Before the King

1 · "You Shall Surely Set"

“And it shall be, when you come into the land that Hashem your G‑d gives you, and you shall possess it and dwell in it, and you shall say: I will set over me a king like all the nations that are around me. You shall surely set over yourself a king whom Hashem your G‑d shall choose; from the midst of your brethren shall you set a king over yourself” (Devarim 17:14–15).

Behold, the Torah here establishes an entire סדר of מלכות בישראל with a double expression, “som tasim alecha melech,” “you shall surely set over yourself a king.” And as is known, every doubling in Torah calls for understanding. For if it would have said merely “you shall set,” it would suffice for the command; what is the inner meaning of “som tasim,” the emphasis that the placing of the king must be in a manner of certainty and insistence?

And furthermore, the verse itself appears at first glance to make the appointment of a king dependent on Israel’s initiative: “and you shall say: I will set over me a king.” This would imply that the matter is not a חיוב גמור but a response to the people’s desire, that when they will seek a king, then they are instructed how to appoint him properly. Yet the Sifri on this verse counts the appointment of a king among the three mitzvos that Israel were commanded upon entering the land—להעמיד להם מלך, to establish for themselves a king—together with cutting off the seed of Amalek and building the Beis HaMikdash. According to this, the matter is not merely a concession to their saying “I will set over me a king,” but a מצוה חיובית מן התורה.

And so rules the Rambam at the beginning of Hilchos Melachim: “Three mitzvos were commanded Israel at the time of entering the land: to appoint for themselves a king, as it is said, ‘you shall surely set over yourself a king’…” And he concludes there that “the appointment of a king precedes the war with Amalek,” and that this order is מן התורה. Thus it is clear that מלך בישראל is not a peripheral arrangement of national administration, but a יסוד in the סדר הקדושה of the people in the land.

Yet we find seemingly the opposite in the words of Shmuel HaNavi. For in I Shmuel ch. 8, when the elders of Israel come and say, “Set for us a king to judge us like all the nations,” the matter is very evil in the eyes of Shmuel, and he davens to Hashem. And Hashem says to him, “It is not you whom they have despised, but Me have they despised from reigning over them.” From this it would appear that the very request for a king contains a certain flaw, to the extent that it is equated with despising the Kingship of Heaven, chas veshalom. If so, we must understand: is the appointment of a king a fulfillment of Hashem’s will, as in Devarim and as codified by the Rambam, or is it a rejection of Hashem’s own מלוכה, as in Shmuel?

It is possible to distinguish, as the commentators do, that the sin of the people in the days of Shmuel was not in the עצם בקשה for a king, but in the manner and intention: “like all the nations,” that they desired a king as a natural-political institution, to be for them instead of the direct הנהגה of Hashem, and not as a כלי for revealing Hashem’s מלכות within Israel. However, even with this distinction, the inner question remains: why indeed is there a mitzvah at all to appoint a מלך בשר ודם, when Hashem alone is the true King? Why should the Torah institutionalize a structure that can so easily be misperceived as a replacement for Malchus Shamayim, to the extent that in the days of Shmuel such a request is counted as “despising Me from reigning over them”?

To phrase the matter differently: since “Hashem Melech, Hashem Malach, Hashem Yimloch” is the essence of our faith, that His Kingship precedes and transcends all existence, what room is there, in the light of this absolute Malchus, for a mortal being to be called “king” in a manner of mitzvah? Would it not be more fitting that the Torah should command only judges and officers and leaders, all of whom are clearly servants of the King of Kings, and not legislate a figure whose very title “king” seems to borrow, as it were, from the Divine Name “Melech”?

However, before entering into the inner explanation, we must recall a general rule: all עניינים of Torah are both הלכה and הוראה בעבודה. That is, there is no detail in Torah that is only a technical regulation of external life; rather, each halachic structure is also a precise משל illuminating a corresponding סדר in the soul’s עבודה to its Creator. Thus, when the Torah commands “you shall surely set over yourself a king,” and the Sifri and Rambam establish this as a foundational mitzvah of entering the land, we are being taught that מלכות בשר ודם, in its Torah form, is not merely a concession to the political needs of a nation, but a deliberate creation of a model in the lower realm through which we may grasp, to the extent possible, the standing of a נברא before Malchus Shamayim.

Accordingly, we can begin to understand the emphasis of the verse “som tasim alecha”—“over yourself.” The duplication does not only intensify the legal requirement; it indicates that the essence of the mitzvah is that the מלך is placed “over you,” that the people accept upon themselves a qualitative מעליותא, an authority that stands above them in being and in consciousness. For if the king were merely a chief administrator, first among equals, then the Torah’s language “alecha,” “over yourself,” would be imprecise. Rather, his very being as king is that he is a מדריגה נפרדת from the עם, and that the people relate to him in a specific דמות of ביטול and קבלת עול which does not exist toward any other human role. And this very posture of the עם toward their king becomes the משל for how a soul is to stand before the מלכות of Hashem.

Yet, precisely this increases our wonder. For if the Torah intends מלכות בשר ודם as a משל for Malchus Shamayim, then we must ask with greater force: how can a finite creature, flesh and blood, weak and limited, serve as the image of the Infinite King? Moreover, the essence of human kingship, as we see plainly, is that the king’s status depends entirely on his people. Without a people, he is no king at all; his מלוכה exists only insofar as there are many subjects who accept his rule. The Rambam himself, after establishing the mitzvah of appointing a king, goes on to detail the laws of awe and honor that must be accorded to him—that no one sits on his throne, and no one uses his scepter, and that all must tremble before him—and it is through these responses that his kingship is concretized. Thus, malchus basar vadam is defined by being a relation: a certain form of standing of the עם toward the one they have set “over themselves.”

And if so, when we say “Hashem Melech,” do we mean, chas veshalom, that His מלכות also depends on the existence of subjects and their acceptance? This cannot be, for “if He desired, He would not have created worlds at all,” and His perfection lacks nothing. His Being and His Kingship are not completed by the worlds, and certainly not brought into actuality by their consent. On the other hand, if we say that His Kingship has no need of subjects at all, then in what sense is it “kingship” as we know it? If the essence of a melech is relation to an עם, then a מלך whose essence does not in any way involve an עם seems to be called “king” only בשם המושאל, a borrowed term that conceals more than it reveals.

From all this it is understood that we are forced to say two opposite things at once. On the one hand, malchus basar vadam, as commanded in Torah, is given to us as a כלי להבין, as a structured, Divinely legislated משל, teaching us how a נברא stands before a מלך—distance, awe, acceptance, the placing “over yourself.” On the other hand, we must affirm with absolute clarity that the מלכות of Hashem is not bounded by any of the dependencies of human malchus, and that His Kingship is perfect and entire even without any world or people. The question, then, is: in what precise manner is human kingship similar to Divine Kingship, such that the Torah entrenches it as mitzvah and mashal; and in what precise manner is it infinitely dissimilar, such that any simple transference of the structure “no king without a people” to Hashem would be heresy, G‑d forbid?

This will be understood by first examining more deeply the nature of malchus in basar vadam itself, as Chazal say “ein melech b’lo am,” there is no king without a people, and by distinguishing the particular conditions—distance, multitude, and the coarse “am-ness” of the nation—that make a human being into a melech. From there we will ascend to understand how the Torah dares speak of Hashem as King at all.

2 · "No King Without a People"

And behold, this is what our Sages have said explicitly, in the language of Midrash: “ברב עם הדרת מלך… אין מלך בלא עם” – “In a multitude of people is the glory of the king… there is no king without a people.” They did not say “אין שליט בלא עם,” that there is no ruler without a people, but “אין מלך,” specifically melech. For there is a fundamental distinction in lashon hakodesh between a מושל and a מלך.

A moshel is one who rules, who exerts control, whether by consent or by compulsion. His essence is not that he is accepted, but that he overpowers. Therefore his rulership can apply even over one individual, and even over his equal, and even over one who resists utterly; if he can subdue him, he is moshel bo. But a melech is not defined by force; his מלכות is the state in which a multitude of subjects place themselves under him, accept his authority upon themselves, and relate to him as their head and king. Thus, the very term melech indicates that his being king is not only in himself, as a certain greatness or power, but in the relationship of a people to him. If there is no עם, no public who stand opposite him and under him, there is no ענין of מלך at all, only a בעל מעלות, a person of stature, or at most a moshel.

And this is why Chazal tie “הדרת מלך,” the splendor of a king, to “ברב עם,” the multitude of people. The הדרת, the revealed majesty of the king, is specifically when he is before a רבוי רבבות, a great many subjects, so that his singularity is seen and felt; for one alone among ten is not yet called “the one that stands above the many” in the full sense of malchus. Thus, we can already distinguish two תנאים, two conditions, that are necessary in malchus basar vadam: first, that there be an עם, a people, and not merely isolated individuals; and second, that they be ברבוי, in multitude, for only then is there הדרת מלך.

However, this still does not suffice to define malchus. For it would be possible to imagine a multitude of very close ones, friends and companions, all of one mind and one heart with the king, his equals in wisdom and refinement, who out of love choose to crown him. Yet this is also not the full concept of malchus. For such a king would be like the ראש לחבורה, the head of a fellowship, or like the נשיא of a Sanhedrin, whose greatness is in his being first among peers. Malchus, however, requires not only רבוי but also ריחוק, distance. The king must stand in a level that is removed from his people, so that between him and them there is a gap of מדריגה, a felt otherness, and it is precisely from this distance that their קבלת עול derives its form of malchus.

This is alluded to in the very term “עם.” Our Sages and the commentators have pointed out that עם is from the root of עִמּוּם, thickening, dulling and coarseness. “עם הארץ” is not only one who is ignorant, but one whose coarse materiality covers over the inward light. Thus, when we say “אין מלך בלא עם,” we are not merely saying that there is no king without subjects, but that there is no king without a stratum of people who, relative to him, stand in a state of עם, of coarseness and distance. The king is of a more refined intellect and character, his heart is broad and subtle, as it is said, “לב מלך ביד ה’,” and “לב מלך בחקר לא יחקור,” whereas the עם are thickened in their perception, occupied with their material lives, their understanding short and constricted. It is to such a people that he is melech.

This yields a deeper definition: malchus basar vadam is the relation of one exalted, removed individual to a multitudinous people who are distant from him in מדריגה, whose very coarse “am-ness” sets them apart from him, and who nevertheless accept upon themselves his sovereignty. The very coarseness of the am is not incidental; it is part of the glory. For when a lofty person is accepted as king by those close to him in level, the contrast is slight. But when the coarse masses, who by nature do not grasp subtlety, nevertheless bow, fear, and accept the yoke of his word, there is manifest the הדרת מלך in its full form: the lofty one who rules, not by mere force, but by a sovereign presence that penetrates even the thickened layers of human coarseness.

If so, we see that “עם” in “אין מלך בלא עם” carries a double sense: רבוי and עִמּוּם. There must be many, and they must be, relative to him, thickened and distant. And only then do we have malchus, not merely memshalah.

According to this, the earlier question becomes stronger. For when we speak of malchus basar vadam, these conditions are all understandable. A human being, even the greatest, is nevertheless limited, of flesh and blood; therefore he can only be king in relation to others outside himself. His greatness is measured and revealed precisely in contrast to those beneath him. Without them, his malchus is not merely concealed; it does not exist in actuality. Even if he has the potential in his qualities to be a king, that potential is not called malchus until an עם accepts him. This is straightforward.

But how can any of this be applied even בדרך משל to the מלכות of Hashem Yisbarach? He is “קדוש ומובדל,” separated and exalted from all worlds. Not only is He not of the same category as His creatures, but between Creator and created there is no comparison at all, not even as between the choicest of intellects and the coarsest material being. He lacks nothing; His perfection is absolute. Before any creation, He is Melech, as we say, “ה’ מלך, ה’ מלך, ה’ ימלוך לעולם ועד,” and as is explained in the writings of the Rishonim, that “מלך” is said on Him even prior to the existence of any worlds, for His essence is that He is the only true Being, and in that He includes all dominion.

If so, how can we say “אין מלך בלא עם” with regard to Him? To say that His being King is dependent, in any way, on an עם, on a world, on subjects, seems to contradict the very foundation of our faith that “אם צדקת מה תתן לו,” if you are righteous, what do you give Him, and that “אתה הוא עד שלא נברא העולם, ואתה הוא משנברא העולם,” You are the same before and after creation. If His malchus would require ברב עם, a multitude of coarse beings, then, Heaven forbid, there would be some change, some addition from the existence of the am; before they exist He would lack the הדרת מלך which “ברב עם.” How can such a notion be entertained?

One might wish to escape and say: all the expressions of “melech” that we apply to Hashem are only בשם המושאל, as a borrowed term, taken from the institution of human kingship to make Him somewhat understandable to us; but in truth there is no relation at all between the two, and the rule “אין מלך בלא עם” applies only below. Yet this answer does not satisfy. For first, the Torah itself speaks in the language of malchus regarding Him, “ה’ מלך גאות לבש,” “מלך עולם ועד,” and many such verses, and the Nevi’im and Kesuvim build entire structures of avodah upon the stance of a subject before a King. If this were only a borrowed term without any inner correspondence, why would Torah so emphasize it, to the point of instituting a whole mitzvah of appointing a human king as its mashal? Second, in the words of Chassidus, אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו; even when we say that there is also a deeper, abstracted meaning, the simple sense, that Hashem is truly called King, remains. So we are compelled to say that there is a real ענין of malchus in Elokus, and that somehow the rule “אין מלך בלא עם” also has a place there.

On the other hand, to say simply that just as a human king requires an עם, so too, כביכול, the Supreme King requires an עם, would be an anthropomorphism not only in language but in essence, G‑d forbid. For it would ascribe to Him dependency, incompleteness, and a need for others in order to be what He is. This is absolutely impossible.

We thus arrive at the classical difficulty that the teachings of Chassidus take up in many places: how to understand all the anthropomorphic expressions in Torah—“eyes,” “hands,” “anger,” “joy,” and in particular “kingship”—in a way that preserves both sides of the truth. On the one hand, the Torah speaks “כלשון בני אדם,” in human language, for “לא ניתנה תורה למלאכי השרת,” and these expressions must therefore point to some real pattern in the Divine, some true relationship by which He chooses to relate to the worlds. On the other hand, “כי לא אדם הוא,” He is not a man, that we should ascribe to Him bodily form, emotions subject to change, or any limitation and dependence whatsoever.

In the matter of malchus, this tension is especially sharp. For the very definition of malchus, as we saw, is relational and dependent: no king without a people, no הדרת מלך without ברב עם, no malchus without the coarse “am-ness” that stands opposite the king. If so, when we say in our davening, “מלוך על העולם כולו בכבודך,” rule as King over the entire world in Your glory, what are we truly asking? Are we, Heaven forbid, asking that He attain some perfection that He did not have? Certainly not. Yet the language is precise: “מלוך,” a request that there be an actualization of malchus.

From all this it is clear that we must seek a deeper understanding of what “malchus” means when said of Hashem, such that it will include, in some refined and exalted form, the content of “אין מלך בלא עם”—there is no king without a people, distance and multitude and “am-ness”—and yet be utterly free of any implication of lack or dependence. Only then will the institution of human kingship, with its conditions of רבוי and ריחוק and עם, be revealed as a true mashal and not merely a misleading image.

To reach this, however, one cannot remain within the plane of malchus as it appears in the world of basar vadam. One must ascend in the seder hishtalshelus to the level of the sefiros, to the sefirah of Malchus in the Divine attributes, and contemplate how there, in Elokus, there can be something called Malchus that is both a mode of relation to “am” and yet an expression of His absolute independence. And this will be the next step in our inyan.

3 · Malchus Above Worlds

However, to ascend to the level of the sefiros one must first be mevarer: what does it mean at all that we speak of ten sefiros in Elokus, and in particular of a sefirah called Malchus? For, on the one hand, the Ohr Ein Sof is pashut betachlis hapeshitus, utterly simple without form or division, beyond any structure of ten or a hundred; and on the other hand, all the writings of the Arizal and of the Zohar speak constantly of Chochmah, Binah, the six middos, and Malchus, and make them into the seder hishtalshelus through which worlds and creations come into being.

