Sefirot of the Shepherds

1 · The Chain of Living Sefirot

It is known, and explained in many places in Toras Chassidus, that Yisrael are bound with the Torah and with the Holy One, blessed be He, in one bond, and that this bond is not merely that they accept upon themselves the yoke of Torah and mitzvos, but that in the very structure of their souls they are an image of Elokus, as it were. For the ten powers of the soul are a reflection of the ten sefiros, and all the details of their avodah in thought, speech, and action are but the unfolding of these ten general kochos.

And just as in the soul of every individual there are ten, so too in the general soul of Knesses Yisrael there are ten; and more so, the entire seder hishtalshelus—worlds, partzufim, and sefiros—is in the form of Adam, a complete organism in which all the details are integrated into one partzuf, with head and body, right and left, inwardness and outwardness. As is known from the teachings of the Arizal concerning partzufim, that the sefiros when they stand each one separately are in a state of igulim (circles), but the perfection of the light is when they are ordered as a single partzuf, of yosher (upright form), in which each sefirah takes its place in relation to the others and the whole becomes a living body.

Now, in regard to Knesses Yisrael, the Zohar says, “Yisrael, Oraysa, and Kudsha Brich Hu kulah chad.” And the Zohar further reveals that “there is a Moshe in every generation,” that in every dor there shines the bechinah of Moshe Rabbeinu, the general neshama that includes all the souls of the generation. The Alter Rebbe in Iggeres HaKodesh explains at length that this is the inyan of the ro’ei Yisrael, the shepherds of Israel, that they “feed” faith and daas into the souls of Yisrael, drawing down Elokus into their hearts. These are not merely teachers and guides in the external sense, but they are the very life of the dor, as the head to the limbs.

From this it is understood that the Nasi hador is not an individual among individuals, but “Nasi hu hakol”—the Nasi is the all. As is known the expression of our Rebbeim that the Nasi includes the entire generation; his soul is a merkavah for the collective neshama of Yisrael in that time, and through him the divine hashpa’ah descends in an orderly manner into all the particular souls. The Nasi is thus like the head in the body, in which are included and sensed all the limbs, and through which the life-force is channeled to each part according to its place.

However, this itself requires understanding. If the Nasi is the “all,” including all ten kochos, why do we speak of particular Nesi’im as being primarily bechinah of Chochmah, or Binah, or Daas, or particular middos? If the Nasi hador is a complete partzuf, how can we designate one as Chochmah, another as Binah, and so on? And moreover: the Zohar teaches that in every generation there is Moshe, which is bechinah of Daas in the partzuf of sefiros, as explained in Chassidus. How then can we say that in the chain of Nesi’ei Yisrael we have a full order of all ten sefiros, and yet each one is Nasi hador hu hakol and also “Moshe shebador”?

To understand this we must first clarify the inyan of partzuf in sefiros themselves. It is explained that each sefirah is not a simple, undifferentiated point alone, but that when it is in a state of partzuf, each sefirah includes ten—Chochmah of Chochmah, Chochmah of Binah, and so on. Thus, in the partzuf of Chochmah, there is also Binah and Daas and all the middos, only that the essential quality that defines this partzuf is Chochmah; the other nine are there only as they are included and subordinate within Chochmah. Likewise, in partzuf Binah, all ten are present, but the main revelation is that of Binah, and so forth.

So too it is in the Nasi hador. Because he is the head of the generation and “hakol,” he must perforce include within himself all ten kochos in complete perfection, for otherwise he would lack something of the generation’s needs, G‑d forbid. However, within this completeness, the inner shoresh of his neshama and the primary mode of his avodah and hashpa’ah is bechinah of one particular sefirah. The other nine are present within him only as they are included in that principal light, and the manner in which he leads and illuminates the dor bears the imprint of that middah.

Accordingly we may say that the chain of Nesi’ei Yisrael from the revelation of pnimiyus haTorah in its final form until the Seventh Generation is not a series of disconnected leaderships, each one beginning anew, but one long partzuf that is drawn out in time. Just as in the body, the head, the heart, the arms, the legs—all are parts of one Adam, so in the seder of doros, each Nasi is like a different limb or organ of a single supernal Adam, the general nefesh of Yisrael as it is revealed in this final seder of preparation for Geulah.

This is the meaning of “Moshe in every generation.” The bechinah of Moshe—Daas Elyon that unites Yisrael with Elokus—is the inner point common to all Nesi’im; through this they are Nasi hador hu hakol. Yet, in the outward hisgalus, our attention is drawn to the specific middah that is revealed through that Nasi as the “face” of his generation. When these successive faces are contemplated together, it becomes clear that they are not random variations, but the deliberate unfolding of the ten sefiros in their order: from the point of Chochmah, to the widening of Binah, to the binding of Daas, and so on through the middos until Yesod.

And this is also the inyan explained in Tanya Iggeres HaKodesh regarding the “shepherds” and the “secondary shepherds.” The primary ro’ei Yisrael are those collective souls through whom the divine food of emunah and daas is given to all; from them branch out the secondary leaders and mashpi’im in each place. The shepherds themselves, however, are few and general, corresponding to the general structure of the soul of Yisrael. Thus their number and their order are not incidental, but express the inner count of the sefiros themselves.

We must therefore look upon the Nesi’ei Yisrael not as separate biographies, each with its own anecdote and character, but as a single living organism of Elokus passing through history. The avodah and chiddush of each one is a certain limb in this Adam haEloki. In one, the mind shines as a pure point; in another, the heart expands; in another, the strength to limit and define; in another, the beauty that harmonizes; in another, the capacity to fight and to endure; and in another, the power to connect and to channel—all together forming one complete tzelem Elokim through which the Infinite shines into the finite world.

Yet, even after all this, there remains a further point that demands clarity. Why must this partzuf be drawn specifically in this order in time, and why in the last generations before Geulah? Seemingly, the ten sefiros exist always and everywhere; they are the constant form of Elokus as it relates to worlds. What novelty is there in saying that in these generations they are embodied in Nesi’ei Yisrael as a chain?

Furthermore, since tzaddikim are “merkavah” to the Sefiros—as our sages state regarding the Avos that “hein hein haMerkavah,” and Chassidus explains that each one is a chariot to a particular middah—why is it that here, in this later seder, we speak not only of individual avos-like figures but of a unified partzuf whose culmination is Yesod of the Seventh Generation? What compels us to see the entire series of Nesi’im as one organism, rather than as repeated appearances of the same general inyan of Moshe hador?

The answer to this begins with the recognition that in seder hishtalshelus there are times of general ascent—“ikvasa d’Meshicha,” “dor hashvi’i”—in which the entire history that preceded is gathered and crystallized. In such a time, the ten sefiros do not remain in a hidden, abstract state in the upper worlds alone, but they descend into history itself, into the garments of human lives and generations, until the partzuf becomes “alive” within time. The Nasi then is not only a merkavah to a middah, but the actual limb of that middah in the collective body of the last generations.

Still, this only shifts the question: if the order of sefiros must be embodied historically, where does this living partzuf begin? With which middah must the chain open? And why is the beginning specifically a point of Chochmah, as it is revealed in the figure who stands at the head of this seder, rather than some other sefirah? This we will understand by contemplating the Chochmah that first broke through the darkness of galus and opened the forest paths of simple, essential awareness of Elokus.

2 · Chochmah of the Forest Paths

The beginning of this living partzuf, then, must be in a beginning that is not yet a beginning in the ordinary sense at all; it is a nekudah, a point, in which everything is already present but nothing is yet unfolded. This is the inyan of Chochmah, which in the language of Chassidus is called nekudah peshutah, a simple point, and reisha d’lo isyada, a head that is not yet known. It flashes, it reveals, but it does not yet explain. It knows, but it does not yet articulate how it knows.

And this is the first giluy of the chain in the person of the Baal Shem Tov. For the Besht does not enter the stage of history as a master of pilpul, nor as a systematizer of paths, but as a point of pure vision that breaks into the thick night of galus, like a lightning stroke that for an instant illuminates the entire landscape in one indivisible glance.

This is why, before his revelation, his life is specifically among the simplest of folk, in hiddenness so deep that even those near him do not recognize his true inyan. As is known, he serves as a helper to teachers of little children, as a beadle in small villages, wandering from hamlet to hamlet among Jews broken by poverty, ignorance, and fear. Outwardly, there is nothing here of “head of the generation,” nothing of sefiros and partzufim. But precisely this concealment is the vessel for Chochmah. For Chochmah is not yet a structured edifice; it is the point of ayin, of nothingness, that can enter anywhere without resistance.

And the Besht’s avodah in those years is davening in the forests and mountains, alone with the trees and the birds and the stones. He seeks solitude not to escape the world, but to see the world in its source. There, in the field and the forest, where human order is minimal and the confusion of galus seems to reign unchecked, he pours out his soul with simple words of Tehillim, with cries and with joy, until the very grasses become letters in his prayer. This is not yet a teaching; it is not yet a derech to be transmitted. It is a seeing.

For Chochmah is re’iyah, sight. In one glance it grasps the whole, without dividing it into parts. And the Baal Shem Tov’s glance, so to speak, is that he sees in every detail of creation the living presence of Elokus. The bird that chirps, the peasant that trudges along the road, the broken Jew who does not know how to read—each one in his eye is a letter in the Divine Name, a spark of the Infinite Light clothed in the lowest garments. This is the chiddush that will later be explained and expanded; but at the beginning it is not a doctrine, it is a vision.

Therefore his first “teaching” that becomes known in the world is the maamar “Hashem is with you in the field.” For the field is that place which is outside the city, outside the settled, ordered environment of Torah and avodah as we understand them. The field is the weekday, the marketplace, the confusion of nations, the exile of Israel scattered in villages and taverns and coarse occupations. And the Besht comes and reveals that Hashem is davka there, “with you in the field,” not merely as a Creator who supervises from afar, but as a living presence, “Imo Anochi betzarah,” with him in his trouble, in his work, in his eating and drinking.

This word “with you” is the essence of Chochmah in this seder. For Chochmah sees the “with”—the unity of the Creator with the created—in one simple awareness. It does not have to prove, it does not have to argue; it simply knows that there is no place devoid of Him, and therefore the Jew in the field is not outside; the field itself is a page of Torah waiting to be read.

Accordingly, the Besht’s early years among simple Jews are not a mere prelude to his later, revealed leadership. They are the very expression of his Chochmah. For Chochmah, as explained in Chassidus, is bittul, self-nullification—the point of ayin in the soul that is open to receive from above. And who possesses this bittul more purely than the simple Jew, who has no grasp of concepts and pilpulim, but whose emunah peshutah, whose simple faith, is whole? The Baal Shem Tov cleaves to these Jews not in order to raise them to some other realm, but to reveal that their simple emunah itself is the highest Chochmah, that their “I believe” is a ray of the nekudah peshutah that precedes all understanding.

Hence his emphasis, in all his teachings, on simchah and temimus—joy and sincerity. For joy, as Chassidus explains, is the natural expression of a soul that is connected to its source without obstruction. When the soul knows Elokus with the knowing of Chochmah—a knowing that is beyond doubt and beyond question—its natural state is simchah. There is no heaviness, no inner conflict, because the point of truth has not yet been divided by analysis. This is why the Baal Shem Tov could take a Jew who could barely say “Modeh Ani” properly, dance with him, and in that dance reveal to him and to the world that this crude “Modeh Ani” touches a place higher than the greatest comprehension.

His journeys from town to town, often in utter secrecy, are also expressions of this nekudah. For Chochmah is called barak hamavrik—lightning that flashes—and the stories relate how the Besht would suddenly appear in a distant place at the precise moment when a Jew was in mortal or spiritual danger, intervene with a few simple words or actions, and then disappear. Sometimes he would gather a small chevrah of hidden tzaddikim in a remote inn and reveal to them distant events, the thoughts of hearts, dangers in other lands, and salvations yet to come. How is it possible that a man sitting in a wagon on a muddy road knows what is transpiring at that same moment in far-off cities, in the palaces of kings or in the heart of a forgotten orphan?

This is the inyan of Chochmah as klalus, an all-encompassing vision. For Chochmah, as is known, contains within it all the details of Binah in a hidden way. Like a seed that includes an entire tree, every branch and leaf and fruit in potential, Chochmah includes the entire seder hishtalshelus of that matter. Thus, when the Baal Shem Tov is shown from Above a nekudah of Elokus as it relates to some soul or some event, that nekudah carries with it the totality of that soul’s path and that event’s outcome. He does not “calculate”; he sees.

And therefore his miracles are not external wonders but expressions of an inner daas Eloki. When he tells a wagon driver to alter his route, thereby saving an entire village from a decree; when he tells a broken widow to light a candle in a particular way and, through this, sweetens judgments in the supernal worlds—these are not “tricks” of a wonder-worker but the living gaze of Chochmah that sees the unity of all planes of being in one glance. For in Chochmah, the upper and lower worlds are not yet divided; all is one simple light.

This same nekudah is what he awakens in every Jew. For his central avodah is not to add new obligations, nor to demand lofty meditations, but to awaken the emunah peshutah that is already present in the soul. When he tells a Jew that every movement, every sigh, every thought is significant before Hashem; when he teaches that Divine Providence extends to the fall of a leaf and the turning of a straw in the wind; he is not giving the Jew a philosophy but revealing to him the point of Chochmah within his own nefesh Elokis. He is saying: what you already know in your depths—that Hashem is here—is true everywhere, in every detail.

And because this awareness is above division, it is also above despair. In the thickest galus, in generations broken by pogroms, poverty, and spiritual ignorance, such a flash is the only beginning that can truly begin. For if the seder were to open with analysis, with Binah, the heart, overwhelmed by darkness, would say: you speak fine words, but I cannot reach there. Only when the beginning is a nekudah peshutah of “Hashem is with you in the field,” without any prior condition, can there be a place for any Jew, in any situation, to enter.

However, precisely because Chochmah is such a point, there remains a question. For a point, by definition, has no length and breadth; it does not dwell in the place it touches. The Besht’s vision illuminates all, but does it remain? A flash of lightning shows the traveler the path for a moment, but afterwards the road is once again dark. The Jew who danced with the Baal Shem Tov in an inn may feel Elokus vividly in that hour, but what happens when he returns to his weekday, to his coarse work, to his inner confusions? Will the nekudah peshutah suffice to guide him step by step?

In other words: Chochmah knows, but it does not yet explain. It grasps Elokus in an indivisible way, but it does not yet answer the soul’s detailed questions: how do I pray when my mind is scattered? How do I transform middos? How do I arrange my day so that “Hashem is with you in the field” becomes a settled consciousness rather than a passing inspiration?

Thus the very greatness of the Baal Shem Tov’s Chochmah—its simplicity, its universality, its immediacy—contains within it a hidden demand: that there be a second stage in which this nekudah will be drawn out into length and breadth, into a structured path that the mind can follow and the heart can internalize. For if the revelation remains only at the level of sight, there is a danger that it will hover above the world, that it will be revered as a wondrous past but not lived as an ordered present.

This necessitates the middah of Binah, which is rechovos hanahar, the widening of the river: to take the point of “Hashem is with you in the field” and explain what this means in all the particulars of avodah. How this widening comes about, through the second Nasi who receives the nekudah of the Besht and unfolds it into a house of understanding, this is the next inyan.

3 · Binah of the Maggid’s House

This widening begins with the second Nasi, the Maggid of Mezritch. For in him one sees openly that the nekudah of the Besht did not remain hovering as a flash above the world, but entered into the vessels of understanding, into a house built with measure and order.

And here there is first a wonder. Outwardly, the Maggid was frail in body, broken in health, confined much of the time to his place. According to the way of the world, such a person is not one who builds wide rivers, who gathers around him a great multitude and arranges paths for them in all details. Yet in him was revealed that Binah itself, which is breadth and expansion, is not a matter of coarse strength, but of inner fire. His limbs were weak, but his Torah burned with such intensity that great men, giants in nigleh and nistar, were drawn like iron to a magnet to his small beis midrash, until that narrow room in Mezritch became rechovos hanahar—the widening of the river—for all the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov.

For it is known that Binah is not another light altogether from Chochmah, chas v’shalom, but the hitpashtus of Chochmah into length and breadth, the unpacking of what was contained there in simple inclusion. The nekudah of Chochmah says one word; Binah hears in that one word many words. Thus, when the Maggid would repeat a short saying of the Besht, a vort that the Baal Shem Tov had uttered in passing on the road or at a table, he did not add anything from himself in the sense of a foreign idea; rather he entered into the nekudah until its inner content spread before him in all directions. One sentence of the Besht became in his mouth hours of explanation, a whole seder of avodah: what is the kavanah in thought, what is the work of the heart, how does this apply to a lamdan, how to a simple Jew, how in prayer, how in business, how in times of ascent and in times of concealment.

This is the inyan of Binah as lev meivin—the heart that understands. For Chochmah is like sight: it sees the thing as one, in its root. Binah is like listening: it takes what was seen in an instant and hears it detail by detail, until the heart can live with it. Therefore the Maggid’s beis midrash was full of great scholars. Their minds were vessels for length and depth; they needed not only to dance with the Besht’s fire, but to understand, to meditate, to taste. And the Maggid gave them this, not by cooling the fire, but by arranging it into coals that could warm steadily.

In his teachings this took the form of precise inyonim: hisbonenus in Elokus, dveikus of the soul, the distinction between yichuda tata’ah and yichuda ila’ah. All these terms are not inventions of philosophy, but names for the rivers that flow out of the Besht’s point. “Hashem is with you in the field”—this is the nekudah. Binah asks: in what manner is He with you? Is the world then something, and He only accompanies it, or is the world itself absolutely nullified in His unity? From this came the explanation of yichuda tata’ah, where the worlds appear to exist and are unified with Him, and yichuda ila’ah, where Ein Od Milvado is felt in such a way that the worlds themselves are as naught. And from there, a seder: when does a person meditate on this, how does such hisbonenus awaken dveikus, what is the avodah of rising from yichuda tata’ah to yichuda ila’ah in the order of prayer.

So too with the parable that became central in his mouth—the parable of the king and the son. The Besht’s nekudah that even in distance the King is present, that even in the coarsest place the Jew is bound to his Father, is translated by the Maggid into a whole structure of understanding. A son is sent from the palace, through many lands, until he is lost among fools and mockers, and forgets his royal origin. The king, desiring his return, builds false walls, sends servants in strange garments, arranges encounters and illusions, all to arouse in the son a memory and a longing. In this parable the Maggid set forth the whole seder of hishtalshelus and hashgachah, the concealments and the descents, the trials that a soul meets—all in order that the Jew should understand his state, should not despair in distance, but perceive that the very distance is a device of the King’s love.

Here we see clearly the work of Binah: to arrange the worlds of thought and story so that the mind can traverse them like a map. The Baal Shem Tov burst into the forest and cried, “Hashem is here!” The Maggid draws a house of rooms within the soul where that cry can echo in a hundred forms. From there arises the seder of hisbonenus: not only to know that “Hashem is here,” but to sit and contemplate the parable, to place oneself as the son, to feel the shame of distance and the sweetness of return, until the heart is moved and dveikus is born.

And because Binah is rechovos, expansion, it does not remain the private possession of one understanding. Therefore in Mezritch we find a new phenomenon: the gathering of many talmidim, each one a world, and each one receiving from the same river a different path. For the nature of Binah is that when the nekudah is unpacked into particulars, it becomes possible that one talmid should grasp more the inyan of rachamim, another more the inyan of yirah, another the inyan of simchah, another the inyan of mesirus nefesh, and so on. All drink from the Maggid; each becomes a unique channel. This too is part of the widening of the river—that the Besht’s point, which shone equally on simple and on scholar, now passes through many minds, becoming tailored paths for all future generations.

