comes the «ברכה שניה, אהבת עולם אהבתנו ה' אלקינו», «second blessing, With an everlasting love You have loved us, Hashem our G-d».
And the Alter Rebbe explains, «כלומר», that is to say, here is the meaning of these words: «שהניח כל צבא מעלה הקדושים», «that He set aside all the holy legions above». He has a mighty army of holy angels, and He set the whole of it aside; meaning, that is not the purpose, and it is not for that that He made the entire order of hishtalshelus, the chain of worlds. «והשרה שכינתו עלינו», «and He caused His Shechinah to rest upon us», He rested His holy Presence upon the Jewish people, «להיות נקרא אלקינו», «to be called our G-d». As it were, the Holy One, blessed be He, says: I want My Name to be upon you, that you should say, He is our G-d.
Certainly He is the G-d of all creations, but this personal relationship is said only of the Jewish people. In relation to all creatures He is «King of the world», as we say in every blessing, «Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the world». Certainly He is King of the entire world, but «our G-d» is a matter unto itself, and we already dwelt on this at length in the previous lessons, at the end of chapter 46 and in chapter 47.
There we examined the text we say every day at the opening of the Amidah: «Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, G-d of Avraham, G-d of Yitzchak and G-d of Yaakov», and we asked: what does «G-d of Avraham» mean, when He is the G-d of everyone, and why single these out? And the explanation is that Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov were bound in their daily conduct, twenty four hours a day, all the days of their lives, to the Divine will, one hundred percent. Therefore it is fitting to say «G-d of Avraham», for Avraham in his deeds and in his conduct represented G-dliness in every single detail.
The same thing each person must see to, that He be «our G-d» as well, that through his deeds he represent the Creator in every detail, by doing what he needs to do. The Creator of the world enables a person to be bound to Him in such a way that He be called «our G-d», and that we should say of Him that He is our G-d. And that is the emphasis here: «שהניח כל צבא מעלה הקדושים והשרה שכינתו עלינו להיות נקרא אלקינו כמו אלקי אברהם וכו' כנ"ל», «that He set aside all the holy legions above and caused His Shechinah to rest upon us, to be called our G-d, as in G-d of Avraham, etc., as mentioned above». With this the Alter Rebbe alludes to what we learned in chapter 47.
And why did the Holy One, blessed be He, set aside all the legions above and say, as it were, that it is the Jewish people He wants? «Ahavta», because He loves us, «והיינו כי אהבה דוחקת הבשר», «and this is because love presses the flesh». As we mentioned at length in the previous lesson, when a person has a very great love for another, he is willing to squeeze himself in so that his fellow should also have room. As the well known expression has it: when there is room in the heart, there is room on the bench too, and in the house, and everywhere, because love presses the flesh, as it were. So too with the Holy One, blessed be He: since He loves us, He contracted Himself, as it were, and said, I am constricting Myself for the sake of the Jewish people.
«ולכן נקראת אהבת עולם», «and therefore it is called an everlasting love». This expression has many explanations, and in many places it is explained in various ways, and here the Alter Rebbe brings a new interpretation of the words «ahavas olam».
In summary: in this section we learned what the angels say in the first blessing before Shema. The Serafim say «Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh», not as a description and definition of His greatness, but in the sense that He is separated and set apart and elevated beyond them, and does not clothe Himself within them in a manner of revelation. And immediately they add «the whole earth is full of His glory», where «earth» is Knesses Yisrael above and the Jewish people below. The Chayos HaKodesh and the Ofanim, in the worlds of Yetzirah and Asiyah, say «Blessed be the glory of Hashem from His place», because they do not know and do not comprehend His place. From all of this comes an expansion of the mind in the greatness of the Creator, and from there to the second blessing: «With an everlasting love You have loved us, Hashem our G-d», that He set aside all the holy legions above and caused His Shechinah to rest upon us, to be called our G-d, because love presses the flesh.
In the next section we will take up the new interpretation that the Alter Rebbe brings for the words «ahavas olam».