The explanation is known: the ten sefiros are not, Heaven forbid, separate entities or parts in Elokus, but they are modes of revelation, ways in which the Infinite light is mislabesh so that there can be a relationship with what is finite. In the language of Chassidus, the sefiros are “kelim” and “oros”: vessels that delimit and channel, and lights that fill and animate. The ohr remains essentially the Ohr Ein Sof, but it shines through a particular keli, and thereby there is a certain form of giluy—of Chochmah, or of Chesed, and so on.

Now, within these ten sefiros, Malchus is counted as the last and lowest. It receives from all the preceding nine, and from it there is the hispashtus into the next world below. As is explained in Etz Chaim in Shaar HaMalchus, that Malchus of each world is the shoresh and the source of the olam that follows it, so that Malchus of Atzilus is the source of Beriah, Malchus of Beriah the source of Yetzirah, and so forth. And this is already a great chidush in our inyan. For we see that what is called “Malchus” in Elokus is not merely a borrowed term from malchus basar vadam, but a real, essential inyan in the seder of Elokus itself: the very power by which the Infinite light stands at the boundary of revelation, contracts and limits itself, and from there allows a world to emerge.

We can understand this more according to what is brought in the Zohar, “Malchus peh; Torah she’b’al peh.” The Zohar identifies Malchus with speech. And this demands understanding: why is Malchus compared specifically to peh, mouth, and not to another limb? But the matter is that speech is the faculty by which a person emerges from his inwardness and relates to an other. Intellect and emotion can remain entirely within the self; a person can be wise and loving and yet dwell alone, without any relation to another being. But when he speaks, he is already standing in a relationship to one outside of himself. Moreover, speech, by its very nature, contracts and measures the inner thought: a person’s machshavah is rich, vast, simultaneous, while speech comes out word after word, letter after letter, in a defined language graspable by the listener.

Thus, Malchus as “peh” means: the Divine faculty of “speech,” through which the Ein Sof, so to speak, steps out from absolute inwardness and enters a relation with worlds and creations. And just as in a person, the power of dibbur is not his essence—he is not “speech” itself, but he possesses the ability to speak when he so chooses—so, in a manner of allegory and infinite distance, Malchus is not, Heaven forbid, a change or addition in His Atzmus, but a mode He brings forth, a way in which His light is mislabesh such that there can be a “listener,” a world that hears.

Now we can return to the earlier difficulty. When we said, “אין מלך בלא עם”—no king without a people—it seemed that the king is dependent on his subjects: without them he is not a king at all. But in the light of the sefirah of Malchus, the matter is reframed. Malchus is not a need, but a will. It is the bechirah and ratzon of the Ein Sof to be “King,” i.e., to be related to finitude, to allow that there should be an “am” that receives His hashpa’ah. The dependence is inverted: the “am,” the worlds, depend on Malchus for their very existence, while Malchus itself is a self-limitation of the Or Ein Sof, an act of tzimtzum and concealment, chosen from absolute independence.

This is the meaning of what is explained in Etz Chaim, that before the emanation of the sefiros there was only the Infinite light filling all, and there was no place for worlds, until there was the tzimtzum, the concealment, and afterwards the kav of light that entered the halal and from which the sefiros were emanated. The first condition for there to be Malchus is concealment: as long as the Or Ein Sof shines without any tzimtzum, there can be no “other,” no sense of distance, no “am.” Only when the light withdraws, so to speak, making room for finitude, can there be the possibility of an am that feels itself coarse, separate, and distant.

But this same tzimtzum is not, Heaven forbid, a compulsion or a lack. It is His act. In the language of Chassidus, “lo zu haderech”: the tzimtzum is not a literal departure, but a concealment to the receiver; the Infinite remains as it was, only that it chooses to hide itself in order that there be worlds. So too with Malchus: Malchus is the name for that place where the Infinite, without ceasing to be Infinite, stands as if at the edge of revelation, presenting itself in a way that finitude can receive. This is malchus above.

Thus, when we say that Malchus is “shoresh ha’olamos,” the source of worlds, we do not mean that worlds add something to Malchus, but the opposite: Malchus is the form in which the Or Ein Sof chooses to be the source of worlds. It is a “crown” that the King places upon Himself, not a garment that the subjects place upon Him. The dictum “אין מלך בלא עם” is, in this higher light, not that the King becomes king through the am, but that the very concept of “king” is the concept of relation to an “other”; and that is precisely what Malchus is: the Divine readiness to relate, the Divine assumption of form.

From here we can also understand why Malchus is counted among the sefiros davka as the last and the lowest. For all the higher sefiros—Chochmah, Binah, the middos—speak, so to say, within Elokus itself: the Divine wisdom, the Divine understanding, the Divine kindness and might. They are all still, each in its way, expressions of inwardness. Malchus alone is the middah that faces outward, that is oriented to what is not yet, to the possibility of a world. Therefore, it is “les lei migarmei klum”—it has nothing of its own—but receives from all the others; for the content of Malchus is not some new light, but the resolve that all that came before—His wisdom, His kindness, His truth—should be expressed toward something outside. In that sense, Malchus is the sum of all the preceding sefiros in a new orientation: not toward self, but toward other.

And this brings us to a further point. If Malchus is the Divine dibbur, the Divine outwardness, then the distinction between Or Ein Sof and the hislabshus in Malchus becomes clear. Or Ein Sof, as It is in Itself, has no relation to worlds at all; it is equally “far” from the highest angel and from the lowest creature. The fact that there exists a world that can say “You” to Him is thanks to the hislabshus of that light in the keli of Malchus, which defines the relation “King–people,” “Speaker–listener.” Yet, even in this hislabshus, the or remains Ein Sof; only that its manner of appearance is now through Malchus.

Therefore, when we speak of Hashem as King, we are not speaking, Heaven forbid, of His Atzmus as acquiring some new perfection, but of His light as manifest in the attribute of Malchus. “Hashem Melech” means: the Ein Sof shines through Malchus, through tzimtzum and concealment, such that there can be an “am” that receives, and in their reception the מלוכה is revealed. And in this sense, the dictum “there is no king without a people” is not a dependency but a definition: Malchus by definition is the attribute of relation; if there were no beings to relate to, Malchus would not be called “Malchus”—not because something is lacking in Him, but because that mode would not be in exercise.

Now, since “b’tzelem Elokim asa es ha’adam,” man is created in the Divine image, it follows that the malchus of basar vadam is not an arbitrary political form, but a reflection, a he’ara, of Malchus Elyon in the plane of flesh and blood. The fact that in human experience there is such a phenomenon as a king, whose word is law, whose presence creates awe, whose decree shapes the lives of multitudes, is because from above there is the sefirah of Malchus, and from it there is drawn into the nefesh ha’adam a capacity for kingship. In the language of Chassidus: Malchus d’Atzilus is mislabesh in Malchus d’Asiyah, and in the soul this appears as the koach ha’manhigus, the faculty of leadership. When this koach is manifest in its highest and most rectified form, in a Jewish king according to Torah, then it is a more direct tzelm of Malchus Elyon.

This also explains the resemblance and the distance between Divine and human malchus. On the one hand, because human malchus is a tzelem, therefore it, too, requires “am,” distance, and multitude; it, too, is associated with speech—decree and command; it, too, appears as a relation rather than an essence. On the other hand, because it is but a dim he’ara, it bears within it the stamp of limitation and dependency: the human king truly has no malchus without his people, for his very authority is constituted by their acceptance. Whereas above, Malchus is an act of the Infinite, which can be withdrawn at any moment without any change in Him, and whose exercise adds nothing to His perfection.

Thus we arrive at a new framing of our earlier question. We had asked: how can we ascribe to Hashem a malchus that seems dependent on an am? Now it is clarified that what is dependent is not He, but the giluy of the attribute. There is, in Elokus, a middah of Malchus—the Divine will to relate, to speak, to be King—and when there is an “am” that receives and accepts, that Malchus is in revelation. When there is concealment of the worlds, that Malchus is in a state of he’elem, like a king who sits in his inner chamber and is not seen. In neither case is there, Heaven forbid, any change in Atzmus; all the change is only in the recipients and in the degree to which the light of Malchus is manifest.

And this is, in truth, the meaning of our request, “מלוך על העולם כולו בכבודך”—“reign over the entire world in Your glory.” We are not asking that He become King; we are asking that His attribute of Malchus, which is already His will, should be revealed in this lower world, that the concealments should be diminished, that the “am” should accept upon itself the yoke of Heaven, and thereby that the glory of Malchus should shine. We are requesting that the tzimtzum be such that, within it, His Kavod is perceptible.

With this, the institution of a human king as a mashal is illuminated from above. For now we see that the very possibility of telling a story of “king” and “people” in this world is because above there is a true attribute of Malchus, as the power of tzimtzum and dibbur whereby the Infinite relates to finitude. Yet still, all this remains in the level of middos and sefiros. To penetrate more deeply into the inner life of Malchus—how, within this attribute, there is “mind” and “thought,” a Divine “daas” that encompasses worlds as a king’s heart encompasses his people—this requires that we contemplate the mashal of the human king’s inner world, his daas hamalchus. And to that we now turn.

4 · The Mind of a King

According to this, we can now return to the mashal of a human king, not only in the external matters of his rule—his decrees, his armies, his courts—but in the inner structure of his daas and machshavah themselves. For if, as explained, malchus in Elokus is a mode of giluy wherein the Infinite orients Itself toward finitude, then it is understood that the mashal for this is not merely that there is a person who is called “king,” but that his very inner life becomes re‑formed according to the inyan of malchus. And this will be the key to approach, in the next stage, the concept of Divine “thought” in malchus.

Behold, the Rambam, when he sets forth the dinim of a Jewish king, does not suffice with laws of honor and fear from the side of the people alone, but goes on at length to describe who the king must become. On the one hand, he writes regarding the awe due to the king that “no one may sit in his presence, nor stand in his place, nor use his scepter, nor see him naked, nor ride upon his horse,” and that “his fear should be upon them, and they should be in awe of him exceedingly.” He further rules that one who despises the king is liable with the gravest liability, and that the king’s dread must be upon the people “like the dread of Heaven.” On the other hand, concerning the king himself he writes that “his heart is in the hand of Hashem,” that he must be “humble and lowly in spirit,” that he may not elevate his heart over his brothers, and that “his heart is the heart of all Israel.”

We see, therefore, a paradoxical structure: the same person must be at once infinitely raised above the people in their perception, and yet inwardly his own daas must be bent under the yoke of Heaven more than any of them; he must hold himself as a servant of the public to a degree beyond any individual, for “his heart is the heart of all Israel,” and yet he must not mingle excessively with them, not be found in the markets and the baths, not make himself hefker among the people, in order that the dread of the king not be diminished. This double structure is not incidental, but expresses the very form of malchus in the nefesh.

For the king’s daas is not daas prat, the knowledge of a private person who fills his own life, his family, his circle. The king’s daas is daas klali. His machshavah must rest constantly upon the klal, upon the people as a whole, their needs, their dangers, their peace. This is why the Kuzari says that the king’s heart is like the heart of the nation, that in his lev the whole body of Israel is unified, as the heart unifies and gives life to all the limbs. And the Maharal explains that the king is the “tzurah” of the people, the form which gives unity and direction to the many particulars. Thus his mind is not only his own mind; it bears within it, as in a general concept, all the details of the people’s life.

Yet, precisely because of this, his thought cannot collapse into theirs; he cannot live on their level. If he were to be “one of the guys,” sitting with them, jesting with them, eating and drinking as they eat and drink, then his daas would be drawn down into their smallness, and he would lose the vantage from which he can truly be a lev klali. Therefore the halachah demands that the king’s personal life be constricted and ordered for the sake of the malchus: he may not multiply for himself horses, wives, and wealth beyond the measure fixed by the Torah, lest his heart be distracted from the public and turn to his private pleasures; he must write for himself a Sefer Torah and read in it all the days of his life, that his heart be always bound with the Divine daas that stands above all.

In other words: the king’s existence as a private “I” must be, so to speak, sacrificed upon the altar of his role as “head of the people.” His eating, his sleeping, his journeys, his speech—all these are no longer his own, but are functions of the malchus. His machshavah is, as it were, turned panim el panim toward the people, for he must think of them and care for them with an inward face, with personal attention and responsibility; and at the same time it remains removed, for his thought is not that of an equal speaking to an equal, but that of one who stands on a higher rung and sees the general picture which they cannot see.

This is expressed also in the halachic requirement that the king’s terror be upon them “like the terror of Heaven.” For terror implies not only that externally they obey, but that internally they feel his superiority in their very mochin. A subject before the king does not only fear the king’s sword; he is shy to think small and coarse thoughts in the king’s presence. Yet the Rambam emphasizes that the king himself must fear Hashem more than all of them. Thus there is a chain: the people’s daas is encompassed by the king’s daas, and the king’s daas is encompassed by Divine daas. In the people’s experience, the king’s thought is a horizon they cannot cross; in the king’s experience, the Divine daas is an infinite horizon which encompasses his own. His inner life is therefore structured as a middle term between the multitude and the Infinite.

Now, this structure—that his thought encompasses the people from above, and yet is not absorbed within them—is the very form of the mashal that we need for Malchus Elyon. For we can now say: when we speak of Divine malchus, we are not only saying that there is “speech” toward the worlds, but that there is, so to speak, a “mind of the King,” a Divine machshavah in which all worlds are held together as a single klal. Just as the human king carries his entire kingdom in his heart, so too all the seder hishtalshelus exists only as it is grasped and encompassed in the “heart of the King.”

However, here arises an essential distinction that will lead us further. The king of flesh and blood, in order that his heart be the heart of all Israel, must give up much of his own individuality. The content of his thought is in fact changed by the people; their needs fill his days, their troubles disturb his nights. If, for example, the people are at war, his mind is agitated with war; if they are at peace, his mind rests differently. The king’s daas is therefore affected, colored, and limited by the content that it must bear. His malchus reshapes his machshavah in an ongoing way.

If so, when we apply this mashal to Elokus, it would appear, Heaven forbid, that Divine “thought” too is altered by its content—that when the worlds are thus and thus, His machshavah is thus and thus, and when, in some other time, there will be other creations, His machshavah will be other. And this cannot be; for the Rambam has already established that in Elokus there is no change, no multiplicity, no composition of subject and object, and that He is Himself His knowledge and His life. How then can we ascribe to Him a “kingly thought” which bears the worlds as content, without implying that the worlds cause some modification in Him?

We must therefore say that the mashal divides. From the human king we learn the form—that there is a daas which encompasses the public from above, panim el panim yet removed, and that this daas defines the king as king. But with regard to the effect of the public upon that daas, there the mashal ceases. In the human case, the people enter into the king’s mind as something added, for his mind is a separate entity that can be filled or emptied. In the Divine case, the “people,” all the worlds and their stories, exist only as they are contained within the simple oneness of His “thought,” which is not affected at all by them.

To make this distinction clear, we must first contemplate more deeply the inner experience of the human king’s thought—how he relates to his people inwardly, how he can hold multitudes of details in a single kesher—and then, from that, ascend to define by negation and contrast the nature of Divine “machshavah” in malchus: how it can be both kollel hakol, all‑encompassing of the totality of worlds, and at the same time utterly transcendent, not changed nor bounded by them at all. This will be explained in the continuation, when we speak of “Divine Thought and Human Thought,” to understand the difference between machshavah shehi nivra, created cognition, and machshavah ha’Elokis, which is simple oneness.

5 · Divine Thought and Human Thought

However, all this remains in the realm of contrast in the negative—what Divine “thought” is not. To come to some positive grasp, according to the measure that Torah permits us to speak, we must now recall the foundations that the Rambam establishes concerning daas ha’Elokis, and from there distinguish two general levels called in the language of Chassidus machshavah elyonah and machshavah tachtonah, and from within this framework to define an inyan prat, a particular modality, which we will call machshavah ha’melechit.