Yet, with all this greatness, there remains a hidden deficiency that itself demands the next middah. For Binah, by its very nature of expansion and differentiation, can remain in the realm of mochin alone. The concepts are clear, the structures are beautiful, the parables are deep; the mind travels in wide spaces. But it is still possible that the heart remains at a distance, that the person knows and arranges and even contemplates, yet the knowledge does not bind him in an absolute way. Today he understands, tomorrow he is distracted; in prayer he is moved, in the marketplace he is cold. The river flows, but does it penetrate the soil, does it become the very life-sap of the tree?

This is already the question of Daas. For Daas is not another level of understanding, but the power of connection, of keshirah, that ties the mochin with the middos, the sechel with the nefesh. The Maggid revealed Binah in all its richness, he gave to the generations maps and languages to enter the Besht’s light. But there is a need for a third Nasi who will take this widened river and implant it as a fixed consciousness within the mind and heart of every Jew, to make from hisbonenus a steady ladder, from dveikus a daily state, from yichuda ila’ah and tata’ah not only exalted categories but lived experience.

How this binding comes about, through the one who is Daas—who takes the light of the Baal Shem Tov and the breadth of the Maggid and ties them into the inner being of the beinoni—that is the next inyan.

4 · Daas of the Alter Rebbe

Daas, then, is the inyan of keshirah, of tying. It takes the point of Chochmah and the breadth of Binah and binds them into a single, steady awareness that grips the soul and does not let go. It is not a new seichel, but the firmness of the knower within the seichel he already knows; the decision of the nefesh to stand inside this understanding until it becomes his very metzius. Therefore Daas is the shoresh of the middos: for only that which the nefesh accepts in an inner way, with a personal “this concerns me,” can descend and give birth to love, awe, compassion and all the measures of the heart.

And this is the inyan of the third Nasi, the Alter Rebbe, who is Daas. His entire path, from the moment he left his home to seek a derech in avodas Hashem, is the story of this power of binding. For it is known that he first traveled to the great gaon of Vilna, and only afterward turned his steps to Mezritch. This already indicates the inner question that burned within him: not whether Torah is true—chas veshalom—but how Torah becomes the life of man. The brilliance of nigleh alone, as great as it is, did not yet answer for him how the heart is tied with the mind, how a Jew in the marketplace, in the midst of worries and distractions, can live in a state of dveikus.

When he came to Mezritch and entered the house of the Maggid, he recognized that here shines the light which can answer this question: the light of Chassidus, the inner Torah that speaks of Elokus as the true reality and of avodah as transforming the inner world of the person. Yet even here, even in this beis midrash of Binah, his soul still asked: where is the seder and the kevius that will ensure that these exalted teachings do not remain in the realm of lofty souls alone, nor in moments of arousal, but become the constant avodah of every Jew? This question is already Daas asking for its own giluy.

Hence his path after the histalkus of the Maggid: to return to his own place and to found a derech of Chabad—Chochmah, Binah, Daas—where Daas is the ikar ha’avodah. For in the very name “Chabad” the order is such that the third term seals the first two and determines their tachlis: all the flash of Chochmah, all the width of Binah, are here only in order to come into Daas, to be fixed in the nefesh in a way of constant hisbonenus that gives birth to middos.

This is the inner content of the Tanya, which he called “sefer shel beinonim.” For on the surface this is a wondrous chiddush: that a sefer of the deepest secrets of the soul and of Elokus is not written for tzaddikim, nor even as a description of their level, but as a guidebook for the beinoni, the average Jew, the one for whom evil has not been transformed but only held in check. But on the inner level this is the very definition of Daas: that the highest hashkafah, the deepest yichudim, become a seder avodah for the beinoni, a practical, detailed instruction how to think, how to feel, how to choose in every moment.

For Tanya does not suffice with describing that Hashem is everything and that the soul is chelek Eloka mimaal mamash. It takes these points of Chochmah and the explanations of Binah and brings them into an ordered hisbonenus: the chapters of Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, the contemplation of Hashem’s constant creating of the worlds, of the letters of speech, of “Ein od milvado” in every detail of existence. And then, in Shaar HaBeinoni, he guides the Jew how to sit with these understandings, to think them through at length until they become vivid to him, until from them are born ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem in his heart. This is Daas: not to leave the seichel as concept but to demand of it that it work, that it press and penetrate until the heart is affected.

His own avodah in tefillah was the living example of this. It is known how he would stand in davenen for many hours, on weekdays and Shabbos alike, and how time in those moments ceased to exist for him. But this was not, G‑d forbid, an escape from the world; it was the opposite—a concentration of Daas on Elokus, a tying of his entire being into the words he uttered, into the ideas upon which he meditated. The length of his tefillah was the expression of Daas refusing to move on until the heart had been moved, until the seichel had given birth to a living middah.

And because in him Daas was complete, it expressed itself not only in inwardness but in the most concrete care for another Jew. For Daas is also hiskashrus, the power by which one soul knows another, binds itself to another. Thus we find the story that on the holiest day, Yom Kippur, in the midst of the avodah of the day, he suddenly took off his tallis and kittel and left the shul. The chassidim were astonished, but later it was revealed that he had gone to a small house where a woman lay weak after childbirth and there was no one to care for her infant. He lit a fire, cooked soup, and fed the crying baby. Here one sees Daas in its most radical form: that the same power which in tefillah ties him in total dveikus to Elokus, obligates him to be totally present with the need of a crying child. The bond with Hashem does not float above the world; it permeates the world.

The same Daas stood firm in the episode of Mesritch and Vilna, when the opposition between the misnagdim and Chassidim reached a point of sharp conflict. The Alter Rebbe did not choose the path of compromise in matters of truth, nor did he flee from confrontation. His mesirus nefesh then—traveling to attempt peace, yet standing unbending in the integrity of the derech of Chassidus—is another expression of Daas: a knowledge so inner that no external pressure, no fear for honor or even for safety, can shake it. For Daas is the root of stubbornness in holiness, the “lo yamish” of Moshe, that once he has known the truth of Hashem, he cannot detach from it.

This same unshakable connection is what was tested and revealed in his imprisonment in Petersburg, which later became known as Yud-Tes Kislev, the “geulah haruchnis.” For all the accusations leveled against him by the authorities, as is known, were in truth a physical manifestation of a deeper, supernal question: whether the spreading of the inner secrets of Torah into the world of the beinoni had reached a point that required, so to speak, a judgment Above. Was the world truly ready that Chochmah and Binah should be tied through Daas into the hearts of simple Jews? Could such a descent of Elokus be borne?

The fact that he was ultimately freed, and that the date of his release became established as a yom tov in all generations, indicates that in Heaven it was decided that indeed the binding of Chassidus with the world must continue and increase. Yud-Tes Kislev is thus the revealed victory of Daas: that the knowledge of Elokus may and must penetrate the garments of this world, that the beinoni in his business, his house, his field, should live with the awareness expounded in Tanya. The prison cell becomes another place of Daas, another makif that is drawn inward and sweetened.

This precision of Daas also explains the particular style of his Chassidus. While the Baal Shem Tov’s words flash like lightning and the Maggid’s like a wide river, the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim are built with exactness of concept and language, every term weighed, every distinction defined. Here Chassidus is given in the vessels of exact intellect, not to limit it but to allow it to tie itself firmly to the mind of the listener. When a chassid learns a maamar of the Alter Rebbe and contemplates its seder, its daled chelkim, its definitions of nefesh, ruach, neshama, and the like, he is being drawn into Daas: each concept becomes a rung upon which his mind and heart can stand.

Even his niggunim, the melodies that emerged from his nefesh, are Daas. They are not mere expressions of emotion, rising and falling without order. Each niggun has a structure, a progression from phrase to phrase that mirrors the seder hisbonenus of Chabad. The well-known niggunim of dveikus ascend slowly, with repeated motifs, as though insisting: do not move on; return again to this point; sink deeper into it. When chassidim would sing these melodies for hours, they were enacting Daas in sound—the refusal to let the awareness of Elokus remain fleeting.

All of this returns us to the essential point: through the Alter Rebbe, Daas became not only a koach in the soul but a derech for a generation. The beinoni received a map of how to bind his mind and heart to Hashem: through learning the words of Chassidus with understanding, through long hisbonenus before davenen, through shaping his middos according to these contemplations, and through caring for another Jew with the same inner seriousness with which he contemplates Elokus. Thus the partzuf of the Nesi’im acquires its central pillar: the knowledge that is connection.

However, Daas, by its very nature, concentrates inward. It ties, fixes, deepens; it makes the connection firm in the pnimiyus of the nefesh. But there remains still another question in the seder ha’Adam: once this inner bond is established, how does the light begin to flow outward with a great hispashtus, with expansive love and revelation, so that the waters of Chassidus flood not only the inner chamber of the soul but also the streets and marketplaces of Jewish life? This is already the inyan of Chesed, of hitpashtus and flow, which will be revealed in the next Nasi, the Mitteler Rebbe, whose very being was a river of Chassidus without end.

5 · Chesed of the Flowing River

Thus, when the light of Daas has been fixed in the inner chamber, there is a need for a new giluy: that this very innerness should pour outward with an abundance that knows no measure. And this is the inyan of Chesed, which in the Sefiros is defined as hitpashtus, spreading and extending, that the light go forth beyond its own place and give space and life to what is outside of it. This hitpashtus of Chesed in the partzuf ha’Nesi’im is the Mitteler Rebbe.

For it is known that the Mitteler Rebbe’s very metzius was hispashtus. Whereas by the Alter Rebbe the maamar is tzuklapte, concise and weighed in each word, by the Mitteler Rebbe the same nekudah becomes a nahar yotzei me’Eden—a river going out from Eden to water the garden. The Eden is the pnimiyus ha’Elokus that shines in the mochin of the Nasi; the river is the hitpashtus of this delight into many details, many explanations, many paths in avodah, such that whoever enters the river is entirely surrounded and carried by it.

Chassidim related that when the Mitteler Rebbe would begin a maamar, it was as though a sluice-gate had been opened. He could speak for hours without interruption, the words flowing one into the next with such naturalness that those present would forget that there is such a thing as stopping. There was no sense of strain in this; on the contrary, his repose was in speaking. As long as he was revealing Chassidus, he lived. And they felt literally flooded—“es hot gegosen chassidus,” it poured. This is the very geder of Chesed: not measured giving, but an inner nature that cannot but bestow.

Now, one might have thought that such hispashtus in quantity comes at the expense of pnimiyus, that when a matter is spread into such length it loses its depth. But by the Mitteler Rebbe, the opposite is true. Precisely through his length, the pnimiyus is given a place to settle in every detail. For Chesed is not only muchness; it is also space. It creates room. And therefore, in his maamarim, each nekudah receives its own sugya, its own analysis and application, until the chassid who hears or learns it feels that there is a place for his own nefesh within the teaching.

This is the deeper meaning of nahar yotzei me’Eden. The river is not only transporting water from the source; it is also widening, making a bed within which the waters can move peacefully and irrigate. The Mitteler Rebbe’s explanations are such a riverbed. Where the Alter Rebbe fixes the nekudah of Daas in the soul through sharp, exact formulations and avodah’dike hisbonenus, the Mitteler Rebbe draws that same nekudah out into many tzadim, into expansive contemplation, so that each type of mind and heart finds its way to be nichlal in the Elokus of the matter.

And this is connected with the inyan that by the Mitteler Rebbe, hisbonenus itself becomes a world. It is not only that he explains more; his entire derech is that avodah requires breadth—rechavus hadaas. To meditate on Elokus not only briefly, to bind the mind, but at length, to wander, so to speak, within the ohr of the inyan, examining it from many sides, comparing, distinguishing, returning again. This is Chesed within Daas: Daas that has become a river.

Correspondingly, his ahavas Yisrael was also of this nature. By some tzaddikim, love for another Jew is expressed in powerful, concentrated acts of care, in rare, intense encounters. By the Mitteler Rebbe, it was a constant hispashtus. His door was open for yechidus in a way that itself was miraculous. He would sit for hours upon hours, receiving one Yid after another, each with his particular pain, his confusion in avodah, his questions in gashmiyus and ruchniyus, and he would pour himself into each one with the same overflowing attention.

Chassidim would say that to enter to the Mitteler Rebbe in yechidus was to enter into a wide place. The narrowness of one’s own mochin and heart was suddenly replaced by a sense that there is room—room to breathe in avodah, room to become. This is Chesed in its simple form: to give another person space to exist, not crushed by his own limitations. And that this came through dibbur, through the Rebbe’s words, is not incidental. Chesed in the Sefiros is the first middah of hitgalus; it begins the descent from the hidden mochin into articulated relationship. So too, the Mitteler Rebbe’s dibbur is the first great river of Chassidus that spills beyond the inner circle of maskilim into the broad field of chassidim and even simple folk.

We also see the midas ha’Chesed in the way he organized Chabad in the revealed world. For Chesed is not only a feeling; it demands a keili of hitpashtus in practice. Under his leadership, Chabad communities, shtetlach and kehillos, were given more fixed forms. Institutions of learning and avodah, structures of support for chassidim, were established and expanded. In earlier generations, the hiskashrus to the Rebbe and the learning of Chassidus existed more as a fiery core; around the Mitteler Rebbe, it begins to take on the character of a derech rabbim, a public road upon which many can travel.

This, too, is Chesed as space: he gave room for chassidim to live Chabad in their day-to-day communal lives. The very fact that there is a settled derech, with known centers and fixed sedarim of learning, is itself an expression of the river that has found its channels in the earth. And all this proceeds from the pnimiyus of his ahavah: he could not bear that the treasures of his father’s Chassidus should remain confined to a narrow circle or to the inner room of the mind. Chesed demands that what is beloved to the giver should be shared.

Yet, we must emphasize that this Chesed is not a deviation from the Alter Rebbe’s Daas, chas v’shalom, but its direct outgrowth. When Daas has bound the soul to Elokus with such strength, the natural result is that the nefesh overflows. Just as by a river: the more the source is filled, the more surely and forcefully it sends forth its waters. So, the Mitteler Rebbe is the hispashtus of the Alter Rebbe’s pnimiyus. The same inner bond is now flowing outward with such breadth that it takes possession of whole hours, whole communities, whole landscapes of the soul.

And this brings us to a wondrous and awesome point regarding his histalkus. It is known that the Mitteler Rebbe’s passing from this world occurred while he was saying a maamar on the possuk “Tzion b’mishpat tipadeh,” that Tzion will be redeemed with judgment and her captives with tzedakah. The very moment of departure is within dibbur of Chassidus, within a river of words about Geulah. This is Chesed in its ultimate form: that even the transition from this world to the next becomes an act of giving, of drawing down ohr into the world.

For histalkus of a tzaddik is itself a greater hispashtus of his ruach, as is known. By the Mitteler Rebbe, this hispashtus is clothed in explanation—he is leaving the body while yet pouring out teachings on the redemption of Tzion, as though to say: my Chesed does not cease; it only becomes more subtle, more encompassing. And the possuk itself hints already to the next inyan: “b’mishpat tipadeh”—with judgment she will be redeemed. The Geulah of Tzion requires mishpat, the gevurah that weighs and defines.

Here a question arises. If Chesed is such endless flow, such overflowing expansion, how does it not wash away boundaries? How does the river not flood beyond its banks and lose its form? In the order of the Sefiros, Chesed and Gevurah must stand together, for only when the outpouring of love is held within din and mishpat does it become a lasting world. So too in the partzuf of the Nesi’im: the Mitteler Rebbe’s nahar of Chassidus needs a keili of gevul and strength, of halachic rigor and delimitation, so that this river irrigates rather than destroys.

This necessity already glimmers in the very maamar with which he leaves the world: “Tzion b’mishpat tipadeh,” that the inner point of Yiddishkeit, Tzion, is redeemed not by Chesed alone, but by mishpat—the attribute of Gevurah that distinguishes between permitted and forbidden, between pure and impure, between the inner and the outer. The Mitteler Rebbe’s Chesed has now filled the landscape; what is required is a Nasi whose avodah is to give this landscape firm borders, strong walls, and foundations that can withstand opposition.

Thus, the flow of the nahar yotzei me’Eden leads necessarily into the next giluy: the Tzemach Tzedek, in whom the midah of Gevurah shines. He will not diminish the river; he will carve its banks, define its course, and arm it with the strength of halachah, so that the hispashtus of Chesed stands against all waters of concealment and brings the garden of Yisrael to its full, enduring growth.

6 · Gevurah of the Tzemach Tzedek

And this is indeed the inyan of Gevurah in kedushah—not a force that comes to oppose Chesed, G‑d forbid, but the very power that allows Chesed to be. For Chesed without gevul is not yet a world; it is a flood. Gevurah as tzimtzum and din does not negate the light; it measures, weighs, and enclothes it in keilim such that the light can endure, can be integrated, can stand in the place of opposition without being pushed aside.

This is the giluy that shines in the Nasi who follows the Mitteler Rebbe—the Tzemach Tzedek. His entire matzias, as known, is an embodiment of this inyan: inner strength, delimitation, halachic precision, and firmness in leadership, all of which are not a turning away from the nahar of Chassidus, but the carving of deep, solid banks for that river.

We see this first of all in his Torah itself. The Tzemach Tzedek is called “Tzemach Tzedek she’baTorah,” for his Torah is not merely many writings quantitatively, but a particular quality: gevurah in Torah. In nigleh, his responsa encompass thousands of complex she’eilos, from the finest points of issur v’heter and dinei mamonos to new situations that arose in his time. There one sees an astonishing koach ha’pilpul and koach ha’psak together: not a proliferation of possibilities without end, but a rigorous weighing, rejecting, delimiting, until the din ha’emes emerges, sharp and clear.

Gevurah in Torah means precisely this tzimtzum: from the infinite possibilities of sevara and the multitudes of shitos, he constricts and channels his seichel, defines the boundaries of each sevara, distinguishes between similar cases, and in the end is kovea a psak that stands like a wall. This is not coldness, but a fiery din; the very intensity of his yiras Shamayim demands that the halachah be exact, without compromise and without blurring of distinctions. Thus his responsa become for later generations a fortress: in them the river of Torah that flowed from earlier poskim is gathered, clarified, and set into solid stone.

And in pnimius haTorah as well, his Chassidic writings reveal this same Gevurah. On the one hand, their breadth is immense; but their inner character is not that of unbounded hispashtus. Rather, they take the expansive hashkafos and hisbonenus of the Mitteler Rebbe and subject them to a precise din: defining each inyan in its exact geder, distinguishing between close concepts, setting clear hierarchies and sederim in the olamos and in kochos hanefesh. As in nigleh, so in Chassidus: he is a posek, establishing what is the derech pnimius haTorah for doros.

From this itself we already understand that his Gevurah is not a contraction away from Chesed, but its rectification. For the more a river has strong, high banks, the more powerfully it can flow within them without overflowing. The Mitteler Rebbe’s nahar finds in the Tzemach Tzedek a gvul that allows its waters to run deeper and further.

