The Alter Rebbe’s Handwritten Kabbalah Maamar Explained

By Rabbi Avraham Katz

In Torah Or, right after the maamar Yafeh Sha’ah Achas (Chayei Sarah 16a), there’s a maamar with an unusual title: “Lashon Admur Nishmaso Eden B’atzmo,” written by the Alter Rebbe himself. It starts “עיין עץ חיים שער מ”ט פרק ה” and goes on like that for over a page: a line from the Arizal, a pointer to the Zohar, a question, a short answer, the next reference.

It’s easy to skip. It reads like the Kuntres Acharon in Tanya, and in a letter from 5706 (Igros Kodesh vol. 2, p. 102) the Rebbe lists the two together and calls their content “Kabbalah.” Every line depends on a source you’d need open in front of you, in the editions the Alter Rebbe had over 200 years ago. A new edition, free on LearnChassidus.com, puts all of it on the page.

In the maamar Yafeh Sha’ah Achas, the Alter Rebbe explains that Torah and mitzvos make levushim, garments, for the neshamah in Gan Eden. They seem to be “just garments,” but they’re actually higher than the neshamah itself, so they can lift it to a level of connection with Hashem it could never reach on its own. This maamar explains more about these levushim, from the Zohar and the Arizal. Here are three points:

1. The levushim aren’t something completely new that we create. Every Yid is part of Adam HaRishon. When Adam sinned with the Eitz HaDaas, his levushim fell into kelipah. With your mitzvos, you rescue the fallen levushim that belong to your part of Adam. When all of us do our part, the damage of the Cheit Eitz HaDaas is completely fixed.
2. Davening and mitzvos are different. One person’s davening can help others, and a tzaddik’s davening can help us in ways we couldn’t reach on our own. But your mitzvos and your Torah learning no one can do for you, not even a tzaddik, because the levushim they fix belong to your neshamah.
3. Every mitzvah reaches Atzilus. Usually we don’t see what a mitzvah does Above. But even when we feel nothing, every mitzvah reaches all the way up to Atzilus and accomplishes something great there. The simplest Yid’s mitzvah reaches as high and accomplishes essentially the same thing as a great tzaddik’s mitzvah.

The Tzemach Tzedek wrote a biur on the first third of the maamar, which the Rebbe printed in the Hosafos to Torah Or. For the rest of the maamar, you have to look up every reference. The editions the Alter Rebbe and the Tzemach Tzedek used differ from what we have in print, and most people don’t own them, or don’t have the time and headspace to look up every single source. That’s why this edition was made.

What’s in it:

• Every source, in full, quoted where it’s cited, from the edition the Alter Rebbe or the Tzemach Tzedek actually had (for example, the Koretz 5542 Etz Chaim for the Alter Rebbe).
• The Zohar with the Masuk MiDvash commentary, so you can follow the Aramaic.
• The maamar in fifteen sections, with the Tzemach Tzedek’s biur woven into the first three and a suggested explanation of the rest in { } brackets.
• A Mavo and a short summary, step by step.
• A guide to the sefarim it cites, and a chart of how the Arizal’s teachings were written down and arranged, from Rabbi Chaim Vital to the compiling of Etz Chaim and Pri Etz Chaim as we have them, about three generations later.
• Hosafos with explanations of the maamar’s ideas from other places in Chassidus.

The nikud and punctuation of the maamar’s text are from the administrator of Chassidus Behirah (ChassidutBehirah.com), who also contributed many edits to the biur. Many thanks to Rabbi Yossi Keller שיחיה, who reviewed the edition and helped tremendously in preparing it.

Download the edition here (free, in Hebrew)

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