The Rambam, in the second chapter of Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, after clarifying that the Creator is not a body and that no corporeal predicates apply to Him, comes to the inyan of knowledge. And there he rules that it is clear and explicit in the Torah and in the prophets that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows all the deeds of human beings and all that will be; and he asks, how is this possible if we also maintain that He is simple, without composition? For by creatures, the knower, the knowledge, and the known are three separate matters. The answer which he brings, founded upon the words of the sages, is that in Elokus, “Hu ha’yodea, Hu ha’yadu’a, Hu ha’daas atzmah”—He is the Knower, He is the Known, and He is the Knowledge itself, all in a complete and simple unity.

From this it is understood that when we say that He “knows” the worlds and the creations, and certainly when we speak of His “thinking” them, we cannot mean a knowledge that stands opposite them, as something which has them as its content, but rather that His very being, in its simple oneness, is the knowing of them. They are known only insofar as they stand in the radiance of His being; they do not enter Him, so to speak, as something added, Heaven forfend, but they are as nothing and effaced in the simplicity of His daas.

And behold, in the language of Chassidus this is often expressed by the distinction between machshavah elyonah and machshavah tachtonah. Machshavah tachtonah is how the worlds appear from below: the perspective in which each thing feels itself as a metzius, a being, and the Divine “knowledge” of it appears as though it were something that rests upon the thing, recognizes it, and governs it. In this perspective we naturally imagine a sequence: first there is the One who knows, then there are the things known, and then there is the act of knowing which connects them. All of this is only in the grasp of the lower, in the garments of created thought.

Machshavah elyonah, by contrast, is how the worlds stand within Elokus: not as something outside, but as they are engulfed within the simple will and knowledge of the Ein Sof, where their entire being is only His thought of them. There, the known has no independent posture at all; its entire reality is only that He knows it. It follows that His knowledge is not affected by the known, for there is nothing “other” to affect it. Rather the known is affected—indeed, brought into being—by the knowledge.

This is the explanation which our master, the Baal HaTanya, elaborates in the beginning of Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah. He explains there, based on the dictum “Forever, Hashem, Your word stands in the heavens,” that the utterance of Hashem which once said “Let there be a firmament” must stand and be forever within the firmament, enlivening and bringing it into being at every moment; for if, Heaven forfend, that speech were to depart for even a moment, the heavens would revert to absolute nothingness as before creation. And he extends this to all creatures: that their entire existence is the constant speech and thought of Hashem regarding them.

Now, when we hear that the worlds are constantly in His speech and thought, if we interpret it according to the way of human cognition, we fall again into the error we wished to avoid: that His thought is like our thought, which is an act that comes to rest upon something other than itself. Therefore he adds and emphasizes that this speech and thought are not like the speech and thought of flesh and blood, Heaven forbid. For in the human, speech goes out from within and becomes separated from the speaker; thought too, though it remains inward, is a koach, a power, that is distinct from the soul’s essence and that can be occupied with one thing or another. It can be moved, stopped, changed, and is affected by its object. But in the Creator, blessed be He, there is no such separation: His “speech” is not something that leaves Him, and His “thought” is not an additional power over and above His essence. Rather, He and His kochos are one simple oneness; the very Being that is, is what we call for our understanding His thought and speech.

Therefore the Baal HaTanya explains that the difference lies not in Him but in the makablim, the recipients. The same Divine radiance which, from His side, is utterly simple and indivisible, when it descends through the seder hishtalshelus, appears as “speech,” as letters, as divisible and successive forms, and the worlds receive from it as though from a speech that enlivens them. But from His perspective, “no thought can grasp Him at all”—meaning even the category of “thought” does not apply in its created sense.

According to this we can more precisely define the difference between thought that is affected by its object and thought that is its own simple being. In a created intellect, the essence of thought is the grasping of something other than itself. Therefore, necessarily, it is porous to its object; it is shaped, colored, and delimited by whatever it takes hold of. The thought of a number is not like the thought of a melody; when one thinks of joy, one’s thought is itself joyful; when one thinks of pain, the thought is itself constricted. The object enters; the knower and known are not one.

In daas ha’Elokis, however, there is no “other” at all; “ein od milvado” in the most literal sense. The entire seder hishtalshelus, from the highest worlds to the lowest, exists only as a dependency of His will and knowledge. His “thought” of them is nothing but His being as it relates to them, and since His being is simple, the thought is simple. It is not affected by them; on the contrary, they have no definition except as affected by it. Its being is not “about” something; it is, and by being, it causes all.

With this we return to the inyan of Malchus. When we said above that Malchus is the attribute by which the Ein Sof relates to finitude, and that it is the shoresh of the worlds, we might have erred to think that Malchus is something like a separate koach, with its own inner life, in which the worlds are lodged as content. But according to the above, we must say that Malchus too, even as it is called peh and dibbur, is nothing other than the Ein Sof Himself, as He wills to be King. The title “Malchus” describes His ratzon to be melech, not a need which presses upon Him from without, nor even a disposition which arises within Him as a novelty, Heaven forfend, but an eternal mode within His infinity—“so He is, and so He wills to be.”

Thus, when we speak of His “kingly thought”—and here we begin to define the new inyan of machshavah ha’melechit—we do not mean a thought that is parallel to the worlds, as if it first existed and then took them into itself as content. Rather, machshavah ha’melechit is the name for the simplicity of His being as it includes, in one undivided gaze, both the story of the worlds and the story of each neshamah, together with the very will that there should be such a story at all.

To explain: in human cognition, there is always division between the public narrative and the individual narrative. Even the greatest human king, whose daas holds the klal, must shift his attention from the needs of the kingdom to the needs of the individual, from the wars of the state to the tears of a single orphan. His thought cannot in truth grasp both with equal fullness in the same instant; he must move from one to the other. And when he considers the whole, the details are necessarily blurred; when he descends into the detail, the whole retreats to the background. This is the limitation of machshavah shehi nivra: it is sequential, bounded, and changed by its content.

Machshavah ha’melechit in Elokus, by contrast, can be understood (by way of mashal and yet in complete negation of corporeality) as a simple, timeless looking in which there is no before and after, no general and particular, no oscillation between the public and the private. In that one Divine “regard,” if we may so call it, the total history of all worlds—from the first moment of “Let there be light” until the final refinement—is held together with the entire journey of each individual soul, from its root in the supernal worlds through its descent into a body and its return. And all this is not an addition to Him, but simply the way His oneness chooses to be King.

In the terms of Chassidus, one could say that machshavah ha’melechit is the interface, so to speak, between machshavah elyonah and machshavah tachtonah. From above, it is entirely one with the simple essence, unaffected and unbounded; from below, it is the source of all the differentiated narratives which we call worlds and souls, kingship and subjecthood. But in itself it is neither narrative nor subject; it is the King’s self‑knowledge as King. It is His will to be Melech, together with the entire kingdom as it is encompassed in that will, in one simple point of daas.

This is the inner meaning of saying that His Malchus is His will to be King and not a need. For a need is always aroused by its object: the hungry one is hungry because there is food that he lacks; the lonely one longs because there is a society from which he is cut off. But a will that is rooted in the essence is not for the sake of filling a lack; it is the essence’s own expression. So too, His will to be King, as it is in machshavah ha’melechit, is not because there are already worlds and souls which call for a King, Heaven forfend, but because He, in His absolute freedom, chooses that there shall be a kingdom and that He shall be its King. And in that very choice, all the details of that kingdom are contained.

Accordingly, the gap between Divine and human cognition is now clarified in a sharper way. Human thought, even at its most royal, is always a movement toward an object and a change by the object. It is like a vessel which fills and empties; its honor is to be affected. Divine “thought,” and particularly machshavah ha’melechit, is the opposite: it is the simple being of the Melech, from which all objects receive their very possibility of being thought. The worlds do not enter it; they emerge from it. It does not become kingly because there are subjects; the subjects are because He is King.

And nevertheless, the Torah chooses to speak in the language of kings and of thought, and to establish in halachah a malchus basar va’dam which is a dim imprint of this supernal attribute, in order that there should be some foothold for our minds and hearts. For when a Jew contemplates how a mortal king’s heart is transformed by his malchus, how he must hold in his mind the whole and the part, he can, by way of distance and negation, begin to sense that above there is a “thought” of the King which holds him too, his own small story, together with the entire cosmos, in one undivided gaze.

This sense will be the foundation for the avodah which comes later, in Amidah and in Yom Kippur: to know oneself as standing within machshavah ha’melechit, within that simple kingly regard which never leaves him for a moment. However, before we come to the avodah of standing, we must first understand the emotions which this awareness is meant to awaken in the soul: the yirah and ahavah appropriate to one who knows that the King’s thought is upon him always. And this will be explained in the continuation, when we speak of fear, love, and distance before the King.

6 · Fear, Love, and Distance

Now, from this awareness that the King’s thought is upon him, there must be born in the soul not only a concept but a standing, a matzav hanefesh of fear and love. For it is not enough that a Jew should know that he is held within machshavah ha’melechit; he must feel himself as one who is seen, as one who stands in the presence of the King. And this feeling is given its first form through the mashal of malchus basar va’dam, in which the Torah and Chazal have detailed for us the awe and love of subjects toward their king.

We find in Rambam Hilchos Melachim that the dread of a mortal king is described in very sharp terms. He writes that one must place the fear of the king upon himself exceedingly; that one must not sit in his place, nor speak before him, nor be overly familiar; and that the king’s awe must be upon the people as the awe of Heaven. From this it is understood that the emotional posture demanded is not merely a formal respect, but a deep inner pachad, a trembling which seizes the person such that his natural movements are checked, his words measured, his very sense of self contracted in the face of the royal presence.

And to illustrate what such awe can be, the Midrash relates concerning Shlomo HaMelech that his throne was constructed with such wisdom and wondrousness that whoever ascended it was overcome with fear. Beasts of gold and lions and eagles were there, mechanisms that moved, steps that responded, until the one who approached felt surrounded by a choreography of majesty, and his heart melted within him. Not that these devices harmed him, G‑d forbid, but that they revealed to him how far below he stood, how great was the one who sat upon such a throne. Thus the throne itself became a pedagogue of awe, carving in the heart of each visitor a sense of his own smallness and the king’s exaltedness.

However, to understand what this teaches in avodas Hashem, we must first distinguish between the different terms of fear that the Torah and Chazal employ: pachad, eimah, and yirah. Pachad is the sharp, immediate terror before something that can strike, the instinctive shrinking-back of a being that feels itself threatened. Eimah is a heavier dread, a gravity that settles upon a person when he enters an atmosphere of greatness, even if there is no direct threat. And yirah is more general: it can refer to both, but at its root it means seeing (for it is from the same letters as re’iyah) – a perception that alters the beholder, a recognition of something beyond himself which demands a change in his posture.

In malchus basar va’dam, all three are present. There is pachad, for the king has power over life and death, to decree judgement on the spot. There is eimah, for the pomp, the guards, the throne, the distance, and the laws that surround him create a field of gravity into which no one steps lightly. And there is yirah in the deeper sense, for the very sight of a true king – his composure, the wisdom in his eyes, the weight of the people that rests upon him – impresses itself upon the beholder and leaves him changed.

Yet Rambam in Hilchos Yesodei HaTorah, when he speaks of fear of Hashem, does not begin from pachad of punishment, but from contemplation of His great and wondrous deeds and creations, until a person recognizes His infinite wisdom, and immediately he is moved to praise and to desire to know Him; and when he thinks these matters, he recoils and trembles, and knows that he is a small and low creature, dark and standing with little knowledge before the Perfect Wisdom. There we see that the yirah which is the mitzvah is not first and foremost fear of harm, but awe of exaltedness – yiras haromemus – born from seeing His greatness and one’s own nothingness.

We must therefore say that just as in human kingship there is a hierarchy within fear – simple fear of the king’s rod, deeper dread of his majesty, and the transformative yirah that comes from seeing true malchus – so too in avodas Hashem there are levels. There is yiras ha’onesh, fear of punishment, which is also a fear of the King, for the punishments are His decrees; but this is a fear that remains centered in the self, in one’s own welfare. Above it stands yiras haromemus, in which the fear arises from the bittul of the soul before His exaltedness, independently of any consideration of self.

And this is the primary mashal that malchus basar va’dam gives us: not the content of fear, but its structure. Before a king, even when one does not think of punishment, one cannot help but feel that he has entered a different domain, in which he is no longer baal habayis over himself. His gestures become careful, his speech is weighed, there is a certain distance that he does not dare to cross. This distance is not a physical measure, for he can be standing close in space; it is an inner gap, a recognition that “I” and “he” are not on one plane. Such is the image for yiras haromemus before Hashem: the soul senses an absolute romemus, an uplift far beyond all worlds, and in that sensing it feels itself removed, held back from overstepping.

Yet with all this, fear alone does not define the relationship of subject and king. There is also love. For the people love their king – but their love is of a certain kind. They love him because he brings them benefit: he leads them to victory, he arranges their economy, he establishes justice, he adorns the kingdom with beauty. Or they love him because of his personal beauty and charisma, the grace of his conduct, his noble bearing. In all these, the love is a response to what the king does for them or how he appears to them.

In contrast, Rambam in the same chapter describes love of Hashem in completely different terms. He writes that a person is commanded to love Hashem with a great and exceedingly strong love, until his soul is bound up in the love of Hashem, as if he were sick with love, his mind never turning away from it. And how is this love attained? Through contemplation of His deeds and great wonders, until one recognizes His infinite wisdom, and then immediately he loves, praises, glorifies, and has a great desire to know the great Name.

Here the love is not based on personal benefit, but on emes, on truth. The soul recognizes that this Being is the root of all being, that He is the true life of its own life, and therefore it is drawn to Him with an essential pull. This love is not “I love what You give me,” but “I cannot but love You, for You are my reality.” And in the inner teachings it is explained further, that the root of this love is the soul’s source in Him, chelek Eloka mimaal mamash, such that its very essence is oriented toward Him as iron to the magnet.

We can now return to our mashal and nimshal. The love of a human king is a love of distance: the people do not know him in his inner private life; they see only the reflected light of his malchus. They love the ray. Therefore their love can coexist with great fear; indeed, the fear intensifies the love, for it invests it with romance and longing for something beyond reach. So too in avodas Hashem, there is a level of ahavas Hashem which is love of the ray: one loves His goodness, His kindnesses, His wisdom as expressed in creation and Torah. This love too can coexist with yiras haromemus, and the distance does not cancel the bond; it refines it.

But there is a point in the nimshal where the mashal breaks. For by a human king, the distance is essential to the love: were he to become a simple fellow among his subjects, the unique flavor of their love would be lost. By Hashem, however, the more the Jew comes to know his root in Him, the more his love and fear change in content. His love becomes not only for the ray but for the Essence as far as it is given to a soul to cleave; and his yirah becomes not only awe of exaltedness, but also a trembling not to be separated for even a moment from the One to whom he is bound in his very being.

This twofold movement – awe of exaltedness and love of rootedness – is the proper emotional posture of one who knows that the King’s machshavah is upon him. He fears, not lest the King harm him, but lest he obscure that gaze through sin; he loves, not only because the King sustains him, but because he recognizes in the King the truth of his own “I.” And these two together create a certain distance-in-closeness: he stands close, for he is rooted in Him; and he stands distant, for the King is infinitely exalted over him.

And this is already a preparation for the next inyan, which is the actual coming before the King in deed: how one walks, stands, and speaks in the palace. For the inner yirah and ahavah must be given form in the body, in the path of his approach and the restraint of his movements. Only then is the subject truly standing before the King, in a way that mirrors, as far as a mashal can, the soul’s standing before the Melech Malchei HaMelachim in tefillah.

7 · Approaching the Palace

From this we proceed to the seder of the body as it comes near – not merely how the heart feels, but how the feet move, how the mouth opens or is held back. For in malchus basar va’dam we find that the derech ha’geshah, the protocol of approach itself, is an avodah; and this is given in Torah and in divrei Chazal not as story alone, but as a living mashal for the seder ha’tefillah.