This is not merely a matter of seforim. The midah of Gevurah in him is revealed with particular clarity in his hanhagah as Nasi Yisrael during a time of harsh decrees. In his days, the government issued gezeiros against Torah chinuch and decrees of conscription that tore Jewish children from their families from a very young age. Here, Gevurah in kedushah must reveal itself not only as intellectual delimitation, but as inner strength, as the power to stand unbending against external pressure.

And so we find: in all dealings with the authorities, he displayed an iron firmness. Where others might have sought to appease, to compromise, to soften the din, he stood like a wall, refusing to grant any concession that would harm the purity of Torah education. His letters and instructions from those years show a language of sharp, measured strength: he defines exactly what may be yielded in external form and what under no circumstances may be touched, not even in the smallest detail. This too is Gevurah—the ability to draw a clear line and say: until here and no further.

It is known also how he organized the response to the gezeirah of conscription. He did not suffice with general cries of alarm or with arousal of rachamim alone. Rather, he established structures, guidance, and takanos: how communities should act, how to protect their children, how to navigate the decrees without betraying halachah. Here Gevurah becomes the building of walls and fortresses in actual life—takonos that are exacting, demanding, but through them kedushah is protected.

Likewise in his stance against the maskilim of his time. The challenge here is more subtle: not a physical gezeirah, but a spiritual erosion, an attempt to introduce foreign hashkafos and to weaken the authority of Torah and mesorah. For this, the midah of Gevurah is particularly necessary. Chesed alone, with its expansive love and its desire to include and to explain, could be drawn into endless dialogue, into a blurring of lines between kedushah and chol. Gevurah, however, draws a sword of din: it distinguishes sharply between Torah-true thought and heresy, between avodas Hashem and humanistic self‑worship.

The Tzemach Tzedek’s words regarding such influence are known for their sharpness. There one hears the voice of Gevurah: he does not flatter, he does not couch his opposition in soft terms; he names the danger and uproots it at the source. Yet even this sharpness is ultimately an expression of great compassion—for Gevurah in kedushah is din that emerges from a deeper Chesed, the will to protect Yisrael and Torah from harm. If one does not set a strong boundary against poison, one has not truly loved the body.

This same pattern appears in his personal hanhagah with chassidim. There are accounts of his warmth and fatherly care, but also of moments when his words were cutting, his gaze severe. When a chassid’s conduct threatened the integrity of Chassidus, or when laxity crept into matters of halachah, his reaction was not to overlook in the name of love, but to rebuke sharply. Here too, Gevurah guards the Chesed: by setting firm demands, by not allowing the river to meander into marshes, he preserves its life‑giving force.

And on the positive side, his Gevurah expresses itself in constructive delimitation: he builds. Under his leadership, Chassidic communities take on a more defined form. He sets clear guidelines for the conduct of a chassid, for the structure of a kehillah, for the place of learning, davening, and gemilus chasadim. Where the Mitteler Rebbe’s Chesed created broad spaces and many outflows, the Tzemach Tzedek’s Gevurah organizes these spaces into a city with walls, gates, and laws.

We can now return to the earlier question: how does the river not flood? The answer is that the midah of Gevurah, as revealed in the Tzemach Tzedek, is the tzimtzum that guards kedushah. In Torah, he is the gevul that fixes halachah in nigleh and pnimius alike; in leadership, he is the wall that stands against decrees and against ideological erosion; in communal life, he is the builder of strong, ordered kehillot with precise guidelines.

Thus, Chesed and Gevurah in the partzuf of the Nesi’im are not two forces in conflict. The Mitteler Rebbe’s Chesed pours forth; the Tzemach Tzedek’s Gevurah gives that outpouring form and defense. The river and its banks are one system: without the river, the banks encircle emptiness; without the banks, the river destroys rather than nurtures.

Yet Gevurah, by its very nature, can appear severe, constrained, heavy. It emphasizes boundaries, judgments, demands. One might then ask: where is the beauty, the harmony, the pleasantness that unites the kindness and the strength? Where is the revelation of a middah that does not only protect, but adorns and uplifts, revealing that Chesed and Gevurah themselves are but two colors in a higher tapestry?

This points already to the next giluy in the chain of Nesi’im. After the river has flowed and its banks have been carved, there is place for a third line, the midah of Tiferes, in which Chesed and Gevurah are inter‑included in a wondrous noam and glory. In the Rebbe Maharash, as will be explained, the beauty and regal confidence of “lechatchila ariber” shines—a conduct that does not merely balance Chesed and Gevurah, but rises above the very confines that they define, revealing a higher harmony in which limitation itself becomes a vessel for infinite light.

7 · Tiferet and ‘Lechatchila Ariber’

In order to understand this higher harmony, there is need to contemplate what is the general inyan of Tiferes in the nefesh and in the Sefiros. For Chesed and Gevurah are two lines, right and left, expansion and contraction, kiruv and richuk. Tiferes is called the middle line, which includes both together in a wondrous unity, and therefore it is called Rachamim, and it is also called Noam and Yofi, beauty and pleasantness.

For when there are only two colors, white and black, the contrast is harsh; each stands against the other. But when there is a third color, a blending that takes from both and yet is a metzius unto itself, then the eye rests upon it with pleasure. This is the inyan of Tiferes: not a compromise that weakens both sides, but a synthesis that elevates them into a new form, a beauty that could not exist without their opposition.

And this is the giluy in the Rebbe Maharash. After the hispashtus of Chesed in the Mitteler Rebbe, and the gevul and tzimtzum of Gevurah in the Tzemach Tzedek, there is revealed a hanhagah in which the two are not merely held in balance, but are worn as a royal garment, in a way of noam and hadar, of compassion that knows both the softness of kindness and the firmness of law, and yet is defined by neither.

This is expressed in the well‑known saying of the Rebbe Maharash: “The world says, ‘If you cannot go under, go over.’ I say: from the outset—lechatchila—go over.” At first glance, this is only an encouragement to be strong, not to be intimidated by obstacles. But when we consider it in the light of Chesed and Gevurah, we see that it reveals the essence of Tiferes.

For “to go under” is the path of adapting oneself within the existing boundaries, accepting the givens of metzius and working within them. This has a side of Gevurah: submitting to constraints, measuring, limiting, bending. “To go over” when there is no other choice seems like the path of Chesed: a leap of generosity, a breaking‑through when all else fails. But the Rebbe Maharash teaches: do not first accept the premise of limitation and then seek to break it; from the beginning, view the limit itself from a higher vantage, in which “under” and “over” are only two modalities within a kingship that is not defined by them.

This is Tiferes. It does not negate Gevurah; on the contrary, it uses the very sharpness and din as part of its majesty. Nor does it dissolve into unbounded Chesed; rather, it weaves Chesed and Gevurah into a royal path that passes “over” precisely because it stands from the outset in a higher seder. The obstacle remains what it is, but relative to this hanhagah, it is already from the beginning a step in the royal staircase.

This is why the Rebbe Maharash’s personal conduct was in a way of malchus, of refined regal beauty, even when the chassidim and the community were in a state of material poverty. Seemingly, this is difficult to understand. If the generation’s situation is one of want and difficulty, should not the Nasi conduct himself with visible simplicity and restraint, in a way that reflects Gevurah and tzimtzum? Why did the Rebbe Maharash insist on a derech of wealth in clothing, in the appearance of the home, in the style of comportment—“hofkheit,” as it was known—when the surroundings did not match?

But according to the above, the matter is understood. For had he confined himself within the existing metzius of poverty, he would have been acknowledging that this state defines the measure of what can be revealed. Tiferes, however, reveals that the inner truth of the dor is not its external constriction but its pnimius, the malchus of Torah and of Chassidus that resides within it. Therefore, specifically in a time of lack, the Nasi as Tiferes must show a hanhagah of royal dignity, not for his own sake, G‑d forbid, but to draw into the generation the consciousness of lechatchila ariber—that their true standing is higher than the constraints of the moment.

The beauty here is precisely that it includes both Chesed and Gevurah. The external conduct is “Chesed‑like,” expansive, adorned; yet it is rooted in the strongest Gevurah, for it requires a will that does not bend to circumstances, a din against the accepted “common sense” of the world. It is rachamim al ha’emes: compassion on the inner truth of the generation, to reveal its royal stature even when its garments are torn.

This same pattern we see in the Rebbe Maharash’s journeys to influence governments and powerful figures on behalf of Yidden. On the one hand, this is the midah of Chesed: to intercede, to bring down salvations and exemptions, to work for the benefit of the flock. On the other hand, it requires an extraordinary Gevurah: to stand with unshakable firmness before ministers and princes, to speak sharply when needed, to refuse to flatter or to sell out. Yet in him these did not stand as two alternating modes. His presence before them was one of Tiferes, of regal beauty, such that the very princes and officials sensed a higher malchus, a nobility not borrowed from their own court but flowing from a different source entirely.

His wit, too, was of this order. Many stories are told of the Rebbe Maharash’s sharp answers, where in one phrase he both cut through the coarseness of a questioner and at the same time uplifted him. This is not mere cleverness. Sharpness alone would be Gevurah without Chesed; soft consolation alone would be Chesed without Gevurah. The union of both in a single moment—an answer that pierces and heals in one—is Tiferes. It is the beauty of a line that is both straight and curved, a form whose very exactness comforts.

And this is connected with the content of his maamarim. On the one hand, they often speak of extremely lofty inyonim in Elokus, exalted levels of Atzmus and Or Ein Sof; on the other hand, they are constantly drawing these inyonim into avodah b’poel, into the concrete life of the person. This, too, is the inyan of Tiferes: it takes the heights of Chochmah and Binah and the depths of Chesed and Gevurah, and clothes them in a form that is beautiful and accessible, yet does not cheapen them. The highest concepts are expressed in a language and structure that can be lived.

From this we can also understand the shortness of his years, together with the intensity and colorfulness of his life. Tiferes, being a middle line, is often a concentrated point of many opposites—great light in a small vessel. The giluy is therefore with a particular brightness, like a flame that burns with many hues at once. His time in this world was not in quantity but in quality; he was the central accent in the phrase, the note on which previous motifs resolve and from which new themes can emerge.

For this is the role of Tiferes in the seder ha’Partzuf. Once Chesed and Gevurah have been revealed as distinct lines—the river and its banks—there is a need for a middah that shows they are not ultimate. Tiferes reveals that the true unity of Elokus is not only that Chesed and Gevurah both come from Him, but that within the kingly beauty of His conduct they are already harmonized. This revelation, however, is not yet war; it is the inner confidence and majesty that precedes war.

And here is the transition to the next middah. For one could argue: if the path is lechatchila ariber, if Tiferes reveals a beauty that is above the whole structure of limitation, then where is there place for struggle at all? Why is there a need for Netzach and Hod—the legs that go out to battle, the perseverance and submission in the face of opposition? Should not the higher harmony of Tiferes dissolve all conflict?

But the order of the Sefiros teaches otherwise. Specifically after Tiferes comes Netzach. Precisely because there is now a revealed noam and hadar, a sense of the truth that stands above the world, there arises the strength to fight for that truth in the lowest places, to engage in extended campaigns and not be broken. The majesty of Tiferes becomes, in the next Nasi, a determination that will not retreat.

Thus, the Rebbe Maharash as Tiferes prepares the way for the Rebbe Rashab as Netzach. The principle of lechatchila ariber, the royal comportment that takes no notice of worldly obstacles, becomes in the next generation an army of Hashem that goes out into a world of new heresies and upheavals, armed with the certainty that all these are but steps to be gone “over” from the outset. The beauty in the palace becomes victory in the field.

To understand the inyan of Netzach as it is revealed in the Rebbe Rashab—how this inner harmony of Tiferes is translated into war, strategy, and unyielding endurance—requires a separate explanation.

8 · Netzach of the Rebbe Rashab

Netzach, as is known, is not merely a measure of strength. It is the middah of victory, of war that is waged not for expansion or conquest, but for the very truth of the Melech, that this truth should not, chas veshalom, be pushed aside by any opposing reality. Netzach is the insistence that the king’s word be fulfilled in actuality, even when all the revealed circumstances of the world seem to deny it. It is, in the language of Chassidus, a koach ha’hiskashrus she’eino talui b’haskalah—an attachment that does not depend on understanding, but on the inner certainty that “ken hu,” so it is, and so it must be.

And this is the giluy of the Rebbe Rashab. After the Tiferes of the Rebbe Maharash revealed a malchus’dike harmony that stands above limitations, there must come a Nasi in whom this inner harmony is translated into the language of war, of campaigns that extend over years and generations, of institutions and series and preparations that continue to act long after the original moment. For this is the inyan of Netzach: not a flash, not even a beautiful harmony, but a drawn‑out battle with an end that is already fixed from the outset.

We see this first in the founding of Tomchei Temimim. For when the Rebbe Rashab established this yeshivah, he did not define it merely as a house of Torah, as a place where bochurim will learn nigleh and Chassidus. He called it an army. He spoke of “tzeva Hashem,” of “soldiers of the Rebbe,” and he defined the talmidim as “neiros l’ha’ir”—lamps to illuminate. This is already the language of Netzach. For a lamp in a peaceful dwelling needs only to give light for those who are present; but a lamp in war is a signal, a beacon, a point of fire that must not be extinguished even in storm and darkness.

And we must understand: why was it necessary to speak in such terms? At that time, in the external, the decrees that would later break upon Russian Jewry had not yet come to their full severity. Although there were already winds of Haskalah, of secularization and nationalism, the open assault of communism and militant atheism had not yet emerged. Seemingly, it would have sufficed to strengthen the existing yeshivos and communities, to continue the path of Gevurah and Tiferes—defining halachic boundaries, influencing governments, and so forth.

But Netzach looks not only at the present battle; Netzach feels the entire war. The Rebbe Rashab, with the sight of a Nasi ha’dor, sensed that the world was entering a new tkufah, a time when the very concept of kedushah as a separate, inviolable domain would be challenged. The Haskalah of that generation was not merely a new pilpul in secular wisdom; it was a corrosive force that sought to redefine the Jew as a citizen, as a cultural being, while relegating Torah to a private sentiment. Later, the ideologies that grew from this root—socialism, communism, atheistic science—would attack not only the particulars of mitzvos, but the very core of emunah.

In the face of such a future, it was not enough to have communities that live; one needs soldiers that fight. Not in the sense of physical force, G‑d forbid, but in the sense of inner unbendingness, of readiness to stand against a whole world and say: “Thus says Hashem; thus speaks the Rebbe.” Therefore, the Rebbe Rashab established Tomchei Temimim as a yeshivah whose talmidim are formed from the outset as a tzeva—trained in pnimiyus haTorah in such a way that their very metzius becomes a fortress, a “choma shel barzel,” that no wind could penetrate.

This is also the inner inyan of the long Hemshachim that he delivered—series of maamarim that extend over months and years, each one weaving another layer of understanding, of avodah, of contemplation. On the surface, this might appear as merely a different style of teaching, a preference for systematic development rather than isolated discourses. But in pnimiyus, this is Netzach. For a single maamar can be like a bolt of lightning that illuminates the night—great light, but soon gone. A Hemshech, by contrast, is like an encircling wall built stone upon stone. Each inyan is placed, revisited, connected to what preceded it and what will follow, until the mind and heart of the listener become like a city fortified from all sides.

In this we see how the Rebbe Rashab transforms Tiferes into Netzach. The Rebbe Maharash revealed “lechatchila ariber”—from the outset, go above. The Rebbe Rashab takes this inner certainty and translates it into an organized, step‑by‑step campaign. The lofty haskalah of the Hemshachim is not an escape from the world, but precisely the opposite: it is a training ground, an officers’ academy for the army of Hashem. Through them, the bochurim become Temimim whose daas and heart are so saturated with Elokus that no later pressure—whether of ideology, of poverty, or of physical threat—can cause them to surrender.

And here we touch another aspect of Netzach: its paradoxical combination of softness and hardness. Externally, Netzach appears as uncompromising firmness. But its inner root is in a very deep rachamim and hiskashrus. For one only fights without end for that which he loves without measure. In the Rebbe Rashab this was revealed in a wondrous manner. On the one hand, his davening was with great tears; chassidim saw how he would stand for hours, his shoulders shaking, his face wet, immersed in dveikus and in rachamim rabbim over the matzav of Yisrael and of the Shechinah in galus. On the other hand, in public matters he was immovable. Whether facing the leaders of Haskalah, or speaking about policies that would endanger the future of Torah, his words were like cut stone—sharp, clear, without compromise.

These two faces are not a contradiction but an expression of Netzach. For Netzach is the leg that walks, that endures; but the life of that leg comes from the heart. The Rebbe Rashab’s tears in tefillah are the hidden wellspring from which his unbending decisions in public flow. He fought not because he liked to fight, chas veshalom, but because he could not bear the thought that a single Jewish soul, a single point of the Shechinah, should be abandoned to the darkness of a new world without Torah.

This is also why he described chassidim as “soldiers of the Rebbe.” For a soldier is not an independent fighter. His Netzach is not his own stubbornness, but his bitul to the general, to the king. In Chassidus, this means that the strength to fight for Torah and Chassidus in new conditions comes from hiskashrus to the Nasi, from the knowledge that he is not acting on his own initiative, but as an emissary of the partzuf ha’Nesi’im, of the chain that began with the Baal Shem Tov. When the Rebbe Rashab spoke of soldiers, he was already preparing the consciousness that would be necessary when the external leadership of Torah would be driven underground: chassidim would need to know that to be a simple Jew, to keep Shabbos, to learn, to teach a child Alef‑Beis in a cellar—this is not a private choice, but a military order in the army of Hashem.

From this perspective we can also understand his activities during the upheavals of the First World War. The world was collapsing; kingdoms were falling; new ideologies were arising amid the rubble. The Rebbe Rashab traveled, met with leaders, intervened for the welfare of Jewish communities, sought to protect yeshivos and Torah institutions. This was not merely chesed or communal activism, but Netzach: the insistence that even when the whole frame of the old order is shattered, the continuity of Torah must not be broken. He went out into the field of history with the consciousness of war—knowing that the next phase would be more difficult still, and that every yeshivah saved, every child preserved, would become a soldier in the battles to come.

And indeed, we see later how these preparations bore fruit. When the harsh decrees of the communist regime descended, when open Torah learning was outlawed, when chadarim were closed and mikvaos destroyed, it was the talmidim of Tomchei Temimim, the “neiros l’ha’ir” formed by the Rebbe Rashab, who became the underground teachers, the clandestine shochetim and melamdim, the ones who were ready to risk their lives for a bris, for a sefer Torah, for a shiur. The Netzach of the Rebbe Rashab—his Hemshachim, his yeshivah, his language of army and soldiers—became the actual Netzach of those chassidim who stood in the face of the most brutal power on earth and did not yield.

However, Netzach, as a middah, is still an outward movement from a place of inner confidence. It goes out to war because it knows that the king’s truth is unshakable. There remains yet another step, which is Hod. For Hod is not the strength that goes forward, but the splendor that remains when all strength is apparently broken; it is the humble acknowledgment, the hoda’ah, that persists even when one is cast down, bound, exiled.

Thus, the Rebbe Rashab’s entire avodah of Netzach was also a hachanah for the next Nasi, the Frierdiker Rebbe, in whom Hod would be revealed. The army that the Rebbe Rashab trained, the consciousness of “soldiers of the Rebbe,” would pass through a new tziruf in the fires of imprisonment and torture. The fiery Netzach of war would become, in the next generation, a radiant Hod of self‑surrender and thanksgiving in exile.

To understand how this transformation takes place—how the victorious stride of Netzach becomes the shining humility of Hod, and how the Frierdiker Rebbe’s broken body could reveal a splendor that no prison could dim—this requires another inyan.

9 · Hod of the Frierdiker Rebbe

Hod, as is known, is related to hoda’ah. And hoda’ah has two opposite meanings that are in truth one: acknowledgment and thanksgiving on the one hand, and surrender and yielding on the other. When one says modeh al ha’emes, he yields his own position and acknowledges a higher truth; when one says modeh ani, he gives thanks and praises. In Hod these two—inward yielding and radiant thanksgiving—are one inyan.

Now, in the seder ha’ishtalshelus of middos, Netzach and Hod are a pair. Netzach goes out to conquer; Hod remains and endures. Netzach is the stride of victory; Hod is the standing of the defeated who has not surrendered. Netzach fights with strength that is felt; Hod shines with a glory that appears precisely when all revealed strength has been broken. And this is why in the body, Netzach and Hod are the two legs: Netzach is the leg that advances, Hod the leg that bears the weight and stands.

According to this, we can begin to understand the giluy of Hod in the Frierdiker Rebbe. For his entire leadership is the revelation of a splendor that shines davka when the body is frail, when the circumstances are of exile, when the outer situation is such that in a natural way one should be bowed and crushed. Yet in that very bowing, an inner majesty is seen.

The Rebbe Rashab prepared an army, as mentioned earlier. Soldiers are trained to go into battle with Netzach, with forward‑pressing strength. But when the battlefield becomes the torture chamber, when the government’s decree is that no yeshivah may exist, that any mikveh must be closed, that a melamed of a child is a criminal—then the soldier must learn another middah: not only to fight, but to remain a Jew even when he cannot move, to stand in chains and still say Modeh Ani. This is Hod.

This is the avodah that was revealed in the person of the Frierdiker Rebbe. From the beginning of his nesius he stood at the head of a generation under Soviet rule, when the full force of a regime dedicated itself to uprooting Torah and mitzvos. The institutions founded with such Netzach by his father, the Rebbe Rashab, were placed under an iron shoe. Rabbanim were arrested, chadarim were closed, mikvaos were filled with stones, and every effort of kedushah was met with surveillance, interrogation, and the threat of exile or death.

And yet, in the midst of all this, the Frierdiker Rebbe did not retreat inward into private holiness; on the contrary, he took upon himself the entire burden of klal Yisrael in that land. He directed underground chedarim, secret mikvaos, clandestine yeshivos. Chassidim were sent to distant towns to be shochtim and melamdim in hiding, to risk everything for a single child’s alef‑beis or a woman’s immersion before taharas hamishpachah. This in itself still has the aspect of Netzach. But the way in which he did it, and the inner posture that he revealed, is Hod.

For Hod, as said above, is not the noise of battle, but the quiet hoda’ah that no power can touch the essence of a Jewish soul. The well‑known statement of the Frierdiker Rebbe in those days expresses this: “Only our bodies were given into exile, not our souls.” This is not a mere phrase of encouragement. It is the voice of Hod: the body is indeed in chains, beaten, imprisoned, exiled; this the middah of Hod acknowledges in full, without denial. But at the same time, in this very acknowledgment it reveals a deeper truth—that the nefesh Elokis, the hoda’ah within the heart of every Jew, is utterly beyond the reach of any government. The power of Hod is to say: I do not have arms to fight with; perhaps I do not even have the possibility to run. Yet I remain a Jew. I remain modeh.

This is seen with particular clarity in the episode of his imprisonment. When he was arrested and brought into the rooms of interrogation, he was confronted with threats, with questions, with punishments. They demanded of him, among other things, that he answer in their language, that he submit not only his body but his very dibbur, his mode of expression, to their authority. But he refused to speak in Russian, and responded only in lashon kodesh and Yiddish. Outwardly, this seems a mere detail of etiquette. In pnimius, it is Hod. He concedes that they have the physical power; he does not pretend otherwise. But he does not concede his language, his inner orientation. He will not let the tongue that has uttered maamarim of Chassidus become a keli for their consciousness. This is hoda’ah in its simple sense: he acknowledges before Whom he stands, and therefore he cannot acknowledge the authority of any other.

Yet Hod is not stiff pride; it is splendor in bitul. It is hachna’ah, but to Hashem alone. The Frierdiker Rebbe’s physical state at that time was one of great weakness; his body, even in earlier years, was not strong. Under imprisonment and torture it became still more broken. But this very frailty revealed a malchusdik splendor that is beyond nature. Chassidim who saw him after his release, and later during his exile and then in his arrival to other lands, would speak of a countenance pale and weakened, and yet there shone from his eyes a majesty that made seasoned interrogators tremble. This is Hod: the beauty of the Shechinah as she sits in the dust, and yet her radiance is not dimmed.

And from this Hod flowed hoda’ah in the sense of thanksgiving as well. For despite all that he suffered, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s diaries and letters from those years are full not only of description of pain, but of praises to Hashem, of deep appreciation for the mesirus nefesh of simple Jews, of tender encouragement to broken hearts. In his ksavim he writes of hidden minyanim in cellars, of Jewish mothers carrying water in the night for a secret mikveh, of elder chassidim who travel for days in miserable conditions to hear one vort of Chassidus. He does not speak of them with bitterness but with wonder: he sees in them a shining beauty. His eyes, trained by Hod, find splendor in the dust of exile.

This is also expressed in his tears. Many stories are told of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s weeping. He wept when he spoke of the suffering of Jews, of the decrees upon Torah, of children torn from their parents. These tears are not merely personal emotion; they are the Hod of the Nasi, identifying with the Shechinah in her pain. Yet at the same time, in those very moments he would strengthen and uplift the broken ones before him. A Jew would come to him in utter despair, having been beaten, having lost livelihood, fearing for his life. The Rebbe would cry with him—sharing fully in the bitterness—yet from within those tears there would emerge words of encouragement so soft and strong that the person left with a new hoda’ah, a new inner “yes” to being a Jew in such times.

All this might still be understood as a localized Hod: the splendor of exile in one country, in one period. But Hod, as the eighth in the count from Chochmah, already hints to a quality that is beyond place, beyond the limits of that historical situation. And indeed we see that when the Frierdiker Rebbe was miraculously freed and later brought to another land, first to Riga and ultimately to America, the Hod was revealed in a new way.

When he arrived to America, the natural expectation would have been that he would accept the common saying “America is different,” that here, under conditions of comfort and material abundance, the same standards of holiness could not be demanded. Instead, upon setting foot on the shores of that country, he declared, “America is no different.” This statement is again pure Hod. He does not deny the reality of America’s spiritual darkness; he fully sees the assimilation, the ignorance, the laxity. But he acknowledges a deeper truth: that the essence of a Jew, the nefesh that is modeh b’etzem, is the same in Russia and in America, under persecution and under freedom. Hod shines precisely by saying: conditions have changed; we bow before the facts of exile here as they are; yet in this very hachna’ah we do not concede even a hairsbreadth of the soul’s standard.

And immediately he began to build: schools, mikvaos, yeshivos, institutions of chinuch and tznius, in an environment that declared these things “impossible” and “unsuited to the American child.” This is not Netzach fighting a known enemy with visible weapons; it is Hod quietly planting seeds in soil that appears barren. Often his own body was so broken that he could barely move; he would have to be carried, his speech slowed and heavy. Yet from that brokenness he radiated a demand and an encouragement that drew young boys and girls, balebatim and balebustes, into a new hoda’ah: to accept upon themselves Torah and mitzvos in America as naturally as in the shtetl. The schools and mikvaos that arose then, against the grain of the culture, are the splendor of Hod inscribed in stone and wood.

Here too, his writings and sichos from those years reveal the same inner tone. He portrays, with a pen soaked in tears, the devastation of the old centers of Torah in Europe, the burning of yeshivos, the loss of lives; and at the same time, he writes with almost childlike faith of the beauty that will arise from the youth of America, of the capacity of these boys and girls to become pillars of Torah. He does not minimize the abyss; he does not turn away from the horror. But his hoda’ah to Hashem is such that he sees, in the very place of concealment, the possibility of a more inward revelation.

From all the above we can understand that the Hod of the Frierdiker Rebbe is not a marginal middah, a decoration at the end of the chain. Rather, it is a necessary step before the revelation of Yesod. For Yesod, as will be explained, is the middah that connects all the higher lights to the world, that brings them into direct relationship with every Jew and with creation at large. But for such a connection to be true, it must reach not only the areas of revealed strength and success, but also the places of exile, of shame, of brokenness. It must know how to stand in the lowest pit and still say Modeh Ani.

Therefore, before the Nasi of Yesod can reveal himself in the seventh generation as a mashpia to the entire world, there must be a Nasi in whom the light of Hod shines completely: one who has walked through imprisonment and torture, through exile and displacement, and has revealed there an unbroken splendor; one who has taught an entire generation that “only our bodies were given into exile, not our souls,” and that “America is no different”—meaning, that no corner of the world is outside the domain of hoda’ah to Hashem.

And this is the transition to the Yesod of the Seventh Generation. For after Hod has been fully illuminated in the person of the Frierdiker Rebbe—after the middah of acknowledgment and thanksgiving in the pit of exile has been made the inheritance of the generation—then there can be a Nasi whose inyan is to gather all these lights, from Chochmah until Hod, and to draw them into a single channel that reaches every Jew wherever he may be. How this is, and what is the special inyan of Yesod in the Seventh Generation, this will be understood through further explanation.

10 · Yesod of the Seventh Generation

Yesod, as is known, is the middah of connection, התקשרות; it is called “צדיק יסוד עולם,” for in it the entire building of the higher sefiros finds its point of outlet into the world. Above it there are many lights, many colors, many paths; Chochmah and Binah, Daas and the six middos, each with its own form and taste. But as long as there is no Yesod, these lights remain, so to speak, in their own realm; they do not yet stand in a direct, practical relationship with a concrete tachton, with a specific place, a specific person, a specific moment in time. Yesod is the organ that turns general light into particular bond, that takes what is “for all” and makes it “for you.”

And because of this, Yesod has a twofold inyan: on the one hand it is mashpia, for it transmits and extends; on the other hand it is mekabel, for in order to connect, it must first receive—all the lights above it, and the particularity of the recipient below it. It feels the entire chain of Chochmah through Hod, and it feels also the condition of the tachton; and out of this double sensitivity it fashions a kesher, a living line that unites them.

With this we can begin to understand the special inyan of the Nasi of the Seventh Generation. For when he accepted the leadership, he defined immediately the identity of the generation: “We are the seventh generation from the Baal Shem Tov, and all sevenths are beloved.” And he explained that the task of the seventh is not to innovate a new beginning, but to bring down into actual deed and place what the first already initiated. Just as by the seventh of the Avos, Moshe Rabbeinu, the Shechinah which had ascended through the sins of the generations was returned to dwell in the lower world, so too the seventh from the Baal Shem Tov is charged to complete the hamshachah of Elokus into tachtonim.

This definition is itself a description of Yesod. For Yesod is not the beginning of the process, but the point where the entire process becomes practical and tangible. All that was revealed by the earlier Nesi’im—the Chochmah of the Baal Shem Tov, the Binah of the Maggid, the Daas of the Alter Rebbe, the Chesed of the Mitteler Rebbe, the Gevurah of the Tzemach Tzedek, the Tiferes of the Rebbe Maharash, the Netzach of the Rebbe Rashab, the Hod of the Frierdiker Rebbe—must now be gathered and channeled in such a way that “a simple Jew in a far corner of the world,” in his daily life, with his table and chair, with his language and his newspaper, should be in direct, living contact with this light. This is the עבודת הדור השביעי; this is Yesod.

Accordingly we see that the leadership of the Seventh Generation is characterized, first and foremost, by connection in the literal sense: connecting to every type of Jew, in every place, in every situation, and connecting every element of העולם הזה התחתון to the kavana of דירה בתחתונים. The general sichos and maamarim are one side of this; but parallel to them there is the wondrous inyan of yechidus, of the personal audience, in which the Nasi, whose inyan is Yesod, bends down, as it were, from the most exalted heights and enters into a direct bond with a particular nefesh. Thousands upon thousands passed through that narrow doorway; each came with his or her own story, questions, wounds, hopes. And from each one, the Rebbe received; he heard, he asked, he studied the particulars. Then, from the reservoir of all the higher sefiros that were embodied in him, he drew out the exact word, the exact directive, the exact blessing, that would form a bridge between that soul and its source.

In this we discern Yesod in its full form: it is not only the power to pour out, but also the power to listen and to be affected, to be a mekabel of the matzav ha’mekabel, so that the hamshachah be not abstract and general, but tailored and precise. And this precision—דיוק—was not only in the content of the advice, but in every detail: a line in a panim, a date on a letter, a change in a schedule, a nuance in a lashon; all was weighed and ordered with the precision of an engineer drawing a blueprint. For indeed, in the revealed life of the Rebbe, the training and background in exact sciences, in engineering and structure, were not incidental. They served as a keli, as a garment, for the inner Yesod. The same mind that knew how to map circuits and systems in the world of gashmiyus was now deployed to order and connect the circuits of ruchniyus, to build a world-structure in which every piece has a place and every line leads from the highest source to the lowest application.

From this inner Yesod flowed the institution which perhaps more than any other expresses the middah of connection: the global network of shluchim. For earlier, the light of Chassidus had already gone out from Lubavitch to many cities and countries, through rabbonim and mashpi’im and chassidim who traveled or settled elsewhere. But here there was revealed a new seder: that every place on earth, to the extent possible, should have a fixed point of connection, a בית חב״ד, a shliach, a shlucha, who stand in a constant bond with the Nasi and through them connect their place, their street, their airport, their campus, their marketplace, with the entire chain of sefiros.

This is not merely shlichus in the simple sense of sending emissaries; it is the embodiment of Yesod as a world-organ: a single body with many nerves, where every extremity is directly wired to the brain and heart. A Jew in Alaska, in Katmandu, in Casablanca, in a small town of a foreign land, steps into a small house with a mezuza on the door, sits by a table, puts on tefillin or lights Shabbos candles, and in that act he is connected to the living partzuf that began in the forests of the Baal Shem Tov and that now flows through Yesod into his own hand. The shliach is not merely an independent leader; he is a channel of Yesod, his entire identity defined by being a conduit, “a pipeline that does not own anything for itself,” bringing Shefa to others.

And the astonishing thing is that this connection is not only geographic but also temporal and cultural. The Rebbe did not say that only Jews who are already close should be connected; he insisted that every Jew, in whatever state, can be and must be a lamplighter. The concept of “lamplighter” is itself language of Yesod: the lamp already exists, the oil is already there; what is lacking is only a point of contact, a small flame that bridges between fire and wick. To every Jew he said: you are that point. It is not enough that you yourself be connected; you must become a connector, a Yesod in miniature, a mashpia to others. Thus the middah of Yesod is not confined to the Nasi alone, but is impressed upon the generation as a whole: a dor whose avodah is to connect, each one where he is.

In consonance with this expansive Yesod, which knows no borders, the Rebbe drew also the tools of the world itself into this work of connection. Where earlier generations had to contend with hostile governments and societies in order merely to preserve Torah, the seventh generation is granted technologies that connect continents in moments. And the Rebbe, whose inyan is Yesod, seized these as keilim for kedushah: radio, telephone hookups, recordings, later video and satellite; all of these were harnessed to extend a farbrengen, a niggun, a sichah, to Jews in distant lands. For if the tachton has developed instruments of connection, it is a sign that Above there is a new giluy of Yesod seeking expression; and the avodah is to use these instruments not as ends in themselves but as wires for Elokus.

This is also the inner meaning of his constant sichos about דירה בתחתונים. From the perspective of the earlier sefiros, the emphasis is often on ascent: to reveal the point of Chochmah, to broaden in Binah, to fix in Daas, to love and fear, to be disciplined, to beautify, to fight, to endure. But Yesod speaks a different language: not only how high can you reach, but how low can you draw down; can a kitchen, a factory, an office, a computer, a highway, become a place where the Shechinah is consciously at home? The repeated call that every Jew must make the place where he stands into a dira for Hashem is the voice of Yesod, which cannot rest until the lowest point is also bound.

And therefore, side by side with all the work of connection, there was an ever-increasing emphasis on Geulah. For in the structure of the sefiros, Yesod stands just above Malchus; its entire purpose is to pour into Malchus so that kingship, revelation, should be. So too in the Seventh Generation, from the very beginning the Rebbe announced that our generation is the last of exile and the first of redemption, and in the later years this became an explicit constant: that Geulah is close, that “kolu kol ha’kitzin,” that the avodah now is to open the eyes, to live with Moshiach, to bring the future into the present through concrete deeds.

And here there is a great wonder. On the one hand the Rebbe taught that Geulah is entirely a gift from Above, contingent on the will of Hashem, the revelation of Malchus. On the other hand he declared again and again that it depends on our actions and avodah; that one more mitzvah, one more act of chesed, one more candle, can tip the scale. This too is Yesod: it is the place where Above and below meet, where the decree of Heaven is tied to the deed of man, where the supernal will chooses to bind itself to the humble act of a Jew in this world.

From all this it is clear that the Yesod of the Seventh Generation is not a private middah of a single Nasi, but an entire world-configuration: a dor that has been granted the capacity and the obligation to be a connecting generation, in which the wellsprings of all the earlier sefiros are already spread outward, in which the instruments of the world are already suited to carry Elokus, in which every Jew is already interwoven with every other through networks of Torah and mitzvos.

Yet precisely this raises a new question. If Yesod has already performed its function to such an extent—if the lights of Chochmah through Hod have been drawn down into the most distant places, if the world’s own technologies have been harnessed for kedushah, if the Rebbe has empowered every Jew to be a lamplighter—then what remains for Malchus? What is the inyan of Malchus in such a reality, and how is it different from Yesod? Moreover: since in our case the Yesod is already identified with the Seventh Generation, how can we speak of a further step, of an “eighth,” of a revelation of Malchus and Moshiach, without adding, G‑d forbid, something outside the chain of our Nesi’im?

To understand this, we must now turn to the inyan of Malchus itself, to what is its deepest nature in Toras HaKabbalah and Toras HaChassidus, and how Malchus, though receiving everything from Yesod, is nevertheless a new matzvus, a new mode of being—kingship, speech, revelation—that cannot be reduced to the channel which precedes it. Through this will also be understood what it means, within the story of the Baal Shem Tov and his successors, for Malchus of Moshiach to emerge as the crown and completion of the entire partzuf.

11 · From Yesod to Malchut

The inyan of Malchus is, at first glance, paradoxical. On the one hand, in all the writings of Kabbalah and Chassidus it is defined as “leit lah migarmei klum”—it has nothing of its own, it possesses no light, no hashpa’ah, no content that originates within itself. All that it has, it receives from the preceding sefiros, and in particular from Yesod, which is the mashpia to Malchus. And precisely because of this, Malchus is the lowest of all the middos, the most distant from the source, the most subject to concealment and to the admixture of opposite forces.

Yet on the other hand, this very Malchus is called “melech,” “Malchus kol olamim,” the measure of kingship itself; it is Malchus that rules over all, that determines the reality of all the worlds. For “ein melech b’lo am”—there is no king without a people—and it is only when there is an “am,” a multitude of separate beings that feel themselves as yesh, that the inyan of Malchus can be revealed. Thus the lowest and most receiving middah becomes the place of sovereignty and revelation for all that is above it.