We see this first in the episode of Esther HaMalkah. The Gemara expounds at length how she said, “And I have not been called to come unto the king these thirty days,” and how her fear was not only fear of punishment, but fear touching the very structure of the palace. For Achashverosh’s law was that no man or woman should enter the inner court who is not called, and whoever transgresses this protocol is judged by the scepter: if the king extends the golden scepter, he lives; if not, he is lost. And the Gemara depicts how Esther, though beloved, trembled to cross that threshold unbidden, and how every step she took toward the inner chamber was accompanied by fear and tefillah, until, “the King extended to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand.”

Now, at first glance one could say: this is a story of a wicked king, a foreign court, and what has this to do with the avodah of a Jew? But the fact that the Gemara elaborates this seder ha’knisah, and that the entire yeshuas Yisrael in those days hung upon the question whether Esther may enter without being called, shows that here is being revealed a toar ha’palterin – an image of the palace – that is Torah. The inner court is not open as a street; there are outer courts, inner courts, guards, and a law of permission. Even the one whom the king loves must not burst in at his own hour and in his own manner, but waits to be summoned, or risks his life upon the extension of the scepter.

Similarly, in Nechemiah we find that when he stood before the Persian king, and the king noticed that “his face was sad,” Nechemiah said, “Then I was very much afraid.” And he explains that never until that day had he shown sadness before the king, for there too there was a seder, that before the king’s face one’s countenance must be arranged, one’s heart must be guarded, and even to hint at one’s inner pain is already a breach in protocol which evokes dread. And there, too, when he wishes to speak, he does not simply pour out his words, but first blesses the king and only then presents his request, after having silently davened to the G‑d of Heaven.

From both these narratives we see several inyanim. Firstly, that there is a distinction between being in the outer service of the king – as Esther in the women’s house, or Nechemiah in the role of cupbearer – and entering the penimiyus, the inner court, where the king’s presence is immediate. Secondly, that there is a chok of calling: “asher lo yikarei,” if he was not called, the very act of approach is a transgression. Thirdly, that even when circumstances require the servant to come or to speak, he must rely on the king’s will revealing itself toward him – symbolized by the extension of the scepter, or by the king’s gracious answer to Nechemiah. The subject does not seize the presence; he receives it.

This is all in narrative form. But halachah itself codifies the awe of place and of objects that belong to the king. Chazal taught that one may not sit on the throne of a king, nor use his scepter or staff, nor ride upon his horse, nor enter his private domain as upon a friend’s house. And in the sugyos of Sanhedrin we find that even in matters of Torah, the king’s place bears a special kedushah of honor: his seat is not for another, and even the greatest sage must not take that place. The very kli – the staff, the scepter – is bound to his person; to take it in hand is to confuse levels, to blur the distinction between the one who stands in malchus and the ones who stand before malchus.

And we must say that although by a mortal king this is to guard his kavod, lest his awe be diminished in the eyes of the people, in the nimshal it is teaching a deeper seder: that the keli through which malchus is revealed is not to be grasped by the subject as his own. There is a domain that is “shel ha’melech davka,” and the subject’s avodah is to keep that boundary intact, to know which step is his and where his step ends.

Furthermore, there is the seder of dibbur. Before a human king one does not speak until permission is given. The Rambam describes regarding kingship that one who addresses the king must stand, must speak briefly and to the point, must not raise his voice excessively, and must not answer back. And even a beloved servant, one who is cherished in the king’s inner circle, waits to be called by name or by gesture; his love does not cancel the protocol, it deepens his care for the protocol. For precisely because he is close, he trembles lest he fail in the derech eretz of the palace.

All of this, when translated into the avodah of tefillah, becomes clear. For the Mishkan and the Beis HaMikdash were structured as a palace with successive courtyards and chambers; and our sages have already compared the seder ha’tefillos to a seder of approach through such courts. Shacharis, Minchah, and Ma’ariv are not merely three times to utter requests, but three distinct ha’gashos, three entries through different gates of the same palace.

Shacharis, which is established corresponding to the morning Tamid, is like the entry as the gates of the palace open. The soul awakens from sleep, from a state of katnus and concealment, and must wash, arrange itself, recite birchos ha’shachar and Pesukei DeZimra, and then present itself at the outer gate. The day’s avodah stands before it like a court full of ministers and attendants; the sun has risen and the light of chesed is revealed. This is like coming into the outer courtyard, where the king’s presence is felt through his entourage, his decrees, his banners.

Minchah, established corresponding to the afternoon Tamid, is like passing through an inner gate in the midst of the day’s toil. Here the person interrupts himself, as it were, in the middle of his affairs; he turns aside from the marketplace of his thoughts and enters a more inward court. The Gemara already says that Minchah is especially accepted, for then the approach requires greater inner gevurah: to detach from the swirl of asiyah and to stand in a quieter, more refined space. In the mashal of the palace, this is to leave the public square and pass through the guard posts into the area where only select servants may enter at that time.

Ma’ariv, corresponding to the burning of eivarim and chalavim at night, is like the approach at a time when the palace is closing, its gates guarded, the corridors darkened. The world descends into sleep, and the dangers of the night – confusion, concealment, the stirrings of din – surround. To daven Ma’ariv properly is to seek entry when access seems least available, relying not on the revealed order of the day but on the king’s faithfulness that extends also into the night. This is like a beloved servant who is granted permission to enter after hours, as it were, when the general public is dismissed, for some matter of closeness that pertains to the king’s inner desire.

However, within each of these three tefillos themselves there is again a seder of courts and an inner chamber. There is the approach through blessings and praises, which is like the walk through the corridors; there is the standing in Amidah, which is the inner court before the king’s face. But this will be explained at length in the continuation, when we come to discuss the structure of the Amidah itself.

What concerns us here is to establish that the very way one walks, waits, and speaks is already avodah. Just as Esther fasted and clothed herself in malchus before entering, arranging her garments and her mind; just as Nechemiah composed his face and whispered a tefillah in his heart before responding to the king; just as halachah forbids one to take the king’s place or use his instruments – all of this becomes, in the nimshal, the seder ha’gashas ha’nefesh to tefillah.

The Jew must know that he does not burst into the presence of the Melech Malchei HaMelachim. He prepares, he passes through the “guards” of distraction and coarseness – the washing of hands, the removal of mundane speech, the ordering of praises – and only then does he come to the “inner court,” which is the Amidah. Even then, he does not speak at length in an unbounded way, but confines himself to the nusach she’tiknu Chazal, like a subject who uses only those forms of address that are fitting for the palace.

And here lies a subtle point. By a human king, this entire system is to protect his dignity and the stability of his rule. By Hashem, who is exalted beyond any change, the protocol is for the sake of the subject. The multiplicity of gates and guards, the waiting to be called, the restraint of movement and speech, all of these form in the soul the vessels to receive the gilui of the King’s malchus without being shattered. The palace is built for us, not for Him; but since He has chosen to reveal Himself as King, He has given us, in Torah and in these stories, the map of how to walk its halls.

And this is the preparation for what follows. For once it is clear that Shacharis, Minchah, and Ma’ariv are like three approaches through the palace courts, and that within each there is an inner chamber of Amidah, we can understand why the Amidah itself is arranged in three parts – praise, request, thanks – as three distinct postures of the subject in the king’s presence: entering, speaking the heart, and taking leave. This will be the inyan to be explained next, with the help of Hashem.

8 · The Threefold Amidah

And in this itself there is yet to understand. For if the Amidah is the inner court, where the subject already stands lifnei haMelech, why is it not one simple speech, an outpouring of the heart in one flow? Why did Chazal, in the nusach which they fixed for all generations, divide it into three distinct parts – the first three berachos, the middle berachos, and the last three – and make of this division an ikar in the din of tefillah?

And not only did they divide, but they tied this seder to a mashal of eved lifnei rabo. In the Gemara it is explained that the first three berachos are shevach, the middle are bakashah, and the last three are hoda’ah; and it is likened there to a servant who first arranges praises of his master, afterwards presents his request, and at the end, when his matter is completed, he takes leave with words of thanks and blessing. We must understand: if the whole inyan of Amidah is standing before the King, why is this threefold choreography necessary; why is the audience with the King not defined simply by the standing itself?

However, to understand this there is to preface what the Rambam writes in the beginning of Hilchos Tefillah. There he defines the mitzvah of tefillah as avodah shebalev – service of the heart – and explains that mi’de’oraisa its essence is bakashah, that a person cries out in time of distress and requests his needs from Hashem. But mi’de’rabbanan, the men of the Great Assembly ordered for Israel a seder of shevach techilah, bakashah emtza, and hoda’ah besof, and fixed the text of eighteen berachos.

So we see that from the side of the mitzvah as such, the ikar is bakashah, whereas the full form of Amidah as we know it is a takanah of Chazal. This raises a difficulty: if bakashah is the essential avodah shebalev, why burden it with these additional frames of praise and thanks, such that one who changes the seder is considered as not having davened in the form instituted by Chazal? And especially according to what was explained before, that the whole seder ha’palterin of tefillah is for the sake of the subject, to form kelim in the soul – what is the inner necessity that the heart’s speech of request be held between praise and thanks, as a thing in the middle between two vectors?

The explanation in this, according to the derech haChassidus, is that Amidah is not only the content of the prayer but the drawing down and establishing of a certain tzuras ha’nefesh, a configuration of the soul in relation to Malchus Elyon. And this tzurah is not simple but threefold. There is the vector of approach – the nefesh going out of its ordinary stance and aligning itself toward the King; there is the speech of the heart in the King’s presence; and there is the vector of return – how the nefesh is released and sent back into its world carrying within it the reshimu of standing before the King. These three movements are what the Sages vested into the three segments of Amidah.

This can be seen more clearly when one contemplates the inner content of the first three berachos. Chazal say that they are “k’neged ha’Avos,” corresponding to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov; and the teachings of Chassidus explain that in them the mispallel ascends, as it were, through the olamos – from Asiyah to Yetzirah to Beriah – until he stands at the threshold of Atzilus. In the first berachah, “Elokei Avraham… haKel haGadol haGibor ve’haNora,” the soul binds itself to the root of chesed, to the fact that there is a Creator who is “Melech Ozer u’Moshia u’Magen,” who chose Avraham and his seed. In the second, “Mechayeh haMeisim,” there shines the gevurah of Hashem, the power of resurrection and judgment, the holding-back and overcoming of concealment. In the third, “HaKel haKadosh… Ata kadosh v’Shimcha kadosh,” the mispallel comes to the bechinah of tiferes and kedushah, separation and exaltedness.

In all this, the person has not yet spoken of himself at all. He is moving out of himself, so to speak, and setting his inner face towards the face of the King. This is the “approach-vector” in the soul: the avodah of shevach. For praise is not merely to say good words about Hashem; it is to reorient one’s daas, to loosen the ego’s grasp on its own center, and to enter a different field – a field of Divine greatness and holiness. When the Gemara speaks of the servant who “mesader shevach shel rabo,” it is not only that he is being polite; he is arranging his own inner world in relation to his master. The shevach makes an inner seder.

And this is why, halachically, the first three berachos are considered one cheftza: one may not interrupt between them, nor change their nusach, nor insert personal bakashos. For they are not yet a dialogue of I and Thou; they are the soul’s ascent through the seder ha’olamos to the point where it can stand and speak. Their form is fixed because their function is to align the mispallel with the eternal seder of Malchus Elyon as it is invested in the Avos, who are the Merkavah. In the language of our new framing: these three berachos carve in the nefesh an approach-vector, a directedness toward the King that is beyond the flux of personal need.

Only after this, when the soul has been drawn out of its self-occupation and set in the stance of shevach, is it fit for the second segment of Amidah – the middle berachos, which are bakashah. Here the inyan changes entirely. Until now the mispallel spoke only of Hashem; now he speaks of himself – wisdom and understanding, teshuvah, forgiveness, redemption, healing, livelihood, ingathering of exiles, restoration of justice, destruction of evil, support of the righteous, rebuilding of Jerusalem, sprouting of David, acceptance of prayer. These are all inyanim of the world and of the individual.

Yet, because they come after the approach-vector of shevach, these bakashos are no longer merely cries of need; they become “heart-speech” in the presence of the King. That is, they are not the heart talking to itself, but the heart as it stands in the field of Malchus. The Rambam emphasizes that tefillah is avodah shebalev; and here, in these middle berachos, the heart is indeed at work, not in suppressing itself but in revealing itself before Hashem as King. This is the central phase of the audience: the subject opens his inner chamber before the royal gaze, revealing the lack and the longing of his existence in all its details.

From the side of halachah, these middle berachos have a certain flexibility: personal bakashos may be inserted within them; their number was arranged in correspondence with the structure of human needs; and even their text, in the early generations, saw some variation. This is because this segment corresponds to the unique configuration of each soul’s heart. If the first three are a fixed ladder of ascent, the middle blessings are a broad plain on which each one walks according to his path. Yet they remain within the form given by Chazal, for even the heart’s individuality must be held within the vessel of malchus, lest it spill out of the audience and return to self-talk.

Afterwards comes the third segment, the last three berachos, which are hoda’ah. Superficially, one might think that thanksgiving is only a refinement of speech – that it is derech eretz to say “thank you” after making requests. But in the nimshal, and especially in the light of what was explained above, hoda’ah is far deeper. It is the “return-vector” of the soul: how it is dismissed from the inner chamber and sent back into the corridors of life while retaining a reshimu of the King’s presence.

In these berachos the content turns again away from the multiplicity of needs back toward the King’s Name and peace. “Retzei Hashem Elokeinu b’amcha Yisrael u’v’tefillasam” – here the mispallel no longer asks for his particular; he begs that his entire tefillah be received, that the avodah he has just performed find favor. In “Modim anachnu lach,” he bows – the only full bowing within the body of Amidah – and acknowledges (“modeh” also meaning to admit) that everything is from Him, “al chayeinu hamesurim b’yadecha,” our lives themselves being in His hand. Finally, in “Sim Shalom,” he asks for a general flow of peace and blessing upon all of Israel.

This is not a return to the initial shevach; it is a new posture. At the beginning, the soul praised from outside; now it thanks from within, having been touched by the King’s attention. The return-vector is thus not a mere backing out of the room but a carrying of the encounter into the world. Thanksgiving seals the audience by stamping the awareness of dependence and gift into the heart, so that when the mispallel steps back three steps, he does not fall out of the field of Malchus but extends it into the streets of Asiyah.

In the language of our chiddush, we can say: the first three berachos draw the soul along a vector from below to above – from its own world into the machshavah ha’melechit, as much as is possible for a created mind. The middle berachos are the heart-speech that occurs within that gaze: the worlds and their stories being spoken within the simple will of the King. The last three berachos draw a vector from above to below – the King’s malchus sending the soul back into its life, but now as a shaliach and not merely as a separate being.

And this is also the reason that the threefold structure of Amidah is compared by the Sages to the Avos. For Avraham is the movement of approach, chesed ha’mes’orer mil’mata, the awakening from below that reaches out to the King; Yitzchak is the inner trembling and avodah of the heart, the gevurah that refines and reveals the depth of need and longing; and Yaakov is the shalom and yashrus that results, the ability to carry the Divine presence into the world in a stable, straight line. The three segments of Amidah are thus not only stages in time; they are archetypal modes of the soul, sewn into its very structure as a tzelem of Malchus Elyon.

According to all the above, we can now understand why the Amidah, which is the inner chamber of tefillah, is nevertheless articulated in this threefold form. For Malchus itself, as it is emanated in the sefiros, is the power of relation – to bring forth beings, to hear them, and to bestow upon them. The soul, in its daily avodah, must therefore traverse these three aspects: to align itself to the King, to speak before Him, and to be sent forth with His blessing. The halachic form of shevach, bakashah, hoda’ah is thus the precise human analog of the inner architecture of malchus.

And this prepares the ground for the next inyan. For if the three segments of Amidah map the inner movements of the nefesh in relation to the King, there remains to clarify: what is the bodily and mental posture in which all this takes place? How does one stand so that approach, heart-speech, and return should be engraved in his very stance? This is the subject of “Amidah k’Malachim,” standing as an angel, to be explained in the continuation, with the help of Hashem.

9 · Standing as an Angel

And with this we can return to the inyan of Amidah itself. For after it has been explained that the three chalakim of shevach, bakashah, hoda’ah are the seder of approach, heart‑speech, and return, there is yet to clarify: in what tzurah of guf and nefesh does this all take place? How is it that the Torah demands not only a certain order of words, but a very particular stance of the body, such that without it the tefillah is lacking?

And behold, our Sages said that when one davens Amidah his raglayim should be joined together, “as it is written by the angels, ‘and their legs were a straight leg’” – that they appear as if they possess only one regel. From this is understood that Amidah is not merely the standing of a servant before his master, as exists also in malchus basar va’dam, but a standing in the manner of malachim. For by a human king, although there is fear and awe, nevertheless the subject stands with his two feet in a natural way, and his body moves somewhat, and his face reveals his inner motions, either in dread or in love; and all this is part of the derech eretz of a court.

But here, in Amidah, the halachah is that one must bind his feet as if they are one, not turn his head, not glance about, not make gestures with his hands, and his voice is not heard outside his mouth – only his lips move slightly. His eyes are cast downward, as if he stands in dust, and his heart is directed upward, to his Father in Heaven. This is a gevul chadash entirely in how a created being may stand. It is a standing that removes from him not only coarseness but even much of the natural human expression; it is the standing of an angel.

And we need to understand: why specifically in Amidah, which is the avodah of a human soul, is he commanded to liken himself to malachim, whose avodah is of another seder entirely? Further, since the whole maamar until here has emphasized that Amidah is the inner chamber where the mashal of malchus basar va’dam guides the nimshal – “like a servant before his king” – how is it that now we depart from the mashal of basar va’dam and are instructed to imitate malachim?

However, the explanation is that in truth these two inyanim are not in contradiction; rather, the mashal of king and subject itself demands that once one has crossed the last gate and entered the innermost heichal, the derech eretz of that place is no longer like the derech eretz of the outer courts. In the outer palaces of a human king, his kavod is revealed through the multitude and the distance – through the fear upon the faces of the people, through their bending and bowing, through their speaking in a hushed but audible voice. But in the inner chamber, where only the most intimate servants are permitted, and certainly in the mashal of the Holy of Holies, there is a different kind of silence, a silence of essence, in which the multiplicity of expressions falls away.

And this is the comparison of Amidah to the avodah in the Beis HaMikdash. For the Sages established that tefillos are in place of the korbanos, and Amidah corresponds to the avodah penimis of the Kohanim. But more particularly, when the Jew says Amidah he is “as if standing in the Beis HaMikdash” – and in the beginning of Amidah he even declares, “Hashem, sefatai tiftach,” as one who is not opening his own lips but whose lips are being opened from Above, like a Kohen whose avodah is not his private action but the service of the King in His house. And according to the poskim, the most perfect kavanah is that one imagines himself standing in the Kodesh HaKodashim. If so, it is understood that the derech eretz here is not yet that of a subject outside the throne‑room, but of an oved standing mamash near the throne itself; and for this, the most fitting mashal is the malachim, who surround the Kisei and stand in bittul pashut.

From this we can also understand the reason for the particular details that the Shulchan Aruch enumerates in Hilchos Amidah: that one must stand with eimah, with the body upright, not leaning; that he must not rest on anything unless absolutely necessary; that he must not look here and there, but his eyes downward; that he must place his hands upon his heart, right over left, like a bound servant. All these are not external etiquette but keilim that form a single vertical line in the person – from the feet joined below, to the straightness of the spine, to the hands folded and the eyes cast down, and the heart lifted above. It is as if the Jew is drawing through himself a kav yashar, a straight line, that connects the lowest point of his existence with the highest point of Malchus Elyon.

And this is what can be called, in the language of avodah, “vertical silence.” For usually, silence is thought of as the absence of horizontal movement – one does not travel, one does not speak, one does not interact. But here, the silence of Amidah is not merely the cessation of motion; it is a positive standing, a column of being, in which the person aligns all the strata of his existence into one regal stillness. On the outside he appears mute and immobile; but inwardly there is a powerful, straight ascent, nefesh, ruach, neshamah, all standing in a single line before the King.

We can say that this is the inner meaning of the angels’ “one straight leg” in the vision of Yechezkel. The malachim have many wings, much movement, “ratzo vashov,” they fly from one task to another, they burn with yearning and return to their station. Yet when they stand before the Kisei, their legs are seen as one, “regel yesharah,” indicating that in their essential standing there is no division, no left and right, no inner and outer; there is only a pure axis of bittul. And so too the Jew in Amidah: all of his ratzo vashov, all of his day’s movements and oscillations, all his worries and his requests and his praises, must be gathered into a single point of being‑before.

According to this it will be understood also why the halachah demands that Amidah be recited quietly, in a whisper that is not heard by others. For in the earlier parts of tefillah – in Pesukei DeZimra, in Krias Shema and its blessings – the voice is still part of the avodah; one sings, one proclaims, one teaches his soul. But in Amidah, the voice is drawn inward; the dibbur is no longer a projection into space but a subtle movement at the border of thought and speech. This too is a form of vertical silence: the words rise like a thin column straight upward, not spreading laterally into the world of sound and ears and responses.

Here we see clearly the distinction from the way one stands before a human king. For before a human king, it is davka the audible word that confirms the relationship – the plea, the praise, the answer to his question. There is space there for some choreography, some motion, for the king’s kavod is increased by the manifestations of his subjects’ fear and love. But before the King of kings, Who knows the thoughts of man and hears even the speech of the heart, the perfection of kavod is when the subject becomes a merkavah to His malchus, a standing‑point of His reign, and therefore the externalities are minimized to the point of necessary halachah. The awe here is deeper than the awe before flesh and blood, and from its depth it quiets the limbs.

And in this lies also a great chassad: that the Holy One, blessed be He, grants every Jew, three times a day, the ability to stand in such a way that resembles the angels and the Kohen in the Holy of Holies. For really, such a stance would seem fitting only for rare moments – for once in a lifetime, or once a year, as by the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur. Yet the seder of Torah is that this angelic standing is woven into the daily life of Israel. This itself requires explanation, and will be clarified in the continuation: how can such a lofty audience, that demands total effacement and vertical silence, be repeated every day and not become, G‑d forbid, cheapened in the eyes of the person?

But before that, from all the above we may already derive an inner hora’ah. That when a person comes to Amidah, he should know that he is not only coming to speak; he is coming to become a pillar – a straight, quiet column through which Malchus Elyon is drawn into the world. His joined feet are the base of that pillar, planted in this lowly earth; his heart turned upward is its head, touching the supernal Kisei. In that moment, he is not only a subject before the King; he is the place where the Kingship itself rests. And this is the inyan of Amidah k’Malachim – to be, for those few moments, a standing‑point of the King’s presence in creation.

10 · Daily Audience, Daily Renewal

And behold, according to this, the question that was left standing becomes even stronger. For if Amidah is in the category of Kodesh HaKodashim and malachim, how is it that the Torah fixed it as a constant seder, three times every single day, for every Jew, in every place, in every state? Seemingly, such constancy would dull the sense of wonder; what is frequent becomes, in the eye of flesh, customary, and what is customary loses its trembling. This is the inner cry of the nefesh when she finds herself standing in Amidah with a heart that is not aflame: if this is truly such a lofty audience, how can I be brought into it so often that my coarseness grows accustomed and my feeling grows dim?

To begin to understand this, we must first consider that this constancy is itself from the Torah’s side. It is not that man, of his own initiative, multiplied the audiences. The obligation of three daily prayers is already alluded to in the writings of the prophets and is fixed in Torah shebe’al peh. Daniel, even in exile, “three times a day… knelt upon his knees, and prayed, and gave thanks before his G‑d, as he had done before,” and our sages derive that the three prayers correspond either to the daily offerings or to the Avos. And in the words of the Gemara, that “the prayers were instituted” in this threefold manner. It is, therefore, the King Himself Who commanded that His subjects should enter His inner chamber morning, afternoon, and night. This already indicates that the repetition is not a human cheapening, but a Divine design.

However, this itself requires understanding. For since the Holy One, blessed be He, is the knower of thoughts, He knows the nature of the human heart, that habit can weaken impression; why then did He will such frequency? If the goal is that the subject stand with the full eimah and yirah due before the King, it would seem more fitting that the audience be rarer, that its scarcity preserve its intensity.

The explanation is bound up with another principle in Torah: that in truth, there is no day like its fellow. “They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness.” The prophet does not say that from time to time there is a renewal, but davka “every morning”; the light that is drawn into the worlds with the break of each day is a light that never yet was. And as is explained in the teachings of the Arizal, that with each day there is a new hisorerus of ohr, a new hamshachah of chayus, that was not drawn on the day before, not only in quantity but in quality, a new ziv and he’arah from Ein Sof baruch Hu. For the Ein Sof is truly without end, and therefore its expressions are without repetition.

And Chassidus has already revealed that this is not only in the macro of years and generations, but in the micro of every single day in the life of a Jew. Each day has its particular avodah, its unique nisyonos, its designated birurim; the sparks that come into the domain of the soul’s service on one day are not those of the next. The inner powers that are awakened in the soul on one day are a different configuration than on another. Thus, when the neshamah descends anew from the nightly sleep, which is one-sixtieth of death and of the ascent above, and is returned to the body in the morning with “great is Your faithfulness,” she is being entrusted with a mission that is, in its precise detail, unprecedented.

If so, we can understand that the three daily Amidos are not three repetitions of one fixed audience, but three distinct meetings with three distinct revelations of malchus and three distinct states of the soul. Shacharis, at the rising of the light, corresponds to the chadashim labkarim – to the glow of a new day’s mercies, to the emergence of the soul from concealment to gilui. Minchah, when the sun is inclining to the west and man is in the midst of his asakim, is an Amidah drawn out of toil and distraction, an elevation of the mundane into the King’s presence. Ma’ariv, when darkness spreads, is an Amidah of trust in concealment, standing before the King when His face is not apparent in the world. Each of these is a different facet of “Malchuscha Malchus kol olamim,” a different way the kingship of Heaven appears within time.

And more deeply: the Zohar speaks of “it’aruta d’le’eila b’chol yom ve’yom,” a new arousal from above each day. The King does not sit in one unchanging pose before His palace. The majesty of a mortal king is itself not one simple, static thing; he appears with one dignity in the war-camp, with another in the council-chamber, with another at a public festival, with another when sitting in judgment. The essence is one – his person and his crown – but the mode of his revelation, the way that essence is clothed and perceived, is manifold. Likewise, lehavdil, the Sovereign of the world’s Malchus Ein Sof is simple and unchanging in His Atzmus, but its hisgalus in the seder of days and nights, in the rotations of history and in the inner rotations of each soul, is in infinite forms. Therefore, the audience of today’s Shacharis is an audience with the King as He reveals Himself today, and that revelation simply did not exist yesterday.

When a person does not feel this, and his Amidah seems to him “the same Shmoneh Esreh” as yesterday and the day before, it is because his own awareness has grown thick, not because the malchus has repeated itself. He is like one who stands in different courts of the king but closes his eyes, and thus sees only the memory of yesterday’s throne-room overlaid upon today’s. The avodah is to open the eyes of the heart to the “new every morning,” to sense that the King’s face today is shining from another angle.

According to this, the frequent Amidah is not a descent from its loftiness, but on the contrary, a testimony to the endlessness of the King’s malchus and of the soul’s capacity. For parallel to the new revelation of malchus on high there is, within the nefesh, a corresponding point that awakens. Each day’s Amidah does not only reveal a new aspect of the King; it also reveals a new point in the subject, a point of inner malchus within the soul herself.

For the human being is not only an eved; he is also, in his root, a melech katan. Man was created “in Our image, after Our likeness, and let him rule,” and the chachmei ha’emes explain that there is a spark of malchus in the nefesh, the power to govern the limbs, to order the life, to be a mashpia to his portion in the world. Usually, this inner kingship is concealed under the garments of nature and habit; the person runs after the day’s demands and is dragged by them, rather than standing as a king over them.

But when he enters Amidah, and particularly when he stands in that vertical silence, there occurs not only a coronation above, “Hamlichuni aleichem,” but also a micro-coronation within. In those moments, he is accepting upon himself anew the ol malchus Shamayim in such a way that he simultaneously accepts upon himself the malchus of his own neshamah over his life. This is a new Eighth Generation inyan: that every Amidah is a miniature ceremony of crowning, in which the soul hears, from the depth of machshavah ha’melechit that surrounds her, the call to be a king under the Great King.

And this explains why the Torah fixed this ceremony not once in a lifetime, nor even once a year, but daily and thrice daily. For the inner kingship of the soul is not established in a single blow. Each day’s circumstances, each day’s tests and possibilities, require a fresh acceptance of mission. Yesterday’s coronation gave him koach for yesterday’s birurim; today a new field is entrusted to him. Therefore he must be crowned again, not because the previous crown has fallen, but because the realm of his rule has expanded.

Thus, the repetition does not cheapen; it deepens. Just as a large kingdom has many courts, and the king’s majesty is magnified by his passage through them all, so the King of kings passes, so to speak, through all the days and hours, and His malchus is magnified in the multitude of audiences. And in each of these, the Jew who stands in Amidah is both the subject and the small king, receiving from the Great King the mandate and the power to rule his own little world in accordance with the King’s will.

On this basis it will be understood, in the continuation, that there are times when this inner malchus of the soul is revealed in a general way, as in the daily Amidah, and times when it is revealed in its very essence, as on Yom Kippur, when the “inner throne” of the neshamah stands exposed before the King Alone. But already now we may grasp that the constancy of Amidah is not a contradiction to its elevation. It is the very sign that the King desires to dwell constantly within His subjects, and to make of each day a new palace in which His malchus is enthroned.

11 · Yom Kippur: The King Alone

And from this itself we are compelled to say, that if in the three daily Amidos the inner malchus of the nefesh is only in a state of hisgalus according to the measure of the day and its avodah, there must be a time when that malchus is revealed not merely as a function and mission within the seder ha‑yom, but as it stands in its etzem, before all measures and all functions, as the very choice of the King in this soul. For otherwise, the constant coronations would lack a root‑ceremony, so to speak, in which the very fact that there is such a bond of king and small king is itself fixed and renewed.

And this is the inyan of Yom HaKippurim.

For behold, concerning this day the Torah speaks at great length in Parshas Acharei Mos, in the order of the avodah of the Kohen Gadol, the korbanos, the incense, the sprinklings of the blood, the sending of the se’ir la’azazel—all of which are details of a single matter, namely, that “once in the year” there is a revelation of a level of “lifnei Hashem” that is not drawn down at any other time. And after detailing all the particulars, the Torah closes with the general: “For on this day He will atone for you, to purify you, from all your sins before Hashem shall you be purified” (כי ביום הזה יכפר עליכם לטהר אתכם מכל חטאתיכם לפני ה׳ תטהרו).

We must contemplate the precision of the verse. It does not suffice with “He will atone for you,” nor with “to purify you,” but adds “before Hashem shall you be purified.” And the order is also wondrous: first “He will atone for you,” then “to purify you,” and then, as if above both, “lifnei Hashem titharu.” From this it is understood that there are three inyanim: the act of kapparah, the matzav of taharah, and a still higher level—that the very purification is “before Hashem.”

And the Mishnah in Yoma (ח, ט) articulates this with even greater emphasis: “Yom HaKippurim atones for those who repent…and Yom HaKippurim itself atones.” The lashon “atzmo” is extremely sharp: the day itself, as it stands, has a koach of kapparah independent of the particulars of avodah, to the extent that the Rambam codifies (Hilchos Teshuvah ch.2) that “Yom HaKippurim is a time of teshuvah for all, an end of pardon and forgiveness for Israel,” and that even when teshuvah is lacking in its perfection, the day nonetheless accomplishes something in the direction of kapparah.