We must therefore understand: what is this nature of Malchus, that it is at once total poverty and total kingship; why is it specifically described as “leit lah migarmei klum,” and how does this explain its distinctness from Yesod which precedes it?

The explanation is as follows. All the sefiros until Yesod are still, in one way or another, on the side of the mashpia. Even the middos that incline downward toward creation—Chesed, Gevurah, and so on—are still defining how the Divine light relates to itself: love, awe, beauty, victory, splendor, connection. They are forms of consciousness, measures in the Divine self-expression. Yesod, although it already bends toward the mekabel and takes the particulars of the recipient into account, is still essentially the power of hashpa’ah, the inner bond of the mashpia with the mekabel.

Malchus, however, is the first point in which the focus is not on the mashpia at all, but on the mekablim, on the worlds as they stand in their own felt existence. Therefore, in relation to the sefiros above it, Malchus truly has “nothing of its own”; it is pure receptivity, emptied of self-light in order to receive and to mirror exactly what is given from above. But in relation to the worlds below, this very receptivity becomes absolute authority, for all that they ever encounter of the Divine is only what has already passed through Malchus. Malchus is the “face” of Elokus toward the worlds.

This is why in Kabbalah Malchus is called dibbur. Speech, by its nature, has no independent content; it only expresses what the intellect and the heart have already grasped and felt. And yet, in our dealings with others, speech is everything. Without speech, all the wisdom, feelings and resolutions of the soul remain locked within; through speech they become a reality for another, they shape relationships, covenants, nations. So too above: Malchus as Divine speech is the dibbur through which “the heavens were made,” the articulation in which all the preceding sefiros enter the field of actual worlds.

From this we can now begin to see the inner necessity of Malchus after Yesod, even when Yesod has completed, in the fullest way, its function of connection. Yesod, as described, joins mashpia and mekabel in a hidden bond, as an inner channel through which the higher lights reach each individual place, person, circumstance. But this remains, so to speak, an inward connection, known to those who are connected, felt by those who enter the channel. The world as world, the “am” in its own self-awareness, may still experience itself as separate, as a collection of particulars among which Elokus is present through certain points of contact, but not as the very kingly reality of its existence.

Malchus, by contrast, is when that which has been flowing through Yesod becomes the obvious, manifest, public face of existence. Just as dibbur takes the hidden thought and places it into a revealed world where all can hear, so Malchus takes the inner kesher of Yesod and reveals it as Malchus Hashem in the world: the clear awareness that “Hashem Melech, Hashem Malach, Hashem Yimloch l’olam va’ed,” that there is no place, no moment, no creature outside His kingship.

This is the inner content of what is called Geulah in Chassidus. For Golus is not only the physical dispersion of Israel, nor only the concealment of miracles, but the concealment of Malchus Hashem. The world appears ownerless, ruled by chance, by nature, by human powers. Even when there are individuals of deep connection—tzaddikim, talmidei chachamim, ovdim—the kingship of Hashem over the “am,” over the public space of human life, is not apparent. Geulah, therefore, is defined as the revelation of Malchus Hashem in the world, that the very same reality which was previously experienced as separate will itself recognize and accept the yoke of Heaven. “V’hayah Hashem l’Melech al kol ha’aretz; bayom hahu yihyeh Hashem echad u’Shmo echad.”

According to this, we can begin to understand the Rebbe’s emphasis in many sichos that our generation is the Dor HaShvi’i, that “kol ha’inyanim shel ha’avodah nigmru,” that all that remains is the inyan of kabbalas Malchuso b’poel. For when the Yesod of the Seventh Generation has already drawn down the lights of all the earlier sefiros into the most tachton places, when the channels exist, when the wellsprings are already “chutzah,” then the remaining avodah is not to create new connections, but to accept and reveal the kingship that is already present within those connections.

Hence also those surprising expressions, “Hinei hinei Moshiach ba,” the insistence that the metzius of Moshiach and Geulah is already b’matzvus ha’yesh, that what is lacking is not the hashpa’ah from Above but the giluy in Malchus, in the “am,” in the dibbur and daas of the world. In other words: the Yesod has already done its work to an extraordinary degree; what is now demanded is the transition from Yesod to Malchus, from inner connection to overt kingship.

At this point, however, another question arises. If Malchus is the revelation of Malchus Hashem in the world, and our Dor HaShvi’i is the Yesod-hador that prepares and presses for this revelation, what is the concrete, human form of this Malchus? For our entire discussion has moved within the seder hishtalshelus as embodied in the Nesi’ei Yisrael; we have spoken of Chochmah, Binah, etc., as they are revealed through individual leaders of Israel. How, then, do we describe Malchus in this chain?

Here we must return to the clear words of Chazal and of the Rambam, that Moshiach is a melech b’nei adam, a king of flesh and blood from the house of David, great in Torah and mitzvos, who leads Israel, fights the wars of Hashem, gathers the exiles, builds the Beis Hamikdash, and through whom Malchus Hashem is revealed in the world. On the one hand, his entire inyan is Malchus of Hashem; he is no independent king but the merkavah for Divine kingship. On the other hand, he is not an abstract sefirah but a concrete Nasi, a human “melech” in whom the sefirah of Malchus is embodied.

We are thus compelled to say that when we speak of Malchus as the completion of the partzuf of the Nesi’im, we are not adding, G‑d forbid, an eleventh figure beyond the ten, but rather describing the state in which the completed ten—Chochmah through Yesod, as revealed in the Baal Shem Tov through the Seventh Generation—stand in the form of Malchus: as open kingship, as the accepted and manifest leadership of Moshiach over Israel and through Israel over the world.

Or, in different words: Malchus here does not mean another sefirah added to Yesod, but the giluy ha’metzius of Yesod itself as Malchus. All that Yesod has gathered, connected, and channeled becomes, in Malchus, the evident kingship of a human melech who is “kol ha’middos kulam,” in whom all the lights of the preceding Rebbeim shine in a revealed way, and whose reign is the Geulah.

This, however, still leaves us with a further necessity. If Moshiach is a melech from Beis Dovid, a mortal tzaddik whose personality, middos, and avodah are described in Torah and Chazal, then we must ask: what are these descriptions, and how do they express the inyan of Malchus as we have defined it? Moreover, since we are speaking within the seder of our Nesi’im, how can we speak, in the language of Torah, about an “eighth” state—Malchus—emerging from the completed seven without departing from the given pattern of ten sefiros and seven generations?

To clarify this, we must now turn to the prophetic and rabbinic portraits of Moshiach himself, as they appear in Tanach, in the words of our Sages, and in the halachos of the Rambam, and see how their description of his humility, his justice, his Torah, his suffering, and his leadership all derive from and reveal the inyan of Malchus. Through this will become understood what it means that Malchus of Moshiach is the flowering of the entire chain we have traced, and how the notion of an “eighth” is not an addition, but the revelation of what was first in machshavah at the very end of ma’aseh.

12 · Prophetic Portraits of Moshiach

When we seek now to speak of the “personality” and middos of Moshiach, it is not, G‑d forbid, in the manner of imagining a figure according to our own heart. Rather, it is to listen to the image which Torah itself has already engraved, in Nevi’im, in Chazal, and in the psak halachah of the Rambam, and to recognize within that image precisely the inyan of Malchus as it has been defined: bittul, kabalas ol, dibbur, and revealed leadership emerging from the am.

For this we must first place before us the clear description in Yeshayahu. “Veyatza choter mi’geza Yishai, ve’neitzer mi’sharashav yifreh. Venacha alav ruach Hashem, ruach chochmah u’vinah, ruach eitzah u’gevurah, ruach daas ve’yiras Hashem.” The Navi does not suffice with saying “ruach Hashem,” but specifies six expressions of ruach within him—Chochmah, Binah, Eitzah, Gevurah, Daas, Yirah—and immediately afterwards continues: “Vehari’cho be’yiras Hashem, velo lemareh einav yishpot, velo lemishma oznav yochiach. Veshafat betzedek dalim, vehichiach b’mishor le’anvei aretz.” He delights in fear of Hashem; he does not judge according to eyes and ears; he judges the poor with tzedek and reproves with straightness the humble of the earth.

On the surface, this looks like a description of mochin and middos—Chochmah, Binah, Daas, Yirah, Gevurah, Rachamim—not of Malchus. But according to what was explained, that Malchus is “leit lah migarmei klum” and therefore receives and reveals all that precedes it, this very totality of ruach is the sign of Malchus. For only Malchus is “kol ha’middos kulam” in the sense of being their collective manifestation toward the worlds. In Atzilus, Chochmah shines in Chochmah, Binah in Binah; their unity is still be’ofen pnimi. Malchus alone stands as the inclusive expression: what the king speaks and enacts is the sum of all the internal counsels of the palace.

Thus when Yeshayahu says that on the choter mi’geza Yishai rests “ruach chochmah u’vinah… ruach daas v’yiras Hashem,” he is describing not only his inner stature, but his Malchus‑nature: he is the one in whom all the ruach of the preceding sefiros stands already in a form ready for mishpat, for hanhagah, for guiding the dal and the anav. This is why, immediately after enumerating his ruach, the Navi turns to his function of judging the poor, striking the wicked, filling the land with daas Elokus—these are all expressions of Malchus.

Moreover, the Navi emphasizes that “ve’hari’cho be’yiras Hashem,” that his main delight is yirah. And yirah, especially yiras ha’romemus, is the shoresh of Malchus, for Malchus rests only on bittul. A king whose inner pleasure is yiras Hashem, and not the honor of the throne, is a merkavah to Malchus d’kedushah, where sovereignty and self‑nullification are one.

This same pattern we find crystallized in the words of the Rambam, who gathers all the scattered sayings of Chazal into halachah pesukah. In Hilchos Melachim perek 11 he writes: “HaMelech haMoshiach atid la’amod u’lehachzir Malchus Beis Dovid li’yoshna ha’rishonah… veyilchom milchemes Hashem, veyechof kol Yisrael le’leches bah ulechazek bidka, veyilchom milchemes Hashem.” And he defines his criteria: that he be “osek baTorah u’mitzvos keDavid aviv, kefei Torah shebiksav ve’shebe’al peh,” that he “yachof kol Yisrael,” “yilchom milchemes Hashem,” and ultimately “yivneh haMikdash bimekomo veyekabtz nidchei Yisrael.”

Here several yesodos are revealed. First, that Moshiach is explicitly a melech—“HaMelech haMoshiach”—a human king from Beis Dovid, mortal and physical, who must “stand up” (la’amod) in this world, in a body, in a specific generation. Second, that his kingship is not inherited as a mere biological right, but effected through Torah and avodah: “osek baTorah u’mitzvos keDavid aviv”; and through hanhagah: compelling Israel to walk in its ways, fighting the battles of Hashem, rebuilding the Mikdash. His Malchus is the giluy of his inner Torah and bitul. This is the very inyan that Malchus “leit lah migarmei klum”: its whole metzius is to be the vehicle through which higher ratzon and chochmah become concrete decrees and institutions in the people’s life.

Furthermore, the Rambam teaches that “im asa ve’hitzliach, u’bana Mikdash bimekomo, vekibetz nidchei Yisrael—harei ze Moshiach be’vadai.” That is, the certainty of his identity is not through nevuah, nor through wondrous signs, but through the pe’ulos of Malchus: that he actually restores the practice of Torah and the structures of kedushah. Moshiach is thus defined halachically as the one whose leadership transforms the public conduct of Israel—Malchus be’poel.

Now we can understand why Chazal, when describing his personal mode of existence before this revelation, paint him as hidden among the lowly and the suffering. In Sanhedrin 98 we find several names suggested for Moshiach. Among them: “Chivra d’bei Rebbi”—the leper of Rabbi’s house—based on the pasuk “achin cholyeinu hu nasa u’mach’oveinu sevalam.” Elsewhere the Gemara tells of Moshiach sitting at the gates of Rome, “bein aneiyei u’metzoraei,” among the poor and afflicted, binding his wounds one by one so that if he is called he can rise immediately.

And in Midrashim it is told that “Moshiach yoshev bein aniyei Chutz La’aretz,” and that “kol tza’aron shel Yisrael alav.” He bears their sicknesses, he sits in their exile.

At first glance, this seems like a description of yesurim, of middas Yesod or even Netzach in suffering. But in truth, this, too, is Malchus. For Malchus, as known, is associated with Shechinah, “Shechinta be’galusa,” the Divine Presence that goes down with Israel into all their exiles. The melech who is Malchus be’Adam must therefore be the one who is with them not only in their geulah but in their galus, who allows their pain to enter his own guf. Malchus is “ragleh yordos mavess,” the lowest, the feet that descend. Thus Moshiach sitting among the poor and sick is the human expression of Malchus haShechinah in exile.

And yet, in that very posture of brokenness, his anavah and kabalas ol are revealed. He does not stand apart on a marble throne waiting until the nation becomes worthy. He sits in the dust with them, as the Shechinah sits “be’afra.” This is Malchus in its aspect of bittul: “leit lah migarmei klum”—it has nothing of its own, only what the am carries into it. Their wounds are his bandages; their cry is his inner avodah.

This is also the inner content of Chazal’s description, on the pasuk “vehu ani rochev al chamor.” The Navi Zechariah calls him “ani ve’rochev al chamor”—poor and riding on a donkey. Chazal explain that “ani” here means lowly, humble, and that “chamor” alludes to “chomrius,” materiality. The melech haMoshiach is thus portrayed as one who rides upon, i.e. harnesses and directs, the physicality of the world; but his mode is “ani,” not the arrogance of conquest. He is malach over the chamor precisely because he is poor in himself, emptied of self‑importance, carrying only the yoke of Hashem.

Here we see two complementary faces of Malchus: on the one hand, Malchus as splendor and royalty—he is a king; on the other hand, Malchus as anavah and kabalas ol—“ani ve’rochev al chamor.” In kedushah these two are not contradictions. For a Jewish king is commanded to write for himself a Sefer Torah and to read from it all the days of his life “le’vilti rum levavo mei’echav.” His very Malchus demands constant bitul. The greatness of Moshiach’s Malchus is that this anavah is not merely a guard against corruption, but the positive content of his kingship: he is king because he is the greatest mekabel of the yoke of Heaven, and therefore the clearest conduit of that yoke to Israel.

Now we can also understand why the Rambam insists that Moshiach is “osek baTorah u’mitzvos keDavid aviv.” Many imagine kingship as primarily political skill, charisma, or military strategy. But the halachah states that the melech haMoshiach is first of all a gadol baTorah and tzaddik in mitzvos. For Malchus d’kedushah has no metzius other than being the dibbur and hanhagah of Torah in the world. If his Torah is complete, his Malchus is a true mirror of Malchus Shamayim; if his Torah, chas veshalom, were lacking, his decrees would express some admixture of self, which is Malchus d’sitra achara.

This is why the Rambam lays down as the sign of be’chezkas Moshiach that he “yachof kol Yisrael le’leches bah ulechazek bidka.” His leadership is measured by whether he restores Torah observance in the am, whether he repairs the “breaches” in halachic life. Malchus is not a private madreigah; it is defined by the people’s actual avodah under his rule. “Ein melech b’lo am”—there is no king without a people—means that Malchus is revealed only when the am accepts and lives by his Torah‑rooted hanhagah.

Correspondingly, Yeshayahu emphasizes his defense of the weak and the straightening of mishpat: “Veshafat betzedek dalim, vehichiach b’mishor le’anvei aretz.” It is not said that he will flatter the wealthy or seek alliances with the powerful. His gaze is on “dalim” and “anvei aretz,” the poor and humble of the land. For Malchus d’kedushah, unlike worldly kingship, does not derive its dignity from dominion over the strong; it reveals the kavod of Hashem by elevating those in whom nothing of their own remains. Thus, the mark of Moshiach’s Mishpat is that it bends toward the dal and the anav, and it uproots rish’ah: “Vehika eretz beshevet piv, uveruach sefasav yamit rasha.” The rod of his mouth—his words of Torah—are what strike the wicked; the ruach of his lips is what causes evil to fall. Here, too, the inyan is Malchus as dibbur: through his speech the world’s values are reordered.

All these descriptions together—his ruach of Chochmah, Binah, Daas and Yirah; his anavah of “ani ve’rochev al chamor”; his sitting among the poor and sick; his bearing of Israel’s afflictions; his being a melech whose authority comes through Torah and mitzvos; his judging the poor with righteousness and slaying wickedness with the rod of his mouth—are one inyan: they are portraits of Malchus as it will be when all the preceding sefiros are gathered into one human figure.

And this allows us to approach the next step in our inyan. For once it is clear that Malchus of Moshiach means such a personality and such a hanhagah, rooted entirely in Torah sources, we can begin to ask: how do these very traits—the ruach of Chochmah u’Binah, the Daas and Yirah, the overflowing chesed and gevurah of his mishpat, the beauty, victory and humble splendor of his presence—already appear, in part and in order, in the Nesi’im of Chassidus? How is the Malchus of Moshiach not an eleventh, foreign element, but the revealed crown emerging from the living partzuf we have traced, in which each Rebbe has already borne one facet of that coming king?

To this we now turn.

13 · Malchut as Crown of the Dynasty

And with this we can now return to the chain of Nesi’im itself, for here is the main chidush in our inyan. That which we have spoken—that Malchus of Moshiach gathers all the preceding kochos into one human king—is not a matter aside from the seder of Chassidus Chabad, as though there were the dynasty on one side and, somewhere else, the future Malchus. Rather, the whole seder that began with the Baal Shem Tov and extends through the Seventh Generation is itself the hisyatzvus of a keli for this Malchus. Not an eleventh head added from without, but the crown that emerges when the ten have become complete.

This is the meaning of “sof ma’aseh b’machshavah techilah.” In pshat it speaks of creation: that the lowest nivra, man of flesh and a coarse world, is the last in asiyah but was first in Machshavah. But in pnimius it is a klal in Sefiros: Malchus, though it is “leit lah migarmei klum” and stands last in order, is in truth rooted in the highest reisha, for it alone reveals the kavanas haratzon. All the inyanim of Chochmah, Binah, Daas and the middos are only the hishtalshelus of light; Malchus is where the ratzon ha’elyon to have “dira batachtonim” is fulfilled.

Accordingly, when we speak of the Baal Shem Tov as Chochmah, the Maggid as Binah, the Alter Rebbe as Daas, and so on until Yesod of the Seventh Generation, we must be careful: their seder is not only a beautiful structure of Sefiros, a spiritual architecture to contemplate. The very fact that this structure comes to completion in our dor means that its sof is now touching its machshavah techilah. The end of the chain is the moment when the kavanas harishonah of the whole chain—Malchus d’Moshiach—is able to appear.

In other words: from the beginning, when the Baal Shem Tov first revealed the nekudah of Elokus in the forests and simple hearts, the tachlis of that revelation was not only to enlighten the souls of that time, but to begin the building of a partzuf whose Malchus would be Moshiach. This is openly hinted in the well-known encounter of the Baal Shem Tov with Moshiach: “Imasai ka’asi Mar?”—“When will the Master come?” And the answer: “Le’k’sheyafutzu ma’ayanosecha chutzah”—“When your wellsprings will be spread outward.”

On the surface, this dialogue speaks of a condition: that the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov must reach chutzah, the outer places. But according to what we are saying, it reveals much more. It means that the very ma’ayan of the Baal Shem Tov, the Chochmah-point of his hisgalus, is itself the mayan of Moshiach; only that in the beginning it is in a state of nekudah, concentrated in the Nasi of Chochmah. The condition “when they will spread outward” is precisely the condition for Malchus to emerge: when all the levels that stand between a concealed nekudah and an accepted kingship in the world will have been traversed.