Now, this is difficult to understand. For all kapparah, as explained there at length, is drawn through teshuvah; and teshuvah is avodah of the nefesh, return from distance to closeness. How then can it be that the day “itself” atones—what is this “itself”?—and how can we speak of a taharah that is “before Hashem,” when all the inyanim of sin and purification belong within the seder of worlds, above which, as we explained, there is no place for change at all?

Moreover: in all the inyanim of malchus that were explained, the structure is that “ein melech b’lo am”—there must be an am, and there must be some sense of distance and relation. But concerning Yom Kippur the Sifra expounds that on this day the Holy One, blessed be He, is “with Israel alone,” that He leaves, so to speak, all the sarim and all the orders of creation, and is occupied only with Israel and their forgiveness. This implies a mode of relationship of such inwardness that the whole apparatus of “am” and “malchus” seems to fall away. If so, in what sense is this still called malchus, and not some other inyan entirely? And if it is malchus, how can we say that He is “alone” with them—does this not remove even the apparent distance which is the very form of kingship?

However, the explanation is, that just as in the seder of the sefiros we distinguish between the revealed malchus which is the source of worlds, and the keter that crowns it and contains within itself the possibility of relation, so within malchus itself there is an inner point, a bechina of “Malchus HaYichud,” which is not yet the measured kingship over an existing am, but the etzem ratzon ha’melech to be a melech, as it stands in simple unity with his atzmus, before any definition of subjects or realms. And it is this bechina which is touched and revealed on Yom Kippur.

To explain: the malchus that we spoke of until now, whether in the supernal seder or in the mashal of malchus basar va’dam, is always already in relation. The King knows Himself as King over something, and even if, regarding Him, that “something” is only His own dibbur and machshavah, still, the form of malchus is “to dominate over another.” But deeper still there is the simple choice of the King in being King at all—a bechirah that is not compelled by any need for subjects, nor by any perfection to be gained from rule, but is the expression of the atzmus itself. This we may call, in our language, “Malchus HaYichud”—kingship as it is bound up with the absolute yichud of Atzmus, in which the possibility of relations is held but not yet unfolded.

And in this essential choice of malchus there is also, by necessity, the choice in the one over whom He will be King. For a kingship without any particular “am” in view is not yet a kingship even in potential. Therefore, the bechirah in malchus contains within it the bechirah in Yisrael, that they be the “am ha’melech,” chosen not because of their deeds or their future acceptance of the yoke, but in a way of etzem, before all cheshbon. This is the meaning of the teachings of our Sages and of Chassidus that “He chose us from all the nations” is rooted “kodem she’nivra ha’olam,” before any revelation of sefiros; and this is the inner content of what we are calling Malchus HaYichud: the King as He chooses to be King even without a world, choosing the soul in that very choice.

Now, the revelation of this bechirah does not fit within the daily Amidah. For the daily Amidah, as explained, is avodah within the structure of worlds—within the rhythm of times and changes, of birurim and missions—where the nefesh is crowned as a melech katan over its realm, according to the limits of that day’s conditions. There, the malchus revealed is the measured malchus that relates to an “am” which is still, in some sense, coarse and separate, and the whole avodah is to bring that “am” into kabbalas ol and bitul.

But once a year, there is an elevation beyond this entire seder, to touch the root of malchus as it stands in bechirah atzmis. This is expressed in the verse “lifnei Hashem titharu”—that the taharah is not only a cleansing of blemishes, but a being‑placed “before Hashem,” in a place where the whole metzius of sin and its stain never had a grip at all. For all sin belongs only where there is already a defined relation between King and am, with commandments and transgressions; but in the bechina of Malchus HaYichud, where the King and His chosen people are together in the simplicity of their mutual choice, there is no room for sin. Therefore, when this level is revealed, the sins are not merely forgiven and washed away; they are shown to have been, in comparison to this point, never truly attached to the etzem of the nefesh.

And this is the meaning of “the day itself atones.” For “the day” is not the twenty‑four hours as measured by the sun, but the revelation that shines in that day. On Yom Kippur, the revelation of Malchus HaYichud shines; the King reveals Himself as He is with Israel alone, in the pre‑worldly choice. This revelation, by its very nature, dissolves the hold of sin, just as light dispels darkness without struggle. Thus, even when the teshuvah of the nefesh is incomplete, the gilui of the day lifts it beyond the whole arena in which sin and teshuvah are measured.

According to this we can also understand why on Yom Kippur the seder ha’tefillah is itself changed, and there are five tefillos instead of three. For the daily three correspond to the structure of malchus within the worlds, as we explained; but Yom Kippur demands an order of avodah that can carry the nefesh from her ordinary stance as subject and small king into the intimacy of “with Israel alone,” into the very precincts of Malchus HaYichud. Therefore, there are added gate‑ways of approach, culminating in a fifth, innermost Amidah, which is Ne’ilah. Each of these is a different manner of standing before the King, until, at the close, the distinction of courts and chambers falls away, and there remains only the King and His chosen soul.

And this is also the intent of the Rambam when he writes that Yom Kippur is an “end of pardon and forgiveness for Israel.” An “end” (ketz) does not merely mean a conclusion in time, but a point in which all the lines of the preceding avodos meet in their root. All the daily Amidos of the year, all the small coronations and acceptances of mission, climb and converge in Yom Kippur, where their source in the essential choice of the King is revealed. Then it is clarified retroactively that every time the Jew stood in Amidah during the year, whispering before the King, he was in truth sustained by this deeper bond, although he did not sense it.

Thus, Yom Kippur is not only “higher” than the daily Amidah in measure; it is of a different kind. The daily Amidah is audience within the palace of the worlds; Yom Kippur is entrance, once a year, into the inner palace of the King’s own choice, where He is “alone with Israel,” where the whole drama of ruler and ruled is embraced within a yichud that precedes it. And because of this, the avodah of the five tefillos of Yom Kippur must be understood as a progressive approach to this inner chamber, each one shedding another garment of relation, until the soul stands simply as the one whom the King has always already chosen. In the continuation we will explain the order of these five tefillos, how each is a separate gate and palace in the soul’s ascent to Malchus HaYichud.

12 · Five Gates of Yom Kippur

However, before explaining the particulars of these five tefillos, one must first understand why there are specifically five. For in the rest of the year the order of tefillah is fixed at three, corresponding to the three Avos and to the three lines in the structure of the middos, as is known; and even on days of Musaf the additional prayer is not of a different kind, but an extension in the same order. Only on Yom Kippur do Chazal say (Yoma 87b) that “Yom HaKippurim has five tefillos,” and count them as a halachic chiddush of the day itself. This indicates that here we are not dealing only with a greater abundance of the same type of audience, but with an ascent through five distinct bechinos of standing before the King.

And this is understood according to what is explained in the writings of the Arizal and in the Zohar and Tikunim, that in the soul there are five general levels: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah. It is not that there are five separate souls, G‑d forbid, but that the one divine soul manifests in five modes of vitality. Nefesh is the life-force as it enclothes itself in action and in the organs of the body; ruach is the life of emotion and voice; neshamah is the inward light of understanding; chayah is a surrounding, supra-conscious vitality that touches but does not fully descend; and yechidah is the point of absolute singularity, the spark in which the soul is bound to Atzmus Yisbarach in a bond beyond all garments.

Now, since Yom Kippur is, as explained, the revelation of the King’s essential choice in Israel, it is understood that the avodah of the day must draw out and reveal these five levels of the soul as they stand before that choice. For the King’s bechirah does not grasp Israel only in their revealed faculties—deed, feeling, and intellect—but reaches into their chayah and yechidah as well. Therefore the halachah gave us five distinct tefillos, as five gates through which the soul passes, each one awakening and elevating another level, until, in the fifth, the yechidah itself is called forth to stand before the King.

The first of these is Ma’ariv of Yom Kippur, beginning with Kol Nidrei and the vidui that follows. This tefillah is the gate of nefesh. For then the day has not yet entered in its full revelation; we still stand at the border between chol and kodesh, between the ordinary flow of time and the single whiteness of Yom Kippur. The avodah is primarily in withdrawing the hands and feet of the soul from their habitual occupations: annulling vows, confessing deeds, separating from food and drink and all the inuyim. This is the work of nefesh, to loosen its grip on the coarse patterns that have formed over the year.

And it is for this reason that the first great act of the day is Kol Nidrei, in which the community stands like subjects at the outer gate of the palace, bringing all their rash words and self-imposed shackles and placing them down before the King’s court, seeking release. Here the “door” between man and G‑d is still thick, like a massive outer gate of wood and iron; the person feels his distance, his weight, his history. But precisely because of this thickness, the avodah is very practical: to cut and untie, to say “I regret,” to step away from those external forms of will that have entangled the nefesh. As the ego begins to bend, that heavy door begins, in a hidden way, to thin.

Afterward comes Shacharis, which is the gate of ruach. The night has passed in the holiness of the day, and with the dawn the emotional life of the Jew awakens in a new way. The selichos and the long order of tefillah arouse sighs, tears, yearning; the tunes of Yom Kippur, the communal responses, the repetition of the Shemoneh Esrei with its added confessions—all of this stirs the ruach to tremble and to love. If at Ma’ariv the Jew stood like a servant who has been summoned from the field and must first wash the dirt of his hands, at Shacharis he already stands in the palace courtyard, feeling the majesty of the King and the sweetness of being allowed to be there.

Here, too, the “door” is thicker than on an ordinary day, for the feelings are intense, the heart is full of many voices—fear, shame, hope, longing. But as the ruach is poured out in vidui and in the piyutim, as the emotions confess their false loves and misdirected fears, the self-centred thickness of the heart begins to melt. The very intensity of feeling, which at first seems to stand between man and G‑d like a wall, is refined into a transparent trembling in which the King’s presence can begin to be sensed through it. The door is still a door, but light begins to seep through its cracks.

The third gate is Musaf, corresponding to neshamah. For in Musaf we recount at length the Avodah of the Kohen Gadol in the Beis HaMikdash, with all its minute details, and we picture in our minds the order of korbanos, the sprinklings of the blood, the entry into the innermost place. This is an avodah of seichel, of contemplative remembrance: we are called to understand, as far as we are able, what it means that a human being, chosen and sanctified, entered once a year before Hashem on behalf of all Israel.

Thus, Musaf lifts the soul from the storm of feeling to an inner clarity of comprehension. The neshamah, which in the rest of the year is often hidden under the garments of action and emotion, now shines in its own light and contemplates the structure of holiness, the order of the palace above. And according to the depth of this contemplation, the “door” of Musaf becomes finer: it is no longer the coarse barrier of misdeed, nor even the thick tangle of unrectified emotion, but the more subtle door of self-understanding, of one’s own concepts of G‑dliness. At this gate the ego refines itself from gross selfishness to a more spiritual self-satisfaction in one’s grasp of holy matters; and when this, too, is offered and surrendered, the understanding becomes like clear glass through which the King’s radiance can be seen.

After Musaf comes Minchah, which on Yom Kippur is the fourth gate, associated with chayah. This is already deep within the day, when the body is weakened from fasting and the mind has grown weary from the long avodah. Precisely then there is revealed a surrounding, supra-conscious vitality in the Jew: a stubborn life of the soul that does not depend on food, on rest, or even on the freshness of understanding. This is hinted in the fact that at Minchah we read the parshah of arayos, the ultimate test of the life-force’s loyalty, and also that Minchah is the time established for the reading of Yonah, in which the possibility of teshuvah from the very depths is revealed.

The chayah of the soul is its capacity to be seized by something higher than it can explain—to be carried by an awareness that rings around the mind rather than sitting inside it. On Yom Kippur afternoon, when the natural energies are low, those who attach themselves to the tefillah sense a strange, encircling strength, a hovering closeness of the King that cannot be reduced to intellect or emotion. Here the “door” is the very sense of being a separate living thing; the life that feels itself as its own centre. But as the Jew surrenders even this, allowing his vitality to be drawn into the orbit of the King’s life, that living door turns translucent, like a pane of light that both separates and reveals.

And then, finally, there is Neilah, the fifth tefillah, corresponding to yechidah. The halachah itself marks Neilah as unique, with its own Amidah and its own order of selichos; and the Midrashim say that at Neilah “the King is closest,” and that “the gates are closing.” This does not mean, as is sometimes imagined in a simplistic way, that the opportunity for connection is about to be taken away, G‑d forbid; rather, that all the external gates are being closed to others, and the innermost gate is being closed with the Jew inside, alone with his King.

Yechidah is the point in the soul that never knew separation. It is not a level that is “reached” through one’s work, but one that is revealed when all that is not it falls away. Therefore, Neilah is not characterized by new ideas or new confessions, but by a certain simplicity and urgency—a calling out of “Shema Yisrael,” of “Hashem Hu HaElokim,” of “Selach lanu,” with the last strength of the day. The body is weak, the voice is hoarse, the mind is beyond weariness; and yet, from some hidden depth, a cry issues that is utterly straight. That cry is the yechidah speaking.

Here the new metaphor is understood. Each of the five tefillos is like a door through which one must pass to approach the King. At Ma’ariv, the door is thick, heavy with the knots of action; at Shacharis, thick with the intensity of untamed feeling; at Musaf, subtler but still substantial—the door of one’s own understanding; at Minchah, a living door of autonomous vitality. But the more the ego thins in each avodah, the more these doors, precisely in their thickness, become transparent. By the time Neilah arrives, there is indeed still a “door,” for the soul remains a created being facing its Creator; but this door is made only of light. It is no longer a barrier at all, but the very radiance in which King and soul behold one another.

And this is why Chazal fixed five tefillos specifically on this day. For Yom Kippur itself is the revelation of that inner bond in which all the doors are already open; yet in the seder ha’avodah it is necessary that the soul pass through the forms of distance and approach, that it may be a vessel to experience what it always was. The five levels of the soul must be brought, each in its way, into the presence of the King, so that not only the yechidah in its hiddenness, but even the nefesh in its deeds and the ruach in its feelings, will know and sense that they belong there.

With this, we are prepared to understand in the continuation the meaning of the Kohen Gadol’s entrance into the Kodesh HaKodashim on Yom Kippur. For his solitary passage through the curtains and doors of the Sanctuary is the root and prototype of these five gates in the soul’s tefillah; and by contemplating his Avodah, we will discern more deeply what it means for a created being to stand at the innermost throne of the King.

13 · The Kohen Gadol and the Inner Throne

And behold, to understand this more, we must return to that which the Torah itself sets as the center of Yom Kippur: “With this shall Aharon come into the Sanctuary… and he shall take a firepan full of burning coals… and his hands full of finely ground incense… and he shall bring it within the curtain. And he shall place the incense upon the fire before Hashem, and the cloud of the incense shall cover the Kapores that is upon the Testimony, and he shall not die.”

Here the Torah describes not merely a further degree in the service, but an Avodah that is absolutely singular: only the Kohen Gadol, only on this day, only in this precise order, and only then may he enter lifnai velifnim. And it is further emphasized, “And he shall not come at all times into the Sanctuary within the curtain… that he not die.” So that we must understand: what is this place, that its entry at any other time is death; and what is this hour, that transforms that same entry into life, into kapparah for all Israel?

Moreover, the Mishnah in Yoma, in the middle chapters that delineate the order of the Avodah, lays all its weight on this inner going: it narrates step by step the drawing of the lots for the goats, the sprinkling of the blood, the confessions, but the apex is this: when the Kohen Gadol with fear and awe enters the innermost chamber, with pan of coals in his right hand and spoon of incense in his left, walking backwards between the staves of the Aron, and placing the incense so that the smoke will rise “ad shehu memalei es ha’bayis kuloi” – until it fills the entire house. And only then does he sprinkle the blood “keneged ha’Kapores mil’matah lem’aalah.”