For what is “yafutzu” if not the work of the subsequent Sefiros? The Maggid’s Binah is the first hafatzah—inwardly, within the world of understanding. The Alter Rebbe’s Daas is hafatzah into the individual nefesh, binding mind and heart. The Mitteler Rebbe’s Chesed is hafatzah in breadth of explanation and in organized Chabad communities. The Tzemach Tzedek’s Gevurah is hafatzah in the form of psak, of halachic definition that can stand against opposition. The Maharash’s Tiferes is hafatzah in a regal, above-nature conduct—“lechatchilah ariber.” The Rebbe Rashab’s Netzach is hafatzah as war, institutions, yeshivos, armies of temimim. The Frierdiker Rebbe’s Hod is hafatzah into the deepest chutzah of galus itself, into prisons and foreign lands. And the Yesod of the Seventh Generation is hafatzah in the most literal sense: shluchim and battei Chabad in every corner, the use of all technologies, the reaching of “chutzah” in its plain meaning—outermost.

Thus, when the Rebbe, Nasi of Yesod, came and declared in many sichos that “hama’ayanos kvar yatz’u chutzah”—that the wellsprings have already gone out to the outside, he was not stating merely a poetic encouragement. He was testifying that the condition given to the Baal Shem Tov by Moshiach himself had been fulfilled in seder hishtalshelus: the partzuf that began as Chochmah has completed its descent into Yesod, into actual channels that touch every chutz, every outside. And if so, then according to “sof ma’aseh b’machshavah techilah,” the inyan of Malchus—the original intention, Moshiach himself—must now begin to reveal.

Here we can understand in a deeper way the Rebbe’s constant insistence that the entire tachlis of the Nesi’im, and of his own avodah in particular, is “hachanas ha’olam l’Bi’as Moshiach,” to prepare the world for the coming of Moshiach; and more than that, his statements that this hachanah is already completed, that we are standing only “b’inyanei achrona shel Geulah.” For if the very essence of the dynasty is to be a living partzuf of ten Sefiros, then its completion in Yesod necessarily means that the keli for Malchus is now fully formed. The remaining inyan is not another Nasi with a new middah, but the giluy of Malchus into this already-prepared structure.

Yet Malchus, as we said, is “ein melech b’lo am.” Just as Malchus of Atzilus receives from all the Sefiros above it yet has nothing of its own, and its whole inyan is to be mashpia into the lower worlds according to their acceptance, so too Malchus d’Moshiach cannot be spoken of only from above, as a light descending. Its very metzius is the kabbalah from below: the people’s kabbalas ha’melech.

Therefore we find that parallel to the Rebbe’s description of the historical fulfillment of “yafutzu ma’ayanosecha chutzah,” there is his unceasing call concerning “kabbalas Malchus Shamayim” in the most simple and practical form: to put on tefillin, to light Shabbos candles, to keep kashrus, taharas hamishpachah, to learn Torah daily, to influence another Jew in these matters. At first glance, these two inyanim—speaking loftily of Moshiach and Geulah, and speaking ceaselessly of simple mitzvos in daily life—seem far apart. But according to the above they are one thing. For Malchus as kingship can only emerge when Malchus as Kabbalas Ol Malchus Shamayim is present in the details of life.

In other words: the “people’s acceptance of the king” that defines Malchus d’Moshiach does not begin when the shofar of Geulah is sounded; it begins now, in each act of kabbalas ol mitzvah. Every Jew who crowns Hashem over his thought, speech and action, who allows the wellsprings that have reached him—through the Sefiros of the Nesi’im and the channels of Yesod—to become Malchus in his own life, is already a chelek of that am upon which the future Malchus will rest. The dynasty’s purpose is not only to bring the light of Chassidus outward, but to form a people capable of receiving Malchus openly.

Accordingly, Malchus of Moshiach within the story of the Rebbeim is not to be sought as a new, separate figure, an “eleventh Rebbe,” chas veshalom, which would break the seder of ten. Rather, it is to be understood as the crown that stands upon the completed head: the ruach and hanhagah of Melech HaMoshiach emerging from within the totality of what the Baal Shem Tov and his successors have already revealed and structured.

When later we will speak of the personality of Moshiach—of his Chochmah like the Baal Shem Tov, his Binah like the Maggid, his Daas like the Alter Rebbe, his Chesed and Gevurah like the Mitteler Rebbe and Tzemach Tzedek, his Tiferes, Netzach and Hod like the Maharash, Rashab and Frierdiker Rebbe, and his Yesod-connection that resembles and is born from the Seventh Generation—we are not, G‑d forbid, inventing stories or weaving fantasies. We are only drawing out the inner necessity of “Malchus receiving from all Sefiros”: that the king in whom Malchus is revealed must be, in his pnimius, the synthesis of all the middos that have already appeared as distinct giluyim in the chain of Nesi’im.

Thus, the Maamarim and sichos that define Dor HaShvi’i as “dor d’Geulah,” that speak of “Hinei zeh Moshiach ba,” are not external proclamations added to a closed historical narrative. They are the revelation of what was in Machshavah from the outset: that this dynasty is the body, and Moshiach is its Malchus; that this partzuf is the kli, and Malchus is its crown.

With this we may now proceed to contemplate, in more detail, how this Malchus of Moshiach indeed contains within itself each Sefirah as it was revealed by the Nesi’im—beginning with the Chochmah of the Baal Shem Tov as it will shine anew in the Malchus of the coming king.

14 · The Chochmah-Spark in Moshiach

And behold, according to all the above, when we say that Malchus of Moshiach receives from all the Sefiros as they were revealed in the Nesi’im, the seder ha’giluy must begin from the beginning. For in the seder haSefiros themselves, the first point is Chochmah, nekudah peshutah, re’iyah klalis, and “sof maaseh b’machshavah techilah” means that specifically this first nekudah is most deeply rooted in Kesser and therefore it is this which must be revealed again, in a higher way, at the sof — in Malchus.

Now, the first giluy of this nekudah in our seder ha’hishtalshelus was by the Baal Shem Tov, who taught and lived that “Hashem is found and stands in every detail of existence,” that there is no place empty of Him, that the simplest peasant on the forest path and the blade of grass beneath his feet, the cry of a child and the fall of a leaf, are all precise Hashgachah Pratis. This was the Chochmah-point: not long hisbonenus, not structured systems, but a simple sight, a flash in which all worlds are seen as transparent to Elokus.

However, then this nekudah was revealed only in an inner circle, by a hidden tzaddik wandering in forests and villages, speaking to a few disciples, awakening in them this simple emunah and simchah. The world as a whole remained dark; the field knew not yet that “Hashem is with you in the field.” And even when this nekudah was later drawn into Binah, Daas, and so forth, it remained, for the most part, a light of pnimiyus within the world of Chassidim.

But the tachlis of the inyan is that this very nekudah, the Chochmah of “seeing Hashem in everything,” should not remain hidden in the head but should fill all the limbs, should come down into the feet, into Malchus, and from there into the entire world. This is the meaning of the nevuah “ki malah ha’aretz deah es Hashem, kamayim layam mechasim” — “for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” Not that a certain circle of ovdei Hashem will be filled with de’ah, but the aretz itself, the lowest, the coarse world, will be saturated with de’ah, so that it itself will know.

And this is the first aspect of Malchus of Moshiach: that it contains within itself, and reveals outwardly, the Chochmah of the Baal Shem Tov. For Moshiach is described as “yoreh de’ah la’amim” — he will teach, will point out, knowledge of Hashem to the nations; he will be a melamed de’ah, not only a baal-de’ah. And this “yoreh de’ah” is not merely that he will explain many concepts, but that he will cause the nekudah of Chochmah to shine in all, that he will awaken in every Jew, and through them in all creation, a simple, encompassing awareness: that everything they have ever seen, everything that ever happened, was nothing but Elokus.

For it is known that Chochmah is called “reisha d’lo isyada” — the head that is not known. In its own place, in the top of the head, Chochmah cannot be grasped as a metzius daas; it is felt only as a flash that eludes articulation. But when this very “reisha d’lo isyada” is drawn into Malchus, into dibbur and into the lowest worlds, then it becomes “malah ha’aretz deah,” a knowledge that even aretz can know, even the lowest consciousness can articulate. This is the paradox of Malchus containing Chochmah: the head that is not known shines most in the place that “has nothing of its own.”

Accordingly, we can understand more deeply the description of Moshiach’s Malchus. When the Navi says that he will “judge not according to the sight of his eyes … but he will judge with tzedek the poor,” this means that his gaze on reality will be like the gaze of Chochmah — he will see through the garments, he will see the Elokus in every occurrence. And he will not keep this seeing as a private prophetic vision, but he will “yoreh de’ah,” he will teach the people to see with him. The world will be re-educated in sight.

This is also the inner meaning of what is explained in the writings, that in the days of Moshiach there will be a revelation of Hashgachah Pratis on every prat and detail, that “Moshiach will explain to each individual what was the Divine intention and hashgachah in all that occurred with him throughout his life.” For all the days of galus, a Jew stumbles through a kind of thick forest — events that seem random, falls and ascents that he does not understand. Only occasionally, like the Baal Shem Tov in the physical forest, does a ray of Chochmah break through and he senses: here Hashem is with me.

But when Malchus of Moshiach will be revealed, the entire history of each soul and of all creation will be illuminated retroactively as one great forest of Hashgachah Pratis. Moshiach will be the king who tells each Jew his own story, but this time from Above: he will show him how every seeming accident, every exile and every concealment, was a precise step in the path of the King with his son. This is Chochmah as it returns in Malchus: the whole tree seen within each seed, but now the seed itself tells the story.

And we may say, in the way of avodah, that this explains the comparison between the Baal Shem Tov’s forest paths and Moshiach’s global revelation. The Baal Shem Tov would leave the town and wander in the field and forest, for there the concealment of Elokus is strongest, and there he opened his heart in tefillah and revealed that “Hashem is with you in the field.” In that, he established the seder: that Chochmah must first enter the most hidden, unrefined places. But then, the number of those places was still limited, bound to a certain geography and era.

Moshiach, by contrast, is Malchus — “melech al kol ha’aretz”; his “field” is the entire globe. The same nekudah of the Baal Shem Tov, that in a Ukrainian forest recognized the Divine in a bird’s chirp and a lumberjack’s sigh, will in Moshiach become the consciousness of continents. Every city will be as a beis medrash, every marketplace as a field where the King is present. The “forest paths” will be the highways and networks of the world, and along all of them it will be clear: “Hashem is here.”

This is the tochen of “ki malah ha’aretz deah es Hashem kamayim layam mechasim.” As long as the sea is covered by water, the stones at the bottom know nothing; they are submerged, passive. When the Navi uses this mashal, he is revealing that the de’ah of Moshiach is not that the “dry land” will rise to the level of a contemplative elite, but that de’ah will become the very element in which all things are immersed. Just as one breathing being in the sea and one dead stone are equally surrounded by water, so in the time of Moshiach, the greatest tzaddik and the simplest Jew, the most spiritual act and the most material detail, will equally be enclosed in the obviousness of “there is nothing else besides Him.”

And this is possible only because Malchus, which “has nothing of its own,” can receive the “reisha d’lo isyada” without distorting it. In the higher powers, when Chochmah is drawn into Binah and Daas, it must be expanded, its simplicity is inevitably broken into forms. But in Malchus, which is sheer bitul, the original simplicity of Chochmah can reappear, only now as a spoken word, as a lived reality. Moshiach’s Malchus, his kingship, is thus not another “system” about Hashem; it is the simple statement of the Baal Shem Tov — “Hashem is here, too” — uttered by the king into every place and every heart, until all say it themselves.

On this basis, we can begin to understand how, in the inner personality of Moshiach, the Chochmah of the Baal Shem Tov is the first and deepest spark: his very malchus is rooted in a simple, all-embracing awareness of Elokus, and his first act as king is to awaken that awareness in all Israel and in all creation. And after establishing this nekudah, we can proceed to see how within that same Malchus is also contained the Binah of the Maggid — the power to unfold and explain this awareness to every mind according to its measure.

15 · The Binah-Heart of Moshiach

And just as in the beginning the nekudah of the Baal Shem Tov could not remain as a flash alone, but demanded the Maggid who would widen it into “rechovos hanahar,” so also at the end: if Moshiach’s Malchus is rooted in that simple all‑embracing sight, it must also contain within itself a lev meivin that can take this sight apart, as it were, and re‑give it to every mind according to its measure.

For it is known that Binah is called lev meivin, “the heart that understands,” and not merely “the brain that understands.” The understanding of Binah is not only the grasp of a concept in its logic; it is the power to feel from within how the matter settles in each particular, to discern distinctions, to separate and to join, to say: for this soul this path, and for that soul that path. And therefore the main expression of Binah is in dibbur, in the ordering of words that reach the other person, for “the heart speaks from its fullness.” Hence Malchus, which is dibbur and explanation to the people, when it receives the light of Binah, becomes not only a rule over bodies but a teaching to minds and hearts.

This is the inner meaning of what our sages describe concerning Moshiach, that he will be a great melamed Torah, in a manner that exceeds even the greatness of the Avos. Chazal say that in the future the Holy One, blessed be He, will sit and teach Torah to the tzaddikim, and each one will point with his finger and say, “Hinei Elokeinu zeh.” And our teachers have explained that this Torah is the “Torah chadashah mei’iti teitzei,” a new depth of the same Torah, drawn through Moshiach. In another place they say that the wisdom that will be revealed through Moshiach will be so great that the chochmah and Binah of Avraham Avinu will be like that of a simple person in comparison. This is not, G‑d forbid, to belittle the Avos, but to indicate that there will be a new kind of lev meivin, which knows how to explain Elokus in such a way that even that which until now was only for the greatest neshamos will become the bread and water of every Jew.

And this is also the content of what the Rambam writes, that “the king Moshiach will arise and restore the kingdom of David to its former sovereignty… and he will compel all Israel to walk in it and to strengthen its breaches, and he will fight the wars of Hashem.” On the surface, this compelling appears as an exercise of external power: the king uses authority to enforce observance. But the Rambam himself immediately continues that his main occupation will be “to be osek in Torah and mitzvos like David his ancestor… and he will influence all of Israel to go in it and strengthen its breaches.” The “compulsion” is thus primarily a hashpa’ah of Torah—he teaches in such a way that the inner will of Israel is aroused, until what was previously a breach becomes itself a gate of understanding.

This was already prefigured in the Maggid. The Baal Shem Tov would say a short vort on “Hashem is with you in the field,” in a few words he would reveal the nekudah. The Maggid would sit and expand this vort through many parables and explanations, distinguishing between levels of yichuda tata’ah and yichuda ila’ah, between simple faith in the field and profound contemplation in the palace. And his beis midrash became a place where each talmid heard from the same teaching his own path, as if the Maggid’s lev meivin descended into each one’s lev to organize his avodah. This is the Binah‑root of the future malchus: the power to take a single point of Elokus and shape it into a whole world of seder and havanah for each receiver.

So too, in Moshiach, Malchus will not be only a proclamation—“Hashem is King”—but a constant speech of explanation. The Navi already hints to this when he says that Moshiach will “judge with tzedek the poor and reprove with fairness the meek of the earth.” True mishpat requires Binah, for judgment is not only the application of a rule but the understanding of particulars and circumstances. The same ruach of Binah with which he will judge will also be the ruach with which he will teach, for his words of Torah and his words of mishpat are one. His malchus is his shiur, his kingship is his class.

And there are Midrashim that speak openly that in the future, when Moshiach comes, he will sit and teach Torah to all Israel, and each one will say, “Torah chadashah mei’ito.” From the greatest chachamim down to the simplest, each will hear from his mouth the explanation that fits his vessel. Not that there will be many different Toros, G‑d forbid, but one Torah whose Binah is so deep and so wide that it can bend itself into each keili without losing its peshitus. This is exactly the inyan of lev meivin: it is one heart, but it understands and feels many souls.

We can picture this, as it were, in the following way. Imagine a king whose palace is open, and every citizen comes with his confusion: one does not understand a sugya in Shas, one does not understand how to make peace in his home, one does not understand why his prayers are cold, one does not understand his suffering. If the king had only Chochmah, he would see the root of all these matters in a single nekudah of Elokus, but his answer would remain general. If he had only Daas, he would bind those who already understand, but the very far ones would remain outside. But a king whose Malchus is filled with Binah can sit and hear each question to its end, separate the tangles, show the order of the matter from beginning to end, and from that same order lead the person back to the original nekudah: “Hashem is here, too.”

And because this Binah is within Malchus, it is not only a private explanation in the inner room, but a public speech that arranges the entire life of the people. Law, education, economy, family, all the structures of society will be taught and rearranged according to the inner Torah that Moshiach reveals. The world’s mind will be re‑educated, step by step, through his dibbur. What we now call “culture,” “worldview,” “common sense,” will be transformed, not through coercion alone, but through a new havanah that makes Elokus the obvious basis of all thought.

Yet even this has a certain limitation. Binah, by its nature, multiplies distinctions. It sees sides, it unfolds into many details. There remains the question: how will all these many individualized explanations not remain separate worlds? How will they be tied back into a single, living connection between the king and each soul, so that the understanding does not remain in sechel alone but penetrates the heart and engenders middos? This is already the inyan of Daas—of keshirah and hiskashrus—which, as known, follows Binah and binds the mochin with the nefesh.

Thus, after understanding that in the Malchus of Moshiach there is the Binah of the Maggid—the lev meivin that explains Elokus to every mind according to its measure—we must now proceed to contemplate how within that same Malchus is also included the Daas of the Alter Rebbe: the power to make from this understanding an inner bond, an intimate knowledge, between Moshiach and every single soul.

16 · Daas and the Inner Bond

And this leads to the next inyan. For if in the days of Moshiach the revelation will be in such a manner that “mala ha’aretz deah es Hashem,” that the entire earth is filled with deah, then we must say that the ikar giluy is not only in the or of Chochmah and Binah, but specifically in the inyan of Daas. For “deah” is from the lashon of “ve’Adam yada,” a knowledge that is keshirah, that binds knower and known into one union. And as is explained in many places, that Daas is the koach hamachshavah ha’misbonenes that settles on the inyan and does not move from it, until it becomes a davar muzgash in the soul, and from it are born the middos.

However, here there is a chidush. In the avodah of the individual now, Daas is primarily hisbonenus: the person fixes his mind on matters of Elokus, contemplates again and again the greatness of the Ein Sof and the smallness of the worlds, and through this “yolid” in himself ahavah and yirah. But in the Malchus of Moshiach, the inyan of Daas will be revealed also from above downward, as a hashpa’as Daas that the melech gives to his people. Not only that each person will contemplate, but that the king himself will be the Daas of the generation, tying every mind and every heart to the daas Eloki.

To understand this, we must recall what is known regarding the Daas of the Alter Rebbe. His avodah was not only to explain concepts in Chochmah-Binah in a clear way, but to be a nefesh ha’klalis for all those bound with him, and to tie them with a kesher of pnimiyus to Elokus. This is the inyan of hiskashrus that Tanya speaks about—“hiskashrus talmidim l’Rabbo”—that through thinking about the teachings of the Rebbe and fulfilling his eitzos, the talmid becomes tied to the nefesh of the Rebbe, and receives from his Daas. And this is not an external dependence, chas v’shalom, but the opposite: it is the awakening of his own pnimius, for the nefesh ha’klalis is only megaleh the nekudah of Elokus that is already in the students.