Thus we see that the Torah itself marks this as the essential standing of a created being at the King’s most hidden point. For although all the Sanctuary is called “Mishkan Hashem,” and the Heichal is filled with holiness, nevertheless the distinct name “Kodesh HaKodashim” is reserved for that small, cubic space where the Aron Habris stood, with the Keruvim spreading their wings above, and the voice of Hashem spoke “from between the two Keruvim” to Moshe. This is called in many places “Kisei Hashem,” “Hashem Tzevakos yoshev haKeruvim” – for there the Shechinah rested in a mode of revelation that is called “throne.”

Yet here too we must be precise. For earlier we spoke of Malchus as a trait, and of the “throne” as the configuration through which the Infinite relates to the worlds. But the Keruvim upon the Aron, in the Dvir, are not merely a symbol of that lower malchus which is source of worlds; Chassidus explains that the inner chamber corresponds to Kesser, and more particularly to Atik – the hidden delight and primal will of the Ein Sof that precedes all ordering of sefiros. How then is it called a “throne,” which connotes sitting down into relation and measured revelation?

However, it is known that there are general two levels in “throne”: there is Kisei HaChitzon, the external throne, which is the organized structure of the worlds, the “merkavah” of the four faces in Yechezkel – lion, ox, eagle, and man – upon which the Divine rides, as it were, into the multiplicity of creation. This is malchus as it already descends into the domain of “there is no king without a people,” in which the many, as many, are arranged under one. And then there is Kisei HaPenimi, the inward throne, which is not a structure of parts at all, but the first point where the Ein Sof “sits” toward relation; that is, where the simple Essence chooses to be King and chooses those by whom He will be called King. This choice is rooted in Atik, in the most hidden pleasure, but the first point of its facing outward is called a “throne,” for there the Infinite rests, as it were, upon the choice of Israel.

And this is the chiddush: that the place in the Mikdash where the Aron and Keruvim stood is not only the symbol of Divine kingship in general, but specifically of this Kisei HaPenimi – the point where Hashem’s essential choice of Israel and Israel’s essential choice of Hashem meet in one simple oneness. For the Luchos in the Aron are the testimony of His covenant, and the Keruvim – with the faces of tender youths turned toward one another according to the state of Israel’s service – are the testimony of Israel’s turning toward Him. And all of this is covered and unified by the Kapores of pure gold, upon which the blood is sprinkled and above which the cloud of incense spreads, signifying that beyond all revealed forms of love and fear there is a covering simplicity, where all multiplicity is absorbed in a higher unity.

Yet if so, we must still ask: why is it that to this innermost throne only the Kohen Gadol may enter, and only once in the year? If the Kisei HaPenimi is the meeting of choices, which is the very root of Israel’s being, it would seem that this should be accessible always and to all. And also, why is it that even the Kohen Gadol, on this day, may not see it bare, but must first cause the cloud of incense to cover the Kapores, “so that he not die”? Is not the whole content of Yom Kippur that the essence be revealed, and that “before Hashem you shall be purified”?

But the matter is as follows. This simple point of meeting is indeed the truth of every Jew at all times; but in the seder ha’hishtalshelus and in the seder ha’avodah, there is a great difference between etzem and hisgalus. The essence of the bond is not subject to time and place; yet for that bond to be consciously experienced in a way that the created soul can receive without its separate existence dissolving completely, there must be the most exact measurements: who, when, and how. The limitation of “with this shall Aharon come,” and “at no time shall he come,” is not because the Essence is narrow, Heaven forbid, but because the vessel of a created being can only bear the revelation of Kisei HaPenimi in a form of utmost tzimtzum and protection. Thus, only one man, who himself embodies the collective holiness of Israel, and only on the day when Malchus HaYichud shines, may be that vessel.

And therefore, the Torah commands that the cloud of incense precede the revelation of the Kapores. For the incense, as explained in Chassidus, corresponds to the delight in Hashem that is beyond all graspable faculties – “rei’ach nicho’ach,” a pleasure sensed but not seen. When the Kohen Gadol brings in this cloud, he draws a garment of pleasure and sweetness around the meeting-point of the two choices, such that it can be revealed inwardly without bursting outward into visible form. The Kapores is covered, not to hide it from him, but to allow him to stand there and live. The “and he shall not die” here is not merely a negation of punishment, but the positive description of a level of revelation that would, without this cloud, draw the soul out of its body in sheer yearning. The smoke is the gentle veil that lets a created being remain existent in the presence of the inner throne.

According to this we may understand the necessity that the Kohen Gadol sprinkle the blood of the bull and goat toward the Kapores “lifnei haKapores” and “al pnei haKapores.” Blood is life as it courses in the vessels – the concrete, individual vitality of Israel in all their deeds and failings. When he sprinkles there, facing the Kapores and upon its surface, he is, as it were, inscribing the actuality of Israel’s life upon the place of the covenant, uniting their story below with the simple choice above. And the order – first bull, then goat; first within, then outward – expresses that from the side of Israel’s inner priestly point, and from the side of their external sins, all is drawn into that one meeting.

Now we can grasp why Chazal said that when the Kohen Gadol exited in peace from the Holy of Holies, a great joy filled Israel, for it was known then that the year was granted life. For his entry and return are not his private experience alone; he goes in as the embodiment of the people, and he stands at that throne where King and nation are one in choice. If he can stand there and emerge, it is proof that the bond holds at the deepest level, and that all that opposed it has been nullified.

And this is also the inner meaning of the statement that the Holy of Holies corresponds to Kesser. For Kesser is the supernal will and delight that crowns all the lower traits and guides them. When the Kohen Gadol enters there, he stands not only before a concentrated point of Shechinah within the world, but before the very crown of kingship as it rests upon Atzmus. In that standing, the two directions of choice – Hashem’s choosing Israel, and Israel choosing Hashem – are united in absolute simplicity. This is the Kisei HaPenimi.

On this basis, we can now understand more deeply the avodah of the soul in Neilah. For all the day we spoke of doors and chambers, of ascent through nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, until yechidah. But the prototype of all this is that lone man who, once a year, walked through the successive spaces of the Mikdash until he reached the innermost room. His physical path – from outer courtyard to inner, from Heichal to Dvir, from before the curtain to beyond it – is the body of the soul’s inner path; his cloud of incense is the soul’s simple delight in G‑dliness that covers over all defined understanding at the last moment; his standing between the staves of the Aron, unseen by all, is the image of the soul’s yechidah standing in Neilah, alone with its King.

However, we must emphasize that he is not only a symbol but a channel. For through his Avodah, the Kisei HaPenimi in the supernal is aroused and revealed into the worlds. This is why the forgiveness of Yom Kippur is bound to his service as described in Vayikra and in Mishnah Yoma; and even now, when we lack the physical Aron and the Holy of Holies in stone, we nevertheless recite in Musaf “and thus would he say…,” for by evoking and contemplating his going within, we draw its spiritual counterpart into our own Neilah. In the continuation, we will see how this becomes the model for the inner Kohen Gadol in every Jew, who enters his own Holy of Holies and stands there, at his own Kisei HaPenimi, with the King.

14 · The Inner Kohen Gadol

On the basis of all the above, it is understood that if the Avodah of the Kohen Gadol in the Beis HaMikdash is to be a model for the Avodah of each and every soul in Neilah, it must be that within the soul itself there is a corresponding point, an inner Kohen Gadol, that can in truth enter such a place. For were this not so, the whole analogy would remain only in the realm of imagination and story, and not in the realm of pnimiyus, where Torah speaks.

And indeed, so we find explicitly in the words of our Rebbeim. In Iggeres HaKodesh it is explained that in every Jewish soul there are known levels—nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah—and beyond them a fifth, yechidah, which is not merely a higher degree within the same series, but a different kind of inyan altogether, a point of simple oneness with the Ein Sof. There it is described as that in which the soul is “bound and united in a wondrous unity” with its root in Elokus, in a manner that no separation and no fall can reach. All the blemishes and coverings that can affect nefesh, ruach, neshamah, and even chayah, do not grasp yechidah at all; it remains “alone,” yachid, with the Yachid of the world.

Now, this is precisely the definition of what we called the Kisei HaPenimi: a place where the two choices meet in absolute simplicity, ungrasped by division. It follows that the analogue to that inner throne within the soul is the yechidah itself. And if so, just as only the Kohen Gadol may enter the physical Dvir, so too, only yechidah can truly “stand” in that inner point of the soul’s Mikdash. This is the inner Kohen Gadol.

And this is in accordance with what the Baal Shem Tov taught, that in every Jew there is a nekudah of the Kohen Gadol—an inner point that never left the Beis HaMikdash, that even in the greatest descent remains as it was, standing before the Aron. The Baal Shem Tov would say that when a simple Jew sighs to his Father in Heaven, it is from that nekudah that the sigh emerges; it is the inner Kohen who yet remembers the inner chamber and longs to return.

However, to understand this more in the way of seder and structure, we must first recall the teaching of the Zohar that “man is a small world,” and specifically its statement that the Beis HaMikdash below is mirrored in the soul. The chambers and courtyards of the Mikdash are not merely geographical; they are a map of the soul’s faculties and garments. Thus, when the Kohen Gadol traverses them, he is tracing a path which exists within every nefesh Yisrael.

We must therefore lay out, as much as possible, this inner map. And although all such maps are only approximations—for in truth the soul is beyond any spatial division—nevertheless, Torah has spoken of “outer courtyard,” “inner courtyard,” “Heichal,” and “Dvir,” and our Sages have applied these terms also to madrigos in nefesh; thus we are authorized to use them as kelim for contemplation.

The outer courtyard of the soul is the domain of behavior, the realm of thought, speech, and action as they are already clothed in worldly terms. Here stand the “altars” of habit and the “lavers” of washing: the daily routines, the deeds of mitzvah and, G‑d forbid, the opposite. It is here that man meets the world; it is here that the world sees man. This is the place of nefesh as it animates concrete doing, of practical mind and habitual feeling.

Further within is an inner courtyard, more sheltered from external gaze. This corresponds to the emotional powers—ahavah and yirah and their many offshoots—as they already have some refinement and structure, but are not yet in the pure light of mochin. Here the soul burns like the outer lamps; here the heart offers its korbanos of desire, fear, joy, and brokenness. This is mainly the domain of ruach.

Deeper still is the Heichal, the sanctuary of intellect. Here are the “tables” and “menorahs” in their inner sense—the faculties of chochmah, binah, and daas, as they contemplate Elokus, as they grasp and arrange. Here the soul learns Torah, understands, reflects; this is the residence of neshamah. It is already a place of kedushah in which no coarse thing may enter, yet it is still a place of forms and distinctions, of ideas and feelings that can be described.

But beyond all these is the Dvir, the innermost chamber. As in the Mikdash, it is not a large space; indeed, it is in a certain sense “no space,” for as our Sages say regarding the Aron, “its place was not measured.” So too in the soul: this level is not extended across the faculties; it is a single point of simple being, unbounded by definition. This is the place of yechidah, which we may call, in the language we have been using, the yechidah‑throne of the soul.

Now, each of these inner domains has its own “kohanim,” its own serving powers. In the outer courtyard, it is the behavioral discipline—the power of action, of kabbalas ol in practice—that serves, like simple priests bringing offerings. In the inner courtyard, it is the emotional refinement, the midot that have been educated by Torah, that offer their service. In the Heichal, the “priests” are the mochin: the power of contemplation in Elokus, of understanding and unifying conceptions of His oneness. But just as in the Mikdash only one Kohen Gadol may enter the Dvir, so too within the soul there is only one faculty that can truly cross all partitions and stand in that inner point: the yechidah, the inner Kohen Gadol.

This yechidah is not another seichel, nor another midah; it is not even a more subtle daas. Its whole definition, as explained in Iggeres HaKodesh, is simple cleaving—an essential attachment that does not pass through comprehension or feeling. When it is revealed, it does not argue, does not persuade, does not negotiate with the other powers. It simply is. And by its very being, it draws the rest of the soul after it, as iron filings are drawn by a magnet.

We can now understand in a more precise way what occurs on Yom Kippur, and especially in Neilah, within the inner palace of the soul. All the year, the avodah is mostly in the outer courtyard and inner courtyard: correcting deeds, refining feelings. On Shabbos and Yom Tov there is more entry into the Heichal: increased Torah, deeper contemplation. But the Dvir remains, as it were, closed; the inner Kohen Gadol stands there concealed.

On Yom Kippur, however, the doors are opened. The five tefillos strip away, one by one, the garments of ordinary consciousness, until in Neilah the yechidah stands revealed. At that moment, the inner Kohen Gadol takes upon himself the white garments of simplicity: all calculations of gain and loss, of reward and punishment, all complex structures of understanding and feeling, fall away. The soul stands only as “I before You,” in the truth of its essential bond. This is the entry into the Dvir of the soul’s Mikdash.

And just as the Kohen Gadol must pass through all the outer spaces in a specific order, with a specific Avodah in each, so too the inner Kohen Gadol does not leap directly to the yechidah‑throne. His peculiar greatness is precisely that he can traverse all the partitions; that he can be present in behavior, in emotion, in intellect, and yet not be captured or exhausted by any of them. On Yom Kippur, the yechidah does not negate the other faculties; rather, it carries them within it as it enters. The hands, the heart, the mind—all are taken along in that simple standing.

This is the new inner map that is revealed in the Eighth Generation: that the soul is a palace whose architecture mirrors the Mikdash in all its details; that within each domain of the soul there is service appropriate to that place; and that above them all, yet within them all, there is a hidden sovereign‑priest, the inner Kohen Gadol, who alone can step over every threshold and stand at the yechidah‑throne.

And with this we approach the next inyan. For if there is within each Jew such a point, standing in such a place, then the manner in which it stands before Hashem cannot be described only in terms of subject and king, of fear and distance, as in malchus basar va’dam. In the continuation we will see that at this level the very geder of “subject” and “King” is transformed; a different kind of bond is revealed, for which no earthly monarch can serve as a full mashal.

15 · Beyond Subject and King

However, even after all this, there still remains a great difficulty. For we have explained that in the yechidah‑throne the soul stands as “I before You,” without garments and without measure. Yet, up until now, the fundamental shape of the relation has still been spoken in the language of subject and King, only that the subject is more inward, the King more inward, and the palace more inward. It is still “I” who stand and “You” before Whom I stand.

But according to what is explained in the holy Tanya in those chapters that speak of the choice of Israel, this is not sufficient. For there the Alter Rebbe establishes that the bond of Hashem with Israel is not only a relation of Creator and creature, nor even only of King and people, but of essential choice—bechirah atzmis—that precedes and transcends all reasons and measures.

For he explains that the choosing of Israel is not because of any greatness found in them within the seder hishtalshelus—neither because of their deeds, nor because of their wisdom, nor because of the root of their souls being higher than the angels—since all these would be a choice “with a ta’am,” a choice that leans to one side due to superiority. Rather, the choosing is from the simple essence of the Ein Sof, Who is above all definitions of reason and advantage, and therefore can choose specifically in a mode that is free from all comparison. And this is the meaning that He chose us from all the nations, that His very Essence, as it were, inclined to Israel with a choice that has no “why,” and therefore is unchangeable and eternal.

From this it is understood that at the point where this choice is revealed, the entire geder of “King and am” is already broken and surpassed. For malchus, even Malchus Elyon, is a middah, a way of relating: it requires an opposite, a subject, a many, a distance. Bechirah atzmis, however, is not a relation at all; it is the simple self‑turning of Atzmus to that which is one with Him in His own knowing. There, the Jew is not first “am” and then “nivchar,” but the very fact that he is “Yisrael” is itself the expression of that choice.

And this is alluded to in the words of the Midrash that in a certain inyan “Yisrael and Hashem are one.” Chas veshalom to understand this in a manner of identity of essence, for the Creator and the created never, Heaven forbid, become one metzius. Rather, the oneness spoken of is a oneness of choice: that in the place where Atzmus is revealed as choosing, that which is chosen is not outside of Him as something upon which He acts, but is known within His own simplicity. The Jew, as rooted in yechidah, is not an object opposite the Chooser, but a point within the Chooser’s own self‑relation, as it were.