Thus we understand that the Daas of the Alter Rebbe had two bechinos: hisbonenus, the path he taught every beinoni, and hiskashrus, the path through which his Daas extended into the souls of his chassidim. And in truth, these are two sides of one inyan. For hisbonenus without hiskashrus remains sechel without life, and hiskashrus without hisbonenus can become a kind of emunah peshutah that is not internalized. The tachlis is that through hiskashrus to the Rebbe, the talmid should be moved to his own hisbonenus, until his heart burns with a daas pnimi.

Now, this very inyan will be in an incomparably higher way in Malchus d’Moshiach. For as we said, Malchus is the sefirah that has nothing of its own and yet is melech over all; and the Zohar says regarding a king, “liba d’malka iskasher b’liba d’am,” that the heart of the king is bound with the heart of the people. The geder of true Malchus is not only that the people obey his decrees, but that there is an inner bond of hearts, that what moves in the heart of the king moves also in the heart of the nation.

Accordingly, when we speak of “mala ha’aretz deah,” we must say that this deah is the Daas of the melech which fills the land. Not that each person separately will develop a deah from his own sechel, but that there will be a giluy of a general Daas, the Daas of Moshiach, that is nimshach into each nefesh according to its measure. Just as now in pnimius, the hiskashrus to the Nasi hador is the keili through which one receives an awakening of Elokus, so in the future the hiskashrus to Malchus d’Moshiach will be the derech through which every Jew will be bound with the daas Eloki b’pnimius.

This is also the depth of what is stated in Chassidus regarding the beinoni in the days of Moshiach. Tanya establishes the beinoni as the matzav ha’nivchar, that his machshavah, dibbur, and maaseh are always in accordance with the ratzon Hashem, and that his middos of ahavah v’yirah are born through hisbonenus. But in the end of the sefer it is explained, that the complete tikun of the beinoni will only be in yemot haMoshiach, when even the natural heart will be transformed, that “vesarti es lev ha’even mibesram.” What is the pnimiyus of this? That the koach of Daas that now is acquired only through avodah will then be an or poshet that fills the nefesh, through the giluy of Moshiach.

In other words: today, the beinoni must exert great toil in hisbonenus to tie his mind and heart together, to bridge the gap between what he knows and what he feels. In the future, the very metzius of Daas in the world will be different. The air of the world will be “deah,” the very ruach of life will be imbued with Daas Eloki, because the melech, who is the general Daas, will be revealed. The hisbonenus will not be abolished, but it will be of a different kind: not to create Daas from nothing, but to absorb, to internalize the Daas of Moshiach that already surrounds and penetrates.

And this is hinted also in the inyan that Moshiach “yodea kol echad v’echad,” he knows each one of Israel in pnimiyus. For if his Malchus is only a general hanhagah, then his daas would be only klali: he knows the people as a collective. But the true Daas is that he knows the shoresh ha’neshamah of each individual, the derech ha’yashar of each nefesh, and therefore he can give to each one his specific eitzah in Torah and avodah. This is like the inyan of the Alter Rebbe’s yechidus with chassidim, when he would say to one word, to another a pasuk, to a third a mashal, and with this one utterance the person’s entire life was tied to Elokus. In Moshiach, this will be in a way that is beyond all comparison: his Daas will embrace all neshamos at once and each one separately.

And from this we can also understand more deeply the inyan of hiskashrus to the Rebbeim as a hachanah to kabbalas Malchus d’Moshiach. For the avodah of hiskashrus trains the nefesh to receive Daas from a nefesh ha’klalis, to be mevatel its own separateness and to let the Rebbe’s daas penetrate. When one learns the Tanya and the maamarim, when one lives with the horaos, when one pictures before his mind the tzuras penei ha’Rebbe and asks himself, “what does the Rebbe want from me now,” he is already living in a matzav where his Daas is not an isolated island but part of a larger sea. This is the dugmah, the miniature, of what will be in a klali way in the days of Moshiach.

For then, the inyan of hiskashrus will not be only a personal avodah of certain individuals, but the very geder of Malchus: “ve’avaduhu kol Yisrael,” they will serve him with a whole heart, meaning that their hearts will be tied to his heart. And through this, the multiplicity that comes from Binah—the many explanations, the many derechim—will be united in one living kesher, so that all the derachim are derachav, the paths of the king, and all the hearts are lev echad im ha’melech.

And this is also the hachanah to what will be explained further regarding the Chesed and Gevurah of Moshiach. For once we understand that the Daas of the king is not an abstract sechel but a bond of heart to heart, then it is understood that his Chesed—his love to Israel—and his Gevurah—his mishpat and din—are not external hanhagos, but the very movements of that bond. When he loves, he loves each nefesh according to its root; when he judges, he judges from within that same Daas that knows the inner path of each soul.

Thus, from contemplating the Daas of the Alter Rebbe and its hiskashrus, we gain a first understanding of how Moshiach is not only a global Melech haMoshiach, but also a Daas pnimi to every individual, a living connection that will bind mind and heart of all Israel to Hashem, in a revealed and permanent way.

17 · Chesed and Gevurah in the King

If so, after the inyan of Daas is clarified, that the Melech’s inner knowledge is a kesher chaim with each nefesh, we can now understand in a deeper way the midas ha’lev of Moshiach, how Chesed and Gevurah are included in his Malchus as two movements of one heart.

For behold, regarding Melech haMoshiach it is written in Yeshayahu, “ושפט בצדק דלים, והוכיח במישור לענוי ארץ, והכה ארץ בשבט פיו, וברוח שפתיו ימית רשע – And he shall judge the poor with righteousness, and decide with fairness for the meek of the land; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.” And immediately afterwards: “והיה צדק אזור מתניו, והאמונה אזור חלציו – And righteousness shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt of his reins.”

Seemingly, these pesukim themselves are two opposites: on the one hand, judging the poor with tzedek, fairness to the humble; on the other hand, striking and killing the rasha with the rod of his mouth and the breath of his lips. Yet the Navi speaks of them as one inyan, “tzedek” and “emunah” girding him like a single belt. From this we understand that in Melech haMoshiach, Chesed and Gevurah are not two separate hanhagos that alternate, but one essential middah of Malchus in which kindness to the dal and din on the rasha are inseparable.

To explain this, we must return to the giluy of Chesed and Gevurah in the chain of the Nesi’im, to see how they already prepared this form.

It is known regarding the Mitteler Rebbe that his inyan was hitpashtus haChesed, a river of love and of Elokus that had no end. His maamarim were described by chassidim as a nahar yotzei me’Eden mamash; hours upon hours of dibbur without interruption, every nekudah of Elokus broadened and given merchav. And this was not only in his Torah, but also in his hanhagah with Yisrael: his ahavah to each chassid, the time he would give in yechidus, the way he created a wide place for every nefesh to spread out and breathe in avodas Hashem.

This is Chesed in its pnimi form: not merely to give a matanah, but to create a space in which the other can exist with menuchas hanefesh, to pour out oneself so that the other’s inner light may reveal itself. And this is the prototype of the Chesed of Moshiach. For when the Navi says, “ושפט בצדק דלים… לענוי ארץ,” the simple meaning is that he will stand for the rights of the poor and the oppressed, that he will not allow them to be trampled. But in pnimiyus, “dalim” are those who are dalim b’daas, the ones whose consciousness is poor, whose heart is crushed by exile; and “ענוי ארץ” are those whose anivus has turned into atzvus, whose humility has become despair. To them Moshiach will be “shafat b’tzedek” – he will apportion tzedek in their favor, drawing down light and explanation and encouragement, until their own inner tzedek, their inner straightness, is aroused.

And how will he do this? “בשבט פיו,” with the staff of his mouth, and “ברוח שפתיו,” with the breath of his lips. That is, his very dibbur will be the keli of Chesed. Just as the Mitteler Rebbe’s river of words did not merely inform but literally carried the listener along and lifted him above his previous metzius, so too Moshiach’s Torah, “Torah chadashah mei’iti teitzei,” will be an endless, individualized outpouring. His mouth will be a staff that supports the dal, a makel that one leans upon; his breath will be a ruach chaim that revives the anav who has sunk too low. This is the Chesed of Malchus: by speaking, he creates a new space of life for the broken.

However, if there were only Chesed in Malchus, only outpouring and expansion, the world would not be rectified. For the very same mouth that must comfort the dalim must also “slay the wicked”; the same breath that revives the crushed must also uproot ra from the world. And here we see the inyan of Gevurah in the king, which is already hinted and prepared in the Gevurah of the Tzemach Tzedek.

The Tzemach Tzedek was called “Tzemach Tzedek she’baTorah” because his avodah was din and psak, the drawing of clear boundaries in Torah, both in nigleh and pnimius. In his teshuvos he dealt with the most complex she’eilos, measuring each detail, accepting some considerations and rejecting others, until a pure line of halachah emerged. And in his leadership he stood with gevurah against decrees and against maskilim, not allowing the river of Chesed that preceded him to overflow its proper banks and be lost in confusion with foreign waters. His gevurah was not anger, chas veshalom, but tzimtzum and geder for the sake of emes.

This too is a prototype for Melech haMoshiach. For the Rambam writes that his primary task is “להחזיר מלכות דוד ליושנה… ולבנות המקדש… ולקבץ נדחי ישראל,” and, “יכוף כל ישראל לילך בה ולחזק בדקה,” he will compel all Israel to walk in the ways of Torah, and he will strengthen its breaches. Compulsion, strengthening breaches, restoring Malchus – all these are expressions of Gevurah. The king must have the koach ha’din to say: this is mutar and this is assur, this behavior remains and this behavior is uprooted from the world.

Thus, when the Navi says, “והכה ארץ בשבט פיו, וברוח שפתיו ימית רשע,” this is not a mashal of physical violence, but a description of halachic Gevurah in its revealed, royal form. His “shevet” is the rod of psak, the straight measure of din that strikes the “aretz,” the worldly culture and norms, breaking crookedness and forcing them into a straight line. His “ruach sefasav” is the breath of emes that leaves no room for sheker; when he speaks a halachah, that very speech kills the rasha within reality, leaving no spiritual oxygen for evil to live.

We can now understand how in Malchus, Chesed and Gevurah are one. For if Gevurah were a separate middah, it would seem to contradict Chesed: how can the same Melech who loves the dal with an infinite love also be the one who slays the rasha with the breath of his lips? But according to what was explained about Daas, that the king’s Daas is a bond with each nefesh according to its root, it follows that both his love and his judgment come from one and the same inner knowledge.

When he looks at the dal, his Daas sees the nekudah of Elokus buried under layers of galus; therefore his heart overflows with Chesed, with a will to widen their space, to pour out Torah and nechamah until that nekudah shines. When he looks at the rasha, his Daas sees that this conduct, these systems, this culture, have no shoresh in kedushah; they are a covering and a rebellion that suffocate the nekudah of others. Therefore his heart is awakened with Gevurah, not as a personal anger, but as a burning identification with the oppressed; his din on the rasha is itself the highest Chesed to the dalim. In other words, his Gevurah is a movement of Chesed to Israel; by slaying the rasha he is giving life to the humble.

This is the inner meaning of “מלך במשפט יעמיד ארץ, ואיש תרומות יהרסנה – A king by judgment establishes the land, but a man of gifts destroys it.” If the Melech would only be an “ish terumos,” a man of gifts, always giving and never judging, he would in the end destroy the land, for he would allow evil to flourish under the cloak of Chesed. True Malchus must be “be’mishpat yaamid eretz,” the land is established davka through din, through measured Gevurah. But since this din comes from the king, whose whole metzius is the klal of Israel and their bond with Hashem, this mishpat itself is an act of love.

According to this we can also understand why the Navi connects “tzedek” and “emunah” as the belts of his loins. “Tzedek” is the side of Gevurah, justice and straightness; “emunah” is the side of Chesed, trusting and believing in every Jew, in his inner point. The belt binds the upper and lower, connecting the mochin and the middos with the lower faculties of action. So when it says that “tzedek” and “emunah” are his belts, it means that his capacity to bind worlds together, to bring Torah into the lowest details, is girded by both: a faith in the inner good of the people (Chesed) and an uncompromising justice that uproots evil (Gevurah). Only both together make him a Melech.

And all this is hinted already in the historical unfolding: the Mitteler Rebbe’s Chesed created a wide, living river of Elokus in which many souls could bathe; the Tzemach Tzedek’s Gevurah gave that river banks, defined its halachic course, and protected it from contamination. In Moshiach, these two movements will be fully united in Malchus. His teaching will be an endless river, wider than all worlds, and at the same time every drop will be precisely measured according to Torah; his love will embrace all, and his din will tolerate no ra.

With this, the emotional and judicial core of his Malchus is illuminated: a heart that overflows and a hand that measures; a mouth that comforts the poor and a breath that ends wickedness. And from here it is already understood how, when Chesed and Gevurah are thus harmonized in the Melech, there shines forth a new inyan altogether – the yofi and noam of Tiferes, the Netzach of his complete victory over ra, and the Hod of his humble splendor. This will be explained in what follows.

18 · The Beauty, Victory, and Splendor of Moshiach

According to the above, when Chesed and Gevurah are united within the Melech as one Daas, there must necessarily shine forth the inyan of Tiferes, Netzach and Hod – for these are, as known, the three modes by which that inner harmony, that inner strength, and that inner bittul become visible to the eyes of flesh.

And this is the meaning of what is said, “Noam Hashem Elokeinu aleinu” – “May the pleasantness (noam) of Hashem our G‑d be upon us.” “Noam” is Tiferes, the beauty and sweetness that comes not from one color alone, but from the blending of Chesed and Gevurah into a third, higher tone. And concerning Melech HaMoshiach it is written in Tehillim (45), “Yafyata mi’bnei adam” – “You are more beautiful than the children of man.” This is not, G‑d forbid, a beauty of external form, but the revelation of “noam Hashem” in a human king. His very presence, his hanhagah, his words of Torah and consolation, will be such that the heart senses a harmony never felt before: rachamim on the truth, a compassion that does not blur distinctions, a truth that does not break hearts.

To understand this more, we must recall what was explained regarding the Rebbe Maharash as the giluy of Tiferes. His “lechatchila ariber” – that from the outset one goes over the obstacle – is not only a hanhaga pratis, but the very definition of Tiferes as it descends into leadership. For Chesed would sometimes seek to flow around a barrier, and Gevurah would seek to smash through it; Tiferes, however, ascending above both, reveals a third dimension: standing upon the barrier as upon a step, and from there leaping over. This is the “noam” of a path that is at once demanding and gentle, uncompromising and elevating.

In Melech HaMoshiach this “lechatchila ariber” will be manifest in a way that encompasses all worlds. His malchus will not accept the givens of nature and history as final. Exile, corruption, spiritual coarseness – all the “walls” which for generations were addressed only from within their own terms (either by slow persuasion or by painful struggle) – will be treated by him as mere rungs in the ladder of Geulah. He will stand upon the accumulated pain of history not in order to erase it, but to elevate it, and from there he will go over, revealing how each concealment was itself a step toward revelation.

This is the “noam Hashem” of Moshiach: that his decrees will be experienced as sweetness, his demands as liberation, his Torah as the natural language of the soul. The beauty of his kingship will be that there is no contradiction left between the soul’s yearning and the king’s command. And this is already foreshadowed in the Rebbe Maharash, whose royal comportment and inner wit expressed a kingship that did not apologize before the world, but also did not crush it; rather, he lifted the world into a higher form of dignity. In Moshiach, this Tiferes will be the common air of existence.

However, Tiferes alone does not yet finish the matter. For so long as there remains any hold for ra, any vestige of Amalek, any corner of reality that can still stand “opposite” the truth, the Malchus is not complete. Therefore there must be within Moshiach’s Malchus also the inyan of Netzach – not Netzach as an inner potential alone, as was the case in the Rebbe Rashab, but Netzach as the final, irreversible victory of kedushah in all the worlds.

Netzach, as explained, is the power of war and endurance: the insistence that the ratzon HaMelech be fulfilled in actuality, even when reason does not yet comprehend and feeling does not yet taste. In the Rebbe Rashab, this was expressed in the founding of Tomchei Temimim as an “army of Hashem,” training talmidim to be “neiros l’ha’ir,” candles that fight darkness by radiating light. This was a Netzach in the time of hachanah, a preparation for future wars: against Haskalah, against secularization, against the decrees that would later fall upon Russian Jewry.

In Melech HaMoshiach this Netzach will stand revealed as the “milchemes Hashem” in its absolute sense. As the Rambam writes, he will wage “milchemes Hashem” and be victorious. This is the war that concludes all wars, the overcoming of Amalek in its root, as it is said, “Ki machoh emcheh es zecher Amalek mitachas hashamayim” – “I shall surely blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens.” It is not merely that the wicked of flesh will be subdued, but that the spiritual principle of Amalek – the coldness, the doubt, the mockery of holiness – will lose all foothold in created consciousness.

And this Netzach is not a separate middah from his Tiferes; rather, it is the extension of that “lechatchila ariber” into the arena of battle. Because he stands above the limits of the world, his very entry into war is from the vantage-point of victory. He does not gauge the enemy’s strength to see “if” he can win; he knows from the outset that truth, being the very essence of reality, cannot ultimately be opposed. The war, then, is the drawing down of this certainty into all the strata of being: history, culture, politics, the inner lives of men. His “strategy” is to reveal such a light of Elokus, and to organize the world so precisely according to Torah, that evil has nowhere left to stand.

Here again, the Rebbe Rashab’s founding of an army of Temimim is the prototype. For the students of Tomchei Temimim were trained not only in learning, but in a certain posture of Netzach: readiness to stand firm under pressure, to preserve Yiddishkeit in secret if necessary, to carry the Rebbe’s ratzon into places where their own understanding did not yet reach. In Melech HaMoshiach, this quality will be the very atmosphere of his people. When he calls, all Israel will answer as one soldier, not out of fear, but out of the recognition that this is their own deepest will. Then Netzach will be completed: not as stubborn resistance against darkness, but as the joyful establishment of light as the only reality.

Yet even this is not the end. For one could imagine a king of great beauty and a warrior of invincible strength whose splendor would be awesome, but whose presence might still overwhelm, might still stand as something “other” than the small, broken, everyday lives of his subjects. Therefore there must be within Malchus d’Moshiach also the inyan of Hod – the radiant humility, the splendor of the Shechinah as she returns to Tzion precisely through having accompanied Israel into the lowest exiles.

Hod, as was explained, is hoda’ah: both submission and thanksgiving. It is the glow that appears when something has been emptied of self and stands only as a vessel for the Other. The Frierdiker Rebbe embodied this in an open way: a Nasi whose body was frail, whose voice was broken with tears, and yet whose presence filled dungeons, interrogation rooms, and later the streets of New York with a majesty that no power could touch. His declaration, “Only our bodies were given into exile, not our souls,” is the pure language of Hod: an acknowledgment of brokenness in the guf, together with an unbroken thanks to Hashem for the indestructibility of the neshama.

In Melech HaMoshiach this Hod will be magnified without limit. For he is the one who has borne, in his own nefesh, the suffering of all Israel, as the Navi says, “Achol cholyeinu hu nasa” – “But in truth, our illnesses he bore.” He is the king who sits, as the Midrash describes, among the poor and sick, changing their bandages, counting their sighs. Even when his Malchus will be revealed in the highest splendor – Beis HaMikdash rebuilt in glory, nations streaming to Tzion, kings bowing before him – he will remain, in his own daas, that same “ani ve’rochev al chamor,” poor and riding on a donkey: utterly submitted to the ratzon of Hashem, utterly identified with the simple Jew and his pain.

This is the Hod of the Shechinah returning to Tzion. For the Shechinah’s beauty is not only that she shines in the Heichal, but that she refused to abandon her children even in the filth of exile. When she returns, her crown is made of all the tears, all the whispered Tehillim, all the broken Modeh Ani’s of generations. Moshiach, as the human Malchus of this Shechinah, will carry this Hod in his very face. His humility will not be despite his kingship; it will be its inner essence. The more his greatness is revealed, the more evident it will be that he has nothing of his own – “leit lei migarmei klum” – that he is only the transparent channel through which Hashem’s compassion and will flow to the world.

Here the image of the Frierdiker Rebbe in Soviet prisons and in American exile becomes a prototype. Just as his crushed body became the place where the splendor of Jewish stubborn holiness was revealed, so too Moshiach’s own histories of concealment and suffering (in whatever hidden forms they take) will become the source of his future radiance. His Hod will make his Netzach bearable and his Tiferes accessible. For when the people will see that the victorious warrior and the beautiful king is also the one who has sat with them in their darkness, they will not be intimidated; they will be comforted. Their kabbalas ol to his Malchus will be the natural response of love and gratitude.

And according to all the above, we can now understand in a deeper way that Moshiach’s Malchus is not a foreign crown placed atop the chain of Nesi’im, but the flowering of middos already planted and nourished: the Tiferes of the Rebbe Maharash becoming the noam and yofi of the king; the Netzach of the Rebbe Rashab becoming the final milchamah whose only outcome is light; the Hod of the Frierdiker Rebbe becoming the returning splendor of the Shechinah in Tzion. All these are gathered and harmonized in one human heart, one Malchus that is entirely bitul and entirely authority.

What remains to be understood is: how does such a Malchus receive from the Yesod of the Seventh Generation? In what manner does the power of connection and channel – already revealed in Dor HaShvi’i through global shlichus and the lamplighter’s work – pour itself into this crown of beauty, victory, and splendor, such that the kingship becomes not only a promise but a revealed fact in the world? To this we now turn.

19 · Yesod and the Birth of Malchut

And with this we return to Yesod itself. For after it was explained that Malchus of Moshiach is the gathering and flowering of all the middos already revealed in the chain of Nesi’im, there remains to clarify: what is the specific inyan of Yesod haDor HaShvi’i in relation to this Malchus? How does it not only prepare in a general way, but actually stands as the makor hayesodos, the living source from which Malchus is born?

To understand this, it is known that in the seder of the sefiros, Yesod is defined as makor hayesodos, the fountain‑spring from which the waters pass into Malchus. The upper middos—even when they are already harmonized in Tiferes, strengthened by Netzach, sweetened in Hod—still remain, so to speak, in the realm of the giver. Only in Yesod do they take on the form of a concrete, directed hashpa’ah, pointing to a specific mekabel, invested in a clear path and measure, until they can be received in Malchus as a reality of “yesh,” of world.

This is the inner meaning of Yesod as brit, as the power of connection that both gathers and aims. It gathers—all the lights of the body are collected there; and it aims—there is a distinct address, a beloved other, who is the recipient. Thus Yesod is not only another middah; it is the moment when the whole partzuf bends toward the other, when all previous lights become intention to be received.

According to this, the special inyan of Dor HaShvi’i becomes clear. The Nasi of the Seventh Generation revealed Yesod not merely as private tzaddik yesod olam, hidden in his own daled amos, but as a world‑organ: a nervous system of connection that reaches literally to all corners of the earth. The global shlichus that he established, the network of batei Chabad, schools, mikva’os, shiurim, and living points of Torah in every place, are not just institutions; they are the visible tendrils of Yesod stretching to touch Malchus—the people, the street, the languages, the cultures, the “chutzah” of the world.

For the nature of this shlichus is such that there is almost no place in the inhabited world where the word of Hashem, in the form of Torah and mitzvos and pnimiyus haTorah, has not been brought in an organized, ongoing fashion. A Jew in the far north, a Jew in the center of a metropolis, a Jew in a tiny town—each one can meet a shliach, hear a vort, put on tefillin, light Shabbos candles, learn a maamar, send his child to a cheder. This is Yesod in its full expression: the light of all the generations, drawn through one Nasi, extended in concrete, relational channels to every possible recipient.

And precisely because this Yesod is revealed in such breadth and precision, the Rebbe could say again and again that the avodah of birurim is complete. For what is birur if not the drawing out of sparks from the most distant places and their connection to holiness? When the channels of Yesod have already reached into airports and marketplaces, universities and army bases, deserts and islands, and in all these places Jews are doing mitzvos and learning Chassidus—this is a sign that the refinement of the kelim of Malchus is essentially done. The world itself has been permeated to such an extent with points of Torah that the remaining work is not new birurim, but giluy of what is already present.

This explains also the constant tone of the Rebbe’s sichos on Geulah: that it is not only close in a general sense, but mamash imminent, standing on the threshold; that “kolu kol hakitzin,” and that the only thing remaining is a kabbalas ol from below. For when Yesod has done its part completely, pouring its waters into every possible receptacle, then, by definition, the next inyan in seder hishtalshelus is Malchus—the awakening of the mekabel himself, the people, the world, to accept and reveal that which is already flowing within them.

Here we can understand in a deeper way the Rebbe’s persistent demand that every Jew become a “lamplighter,” and not be satisfied that there are shluchim. On the surface, since Yesod is the Nasi and his emissaries, one might think that the hamshachah is complete once the network exists. However, Yesod by its very nature aims at Malchus; it seeks not only to connect, but to awaken in the recipient a power of acceptance and self‑movement. Malchus is “leit lah migarmei klum”—it has nothing of its own; but precisely because of that, it expresses itself as kabbalas ol: the people saying “na’aseh ve’nishma,” the generations saying “we will live according to this kingship.”

Therefore the Rebbe spoke of Geulah in a way that demands response: “Tut altz vos ir kent tzu brengen Moshiach,” “Live with Moshiach,” “Open your eyes and see that the world is ready.” These words are not only promises from above; they are calls to Malchus, summoning the mekabel to stand up in its own avodah of acceptance. When Yesod announces that the avodah of birurim is complete, it is, in effect, saying: the waters have reached your lips; now drink. The world is saturated with kedushah; now allow that saturation to become manifest kingship in your daily life.

And this is also the inner content of the Rebbe’s insistence that the shlichus is not only to bring individuals to isolated mitzvos, but to establish Torah and mitzvos as a permanent, visible presence in every place. A mezuzah on every door, a mikveh in every city, fixed shiurim in Nigleh and Chassidus, children’s education as a norm—these are not only private acts; they are the slow, stubborn building of Malchus in the world. For Malchus is not a hidden connection; it is public law, public rhythm, public language. When the city’s map already contains these points of Torah, when the weekly schedule of people already bends around Shabbos and Yom Tov, when holidays are felt in the streets—this is the body of Malchus beginning to be formed.

From this perspective, the global shlichus is the gestation of Malchus. Yesod pours, day and night, through thousands of emissaries and tens of thousands of talmidim and mekusharim, into the womb‑space of the world, forming within it a new nature, a new norm, in which the presence of Torah is taken for granted. And as in gestation, there comes a moment when the form is complete; what remains is birth—the transition from hidden life inside to revealed life outside.

The Rebbe’s repeated expressions that “we have already finished polishing the buttons,” that “the table is already set,” that “all that remains is to greet Moshiach Tzidkeinu in actuality,” are precisely such statements: the Yesod announcing that the fetus of Malchus is complete. The world already contains all the organs of a redeemed existence; the diffusion of Chassidus and mitzvos has reached such a stage that the inner structure is whole. The only remaining step is the birth itself—the explicit revelation of Moshiach’s Malchus, which depends on the kabbalas ol of the people: that they recognize, desire, and live in accordance with this kingship.

Thus we can also understand why the Rebbe places such emphasis on Geulah not only as a future hope, but as a present mode of consciousness. For when Yesod has already poured its entire content into Malchus, then even before the moment of open revelation, the inner reality is Geulah; exile is only in the eyes that do not yet see. To “live with Moshiach” now is to align one’s personal Malchus—one’s speech, daily schedule, priorities—with the truth that the world is already permeated with Elokus; it is to accept in advance the Malchus that is about to be revealed.

On the other hand, this itself deepens the responsibility. Since the avodah of birurim is complete, our present time is not defined by new conquests, but by faithfulness to what has already been given. Every Jew, wherever he is, stands as a small Malchus facing the Yesod of Dor HaShvi’i. The question is no longer: will the connection reach me? It has already reached. The question is: will I accept? Will I let my life become a keli for this kingship? Will I let my home, speech, and deeds testify that Yesod has indeed poured into me?

And with this the bridge is prepared to the final inyan. For if the Yesod of the Seventh Generation has already accomplished its essential work of drawing the wellsprings to every place, and if the birth of Malchus now depends on the kabbalas ol of the mekablim, then the next step in the maamar must be: what is the avodah of each individual Jew in this time? How does he live as a spark of Malchus, internalizing the entire partzuf of the Rebbeim, so that when the general Malchus of Moshiach is revealed, he will find within himself a ready, resonant vessel?

To this, with Hashem’s help, we now turn.

20 · Living as a Spark of Malchut

And behold, according to all the above, the matter returns and settles in the innermost point of the soul of each and every Jew. For if we have spoken until now of partzufim, of sefiros, of Nesi’im who are general souls and supernal limbs, it could be imagined that this all remains in the realm of the great and the lofty, in worlds and generations, and does not descend into the simple, present “I” of the listener, in his house, in his weekday shoes. Therefore it is necessary to emphasize: the completion of Malchus does not take place only in the general Nasi and in the general Knesses Yisrael; it must be inscribed within the particular nefesh of every Yid. Without this, the partzuf remains, so to speak, without its final cells; the body of Malchus is not yet whole.

For it is known from Tanya that “the nefesh of every Jew is a chelek Eloka mimaal mamash”—a literal portion of G‑dliness from above. And further it is explained in Chassidus that this Elokus is not a formless spark, but is structured with all ten sefiros, in exact parallel to the supernal ten. The soul has its Chochmah, its Binah, its Daas, all the way until its own Malchus. Thus, when we spoke of the ten sefiros as they unfold through the chain of the Nesi’im, we were also describing an inner map that is already engraved in the constitution of every Jewish soul. The Rebbeim are the general embodiment; the Jew is the particular embodiment. The general does not hover above the particular; it is revealed within it.

However, there is a fundamental difference. In the soul, these ten powers are given in potential; their order and harmony are not automatic. A person can live his entire life from a fragmented Chochmah without Binah, or from a scattered Binah without Daas, from Chesed without Gevurah, or from Gevurah without Chesed, and so on. The Rebbeim, by contrast, are the partzuf as it truly is: each middah in its perfection, in its proper time, in its true relation to all the others. Hence the avodah of the individual is to allow his own internal ten powers to be educated, formed, and aligned by the tenfold revelation of the Nesi’im, until his nefesh becomes a small reflection of that complete partzuf. When this is accomplished, his Malchus—the lowest faculty of his soul, his behavior and speech in the world—becomes a pure kli to the general Malchus of Moshiach.

This is the inner content of hiskashrus to the Rebbe as it is explained in the teachings of Chassidus Chabad. Hiskashrus is not only emotional attachment, admiration, and love; it is a deep binding of the particular soul to the nefesh ha’klalis that is the Nasi. Through this binding, the order of sefiros that is revealed in the Rebbe is drawn, drop by drop, into the corresponding powers of the mekushar. In the earlier generations this was grasped mainly in the form of yechidus, in the personal word, the individualized guidance. In Dor HaShvi’i, through the Yesod that spreads to every place, this hiskashrus passes primarily via the Rebbe’s Torah and horaos, through fulfilling his shlichus in one’s place, and through living in accordance with his directives. When a Jew learns the sichos and maamarim, aligns his day with the takanos, and feels himself a soldier and emissary of the Nasi, he is not only “connected” in a sentimental way; he is allowing the entire partzuf of the Nesi’im to imprint itself upon his own ten kochos, until his personal sefiros stand in the same seder ve’hadra’gah as the general ones.

More specifically, this means that a person must contemplate how each Nasi, each sefirah, demands a corresponding avodah within him. The Chochmah of the Baal Shem Tov calls him to a simple emunah that sees Hashem in every detail of his life; the Binah of the Maggid calls him to think, to meditate, to understand; the Daas of the Alter Rebbe calls him to bind that understanding to his heart until it changes his middos; the Chesed of the Mitteler Rebbe calls him to expansiveness in Torah and ahavas Yisrael; the Gevurah of the Tzemach Tzedek calls him to fix limits for himself, halachic precision and inner discipline; the Tiferes of the Maharash calls him to seek the beautiful, royal way of “lechatchila ariber” in his avodah; the Netzach of the Rashab calls him to steadfast struggle; the Hod of the Frierdiker Rebbe calls him to humble endurance and hoda’ah in all situations; the Yesod of Dor HaShvi’i calls him to be a connector, a lamplighter, to reach another Jew. When he does this, he is in truth internalizing the sefirah-path of the Rebbeim. And when all of this is then expressed in the simple kabbalas ol of daily mitzvos and in the sanctification of his speech, his own Malchus becomes a throne for the Malchus of Moshiach.

This is why the Rebbeim emphasized so strongly that each Jew must learn their Torah. For the Torah of every Nasi is the primary garment and vessel of his middah. When one studies the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, one draws Chochmah into his soul; when he studies the teachings of the Maggid, he widens his Binah, and so on. It is not sufficient to be inspired by stories alone; one must engage the sechel and the heart with the actual divrei Torah of each Nasi, to the extent of his ability. And if one argues: I am a simple person; I do not understand these deep maamarim—then it must be said: understanding in depth is a higher level, but the connection is forged already by the very act of learning, by the effort to hear the Rebbe’s voice in his Torah and to accept it upon oneself. Just as Malchus has nothing of its own, “leit lah migarmei klum,” yet receives all from the higher sefiros, so too the simple Jew, who feels he has nothing of his own in chochmah and binah, becomes precisely thereby the truest vessel to receive.

And here we reach the core of personal Malchus, which is kabbalas ol malchus Shamayim in simple, daily action. For all the lofty sefiros of the nefesh, all the inner understandings and feelings, are only truly united with Elokus when they reach the faculty of action and speech. Kabbalas ol is expressed not only in the grand moments—on Rosh Hashanah, at great hisorerus—but in the unquestioning footstep that goes to shul for davening on a weekday morning, in the hand that reaches for the kosher food even when it is less convenient, in the eyes that are guarded, in the tzedakah coin given even when the yetzer hara calculates otherwise. These are the acts by which the Jew coronates Hashem over his own small kingdom; through them his Malchus bows to Malchus Shamayim. And since “a man is a small world,” his acceptance draws down a reflection of Malchus also into the great world.

Therefore the Rebbe, Nasi of Yesod, demanded that we “live with Moshiach.” This does not mean only to speak about Moshiach, to yearn for Moshiach, but to arrange one’s life as befits a citizen of a geulah-world. If in the world of Geulah the whole day is permeated with daas Elokus, then also now one must set fixed times for Torah and Chassidus in the midst of his work. If in the world of Geulah “v’lo yilmedu od ish es re’eihu” because the knowledge of Hashem will be obvious, then already now one must speak to his fellow Jew words of encouragement, of emunah, of Elokus, so that such knowledge becomes second nature. If in the world of Geulah the physical world will clearly be a dira lo yisbarach, then already now one must make his home a dira: to place sefarim in it, to light Shabbos candles, to fix mezuzos, to speak only words of kedushah and kindness within its walls. In this manner he is literally living with Moshiach—his Malchus of today is dressed in the garments of Malchus of tomorrow.

Here the inyan of speech assumes a central place, for Malchus in all the sefiros is identified with dibbur. And in the human soul too, the primary revelation of Malchus is in the way one speaks. A person might think: speech is light, it does not leave a mark; only thoughts and deeds matter. Chassidus teaches the opposite: speech constructs worlds. It is through speech that the king rules; it is through speech that the soul governs its environment. Hence, to live as a spark of Malchus is above all to sanctify one’s mouth.

This entails three main directions. First, that the mouth should be accustomed to words of Torah. To read Chumash, Tehillim, Mishnah, Tanya, to review a line of a maamar aloud; even a short daily portion is a coronation of Malchus Shamayim in the faculty of dibbur. Second, that the mouth should be occupied with tefillah—both the fixed tefillos from the siddur and the simple words one says to Hashem in his own language, in his own room. Such speech is the most direct revelation of his personal Malchus binding itself to the King of kings. Third, that his speech to other people should be words that raise them: encouragement, comfort, honest praise, words that awaken their own Elokus. This is a direct continuation of Yesod’s lamplighter-work into Malchus: the Jew’s mouth becomes a small channel through which the Rebbe’s Yesod reaches another heart.

Conversely, he must guard his speech from lashon hara, scoffing, cynicism, coarse joking, and all forms of negative talk. For such words are the misuse of Malchus; they are like a king who uses his crown to strike with. They establish, G‑d forbid, a different sort of kingship in his life, a rule of concealment and separation. The avodah of our time is to strip our mouths of such exilic kingship and to give them over entirely to the service of Malchus Shamayim. When a Jew restrains even one unnecessary word, when he chooses instead to be silent or to say something good, he is in that moment a spark of Malchus rectifying the Shechinah in exile.

All this is not beyond the reach of any Jew. On the contrary: precisely because Malchus is “leit lah migarmei klum,” it does not demand from the person that he be a lamdan, a mekubal, a baal madreigah. It demands that he be willing to accept, to be a servant. To say Shema Yisrael with simple kavanah; to answer Amen; to put on tefillin, to keep Shabbos, to guard kashrus; to fix times for Torah; to speak kindly and truthfully. This is the kabbalas ol that stands at the center of our avodah now. And when this kabbalas ol is informed—even a little—by the inner understanding of the sefiros-path of the Nesi’im, then the simplest deed becomes consciously a revelation of Malchus. The Jew senses that in his putting of a coin into a pushka, in his refraining from a forbidden word, he is participating in the crowning of the Melech HaMoshiach over the world.

With this the circle closes back to the beginning of the maamar. We began by explaining that the chain of Nesi’im from the Baal Shem Tov until Dor HaShvi’i is not a series of separate biographies but one living partzuf, a single organism of ten sefiros unfolding in time. Now we see that this organism seeks, as it were, to extend itself into every individual soul. The Nasi hador is hakol—he includes all—but the “hakol” is not complete until every chelek Eloka mimaal, every Jew, allows that hakol to be mirrored within his own ten powers and expressed in his own Malchus.

When this happens on a wide scale—when countless Jews, in all places reached by the Yesod of the Seventh Generation, live even a part of their day as conscious sparks of Malchus, aligning mind, heart, deed, and speech with the Rebbeim’s path—then the vessel for the general revelation is finished. The personal Malchus of millions will resonate with the approaching Malchus of Moshiach. Then the hidden kingship, which even now already fills the world, will be able to appear openly, and “Hashem will be King over all the earth; on that day Hashem will be One and His Name One,” speedily, in our days, mamash.