And this is the secret of the no‑space of the Holy of Holies that our Sages reveal: that the Ark did not occupy place, yet its dimensions were present. For if we look at the Kodesh HaKodashim only as a very holy place in the seder haolamos, it must still be a place—it must, at the least, be encompassed by measure. But Chazal testify that here there was a paradox: the measure of the Ark, when calculated from wall to wall, disappeared. Place was present, and yet no place was taken.

The inner meaning of this is that in the Dvir shines a glimmer from a level where the very notion of “here” and “there,” of inside and outside, falls away. The Ark is there as a keli, with exact measures; the room has walls and cubits. And yet, relative to the gilui that rests upon them, their being‑something within space is as nothing. This is the sign within the worlds of a light that comes from beyond worlds.

So it is within the soul: in the yechidah‑throne, the soul’s entire structure—its behaviors, its feelings, its understandings—are present, with all their individual measures. The inner Kohen Gadol carries them in. Nevertheless, relative to the revelation of bechirah atzmis that shines there, they are not what define the bond. They are like an Ark that stands and yet does not take space, a form that is there but is not what makes room.

On this basis we can begin to speak of a new inyan—what can be called, in the language of the Eighth Generation, Malchus HaAtzmis.

For until now, when we spoke of malchus, even in its loftiest forms, we meant a middah in Elokus: His will to relate in a manner of King and am, His self‑limitation into Seder Hishtalshelus, His acceptance upon Himself, as it were, of the crown of relation. This is all Malchus as a sefirah, Malchus of Atzilus, Malchus HaYichud, and the like. There, “ein melech b’lo am” is a tenai in the geder ha’inyan: where there is no “am,” the name “melech” does not apply, even if the Atzmus is the same.

But there is another way to speak of kingship, which is not a middah among middos, but a mode of the Essence itself. Not “He is a King over something,” nor even “He chooses to be King,” but that the very simplicity of Atzmus includes a self‑mode that can be called “Kinghood” only by way of borrowing, since it has no opposite and no dependence. This is Malchus HaAtzmis.

And one can say, by way of haskalah, that Malchus HaAtzmis is the name for that level of Atzmus where the whole inyan of “King and am” is only a garment, an outer description. There, the “King” is only the Essence as He knows and chooses Himself; and the “am” is the inner point of Israel as they are known within that self‑knowledge. The bond between them is not that He rules and they are ruled, but that He and they are bound in one bechirah atzmis—His essential choosing of them and their essential choosing of Him are a single, simple point.

From here it is understood why no human king can ever mirror this. For every malchus basar va’dam, even the most righteous, even David Melech Yisrael, is constituted as king only in relation to those over whom he rules. If there were no people, if they did not accept his authority, there would be no malchus. His entire kavod is in the revelation of his distinction over them, and his entire pnimiyus of kingship is in his responsibility to them. His “kinghood” is a structure of relation from beginning to end.

And therefore, even when he loves his people with an essential love, even when his whole delight is in them and theirs in him, this love remains within the framework of two: one who bestows and one who receives, one who commands and one who obeys. The king cannot, in truth, choose his people with bechirah atzmis, because he himself is not bechirah atzmis. He is born into kingship or rises to it; he is shaped by history and by the people’s acceptance. His essence is not simple freedom from all definitions; therefore, his choice is never absolutely free from reasons.

But by Hashem Yisbarach, Who is Atzmus Ein Sof, beyond all definitions and influences, there can be a choice that is truly essential—without cause, without change, without dependence. And because this choice is Himself, as it were, it follows that that which is chosen stands not outside of Him, but within His own atzmi life. In this sense alone one may speak of “Yisrael and Hashem are one”: that in Malchus HaAtzmis, the King and the chosen are held in one indivisible act of choice.

This is what is hinted in the description of the Holy of Holies as a place of no place. For Kisei HaPenimi, as we spoke earlier, is not merely the throne of a higher malchus, but the inner “throne” of this atzmi kingship. There, the throne is not elevated above a people, but sunk, as it were, into the very heart of the chooser, and the people are not spread out beneath but are gathered within that heart. There is no distance to bridge, no multiplicity to arrange, no fear of rebellion; there is only the simple fact that He, in His Essence, wills Israel, and Israel, in their essence, will Him.

When the inner Kohen Gadol of the soul stands at the yechidah‑throne, this is what is touching him. He is not then a subject coming in from outside to swear allegiance; he is the inner point of Israel as it is held within the Divine bechirah. His “I before You” is itself the ray of “You before Yourself,” as it were. The very pronoun “I” at that moment is not the “I” of a creature standing over against its Maker, but the “I” of the pintele Yid that has no other will but His.

And therefore, at that level, the entire vocabulary of malchus basar va’dam, which Chassidus has used until now as a mashal to teach awe and distance and protocol and approach, must be set aside. Not, Heaven forbid, that it is false—it is the divinely‑given mashal for all the levels of Malchus that are within relation and within worlds. But the inner point that is revealed in the Dvir, in Malchus HaAtzmis, has no complete analogue below. Here the mashal breaks.

Yet precisely through its breaking, its limitation is revealed, and with it the absolute distinction between Hashem and all images. For if we had only the lower malchus, we might imagine that He is like a King of flesh and blood, only greater; that His knowledge is like ours, His rule like ours, only perfect. But when we encounter a level where the whole form of king and subject dissolves into a single essential bechirah, we are forced to recognize that all our speech before was only to bring the mind close; the truth itself is other, beyond.

And this is the completion of the inyan we began: that malchus basar va’dam is a mashal, and like every mashal, it both reveals and conceals. It reveals the seder of approach, the forms of awe and love, the structures of protocol and standing. It conceals the atzmi simplicity where there is no “before” and “after,” no “far” and “near,” and even “King” is only a word for the way Atzmus chooses Himself together with Israel.

In the continuation, with Hashem’s help, we will see how, when one knows of this inner bond of Malchus HaAtzmis, all the earlier levels—of king and subject, of palace and gates, of Amidah and Yom Kippur—are reread. They are no longer ladders to reach a distant Sovereign, but veils through which a pre‑existent oneness is allowed to appear.

16 · Re-reading the Palace

According to all the above, we are now compelled to return to the beginning of the inyan, and to read again all that was said of king and people, of palace and gates, of Amidah and Yom Kippur, but this time in the light of Malchus HaAtzmis, where king and chosen one stand in one simple bechirah.

For at first glance, when we said “there is no king without a people,” the mind understood this as a law of relation: that the status of king depends on the existence of an “am,” distant and many, and that therefore, so to speak, the revelation of Malchus Above is drawn after the creation and acceptance of the worlds below. And even when we refined it, saying that for Hashem this is not chas v’shalom a dependence but the very definition of Malchus as a middah, still the picture that stood before the mind was of a King there, and a people here, and of a bridge of relation stretched between them.

But now, after knowing that there is a higher mode, Malchus HaAtzmis, in which “King” and “am” are not two poles joined by a bridge but one indivisible choosing, we must say that the statement “there is no king without a people” has, in its root, another taste altogether. Not that the King requires an external am in order to be King, but that the very inyan of “king” in its atzmi source is His will that the essential bond with Israel not remain concealed within Himself alone, but be brought into revelation. The “am” in that dictum, when read in its supernal root, is not first of all a coarse multitude standing outside the palace, but the point of Israel as it stands within His own simple knowing. “There is no king without a people” now reads: there is no revelation of this atzmi malchus without its being together with the one He has chosen in His essence.

Thus, the whole seder of malchus that we traced in the lower levels is itself only a way in which this hidden togetherness is allowed to show itself. The distance of the “am,” its multiplicity and its coarseness, are not the cause of malchus, but its garment. For the inner reality is that they already stand with Him in the simple point of bechirah; only that this oneness is wrapped, thickened, obscured in the form of a people outside, accepting a King inside. The “no king without a people” below is a shadow of the “no revealing of the essential King without His essential am” Above.

And this also is the deeper meaning of what we called machshavah ha’melechit. Earlier, we spoke of it as a Divine “thought,” encompassing all worlds and all souls in one simple gaze, in contrast to human thought which enters into its objects and is changed by them. Now we can add: the inner content of this kingly machshavah is not merely that He knows the worlds; it is that He knows Himself together with Israel. It is His self‑knowledge as the One who has chosen. In that simple knowing, the story of the worlds and the story of the soul are not two histories that He surveys from above, but two sides of a single act—His bechirah and their being‑chosen—as they stand within Atzmus.

Therefore, when the soul is aroused to the awareness that “the King’s thought is upon me,” if it remains only with the earlier understanding—that a high, exalted Mind is paying attention to a small creature—its fear and love will be true but external. When, however, through the light of Malchus HaAtzmis, it senses that this machshavah ha’melechit is His very self‑knowledge in which its own root is held, then the awe and love are transformed. The subject no longer imagines itself standing opposite an Other, but feels itself mirrored within the King’s own daas. This is not, Heaven forbid, to say identity of essence—for He alone is Creator and they are created—but that the deepest point of their existence is already inscribed inside His simple knowing of Himself.

With this we can now return to the image of the palace with its many gates, which accompanied us from the beginning of the maamar. At first, the palace was understood as a structure of distance: outer courtyards where many may stand, inner courts where only select servants may enter, and inmost chambers where only the king himself and the highest officers may tread. The doors, the guards, the waiting in antechambers—all drew a picture of a far King, to whom one must slowly, carefully, and with great restraint, make one’s way.

But after what was explained, we may say—in the way of a new metaphor suitable to this generation—that the palace is also a hall of mirrors. That is, the walls and doors that seem to separate the subject from the King’s chamber are themselves polished surfaces, reflecting his own image back to him from different angles and distances. In the outer court he sees himself as a distant figure among many, small in the grandeur of the place; in the inner courts he recognizes features of his own face emerging more clearly; and in the inmost room, when he stands finally face to Face, he suddenly realizes that the countenance before him, the visage of the King, is the very root‑form of his own.

This does not mean, Heaven forbid, that he and the King are one essence; that would be a collapse of all Torah boundaries, a confusion of Creator and creature. Rather, it means that his true “I” was never the isolated, separate subject that he imagined himself to be in the outer yard. His real self is a tzelem, a form drawn from the King’s countenance; his face is an echo of that Face. The mirrors of the palace are the levels of avodah and seder ha’ishtalshelus, through which he slowly recognizes that his being is bound up, from the outset, with the One before whom he stands.

According to this, the gates and partitions are not there in order to create distance where none existed, but to thin and refine the soul’s perception of a closeness that was always there. What appeared as barriers are, in truth, veils over an intrinsic intimacy. Each gate traversed is not a step closer to a far King, but a layer lifted from the soul’s own face. By the time it reaches the innermost chamber—whether this is in the daily Amidah, or in Neilah on Yom Kippur—it does not find a new King waiting there whom it had not known, but discovers that the One before whom it now trembles and cleaves is the same One in whose bechirah its own root has always rested.

And this is the inner rereading of Amidah. We spoke of it as standing like an angel in the Holy of Holies, with joined feet and vertical silence, as if entering a place where one has no prior right. Now, however, we understand that this very stillness is the soul’s recognition that it is not intruding into a foreign space, but returning to its own root‑room. It is not that a distant subject is admitted, three times a day, into the King’s otherwise closed chamber; it is that the inner Kohen within is allowed, again and again, to show itself as what it always is—a point of the King’s own choosing presence in the world. The repetition does not cheapen the audience, because it is not a new grant of entry each time, but a renewed unveiling of an ever‑present bond.

Similarly with Yom Kippur and its ascent through the five prayers. On the surface, the day seemed an annual exception, in which a once‑distant people are briefly allowed to approach closer than usual, until, in Neilah, the gates are closed and they stand with Him alone. In the light of Malchus HaAtzmis, we can now say: the “closing of the gates” is not a shutting out of others, but a shutting out of all those images of self that are not the true face. What remains at the end of the day is the bare relation of chooser and chosen as they are already one in His simple knowledge. The many chambers traversed over the day have been like successive mirrors, each stripping away a borrowed face until only the root‑visage of the Jew as held in Hashem’s bechirah remains.

Yet, again, it is crucial to guard here the distinction between oneness of relationship and identity of essence. The fact that the soul discovers its root in the King’s Face does not mean that it is that Face. The hall of mirrors does not turn the reflection into the original. All the halachos of awe, all the protocols of distance—of not sitting in His place, not taking His crown, not confusing servant with Master—remain in their full force. The more the soul knows how inwardly it is bound up with Him, the more it must hold fast, in practice, to the boundaries that Torah has placed between Creator and creature. For the very greatness of the bond is that He, who is utterly beyond, has chosen to inscribe a trace of His kingship within a finite being; and the awe of that wonder is preserved only when the finitude remains consciously finite.

And this brings us, naturally, to the practical avodah that must follow from such a rereading of the palace. If all our approach to the King—whether in human protocol, in Amidah, or in Yom Kippur—is in truth a training for recognizing our own reflected face in His, then every halachah of how to stand before a mortal king, every measure of awe and restraint before authority rooted in Torah, becomes a preparation for the soul to bear the light of its inner bond without confusion. In the continuation, with Hashem’s help, we will therefore consider how the body and the natural soul can be educated, even through the conduct required before flesh and blood, to become a faithful vessel for this higher knowledge when we stand before the King of kings.

17 · Training Before Flesh and Blood

According to this, we can now understand in a more inner way the detailed dinim that the Torah gives concerning a mortal king. For the Rambam, when he sets out the laws of kingship, does not suffice with the general command of awe and fear, but descends into particulars that, at first glance, seem to concern only the preservation of external kavod: that one may not ride on the king’s horse, nor sit on his throne, nor use his sceptre or any of his vessels for a mundane purpose; that one may not see him unclothed or in a degraded state; that his dread should be upon them, and that they should treat him with an awe exceeding that accorded to any other authority.

And it is known that the Rambam’s way in Mishneh Torah is that every halachah is weighed and precise. If the whole point were only to secure the functioning of a strong government, a general command of respect would have been sufficient. Why, then, this insistence that no one place his foot in the stirrup of the king’s horse, that no one lean upon his staff, that even that which only carries the radiance of his malchus may not be taken into the hand of another?

However, based on all the above, the matter is understood. For since the very institution of malchus basar va’dam has been established as a mashal to train the created being in how to stand before Malchus Shamayim, it is necessary that the mashal not remain in the realm of abstract daas alone, but that the body itself, with its habits and reflexes, should be educated into the form of bittul required of one who stands before a king. And this education is not accomplished by lofty contemplation alone, but specifically by repeated concrete acts, through which the animal soul learns, in its own language, that there is in the world a domain that is not “mine,” a place, a seat, a vessel, a way of moving, that is set apart utterly for another.

This is also the explanation that the Sefer HaChinuch gives when he speaks of the mitzvah to appoint a king. He writes that the root of the command is that man is drawn after his deeds, and therefore, when he is accustomed to accept upon himself the authority of a human king, and to be in awe of him, he will acquire within himself the capacity to receive upon himself the yoke of Heaven and to tremble before Hashem. That is, the fear before basar va’dam is not the goal, but a training of the midah of yirah within the natural soul, so that it be ready to bear the far subtler and more inner awe that is demanded when one stands before the King of kings.

Accordingly, when the Rambam records that none may ride upon the king’s horse, he is not only preventing a lessening of the king’s political prestige; he is inscribing into halachah a repeated inner exercise: to see a thing of this world that is accessible in principle to one’s hand and yet to stop, to withdraw, and to say—this is not for me, this belongs to the king. And similarly with the throne and the sceptre and all the other vessels of kavod: each prohibition is a practice in not extending the hand where the will of Torah has drawn a boundary.

From this we understand further that these halachos are not merely protections around an exalted individual, but a discipline given to the people as a whole. The very existence of such a figure in the community, whose person and belongings are hedged about with distance, engraves in the collective body a posture of deference and of self‑limitation. And when this is done according to Torah, it is not a humiliation of the subject, G‑d forbid, but a liberation: it frees him from the illusion that all spaces are his, that he is the centre of every domain. He learns, in his flesh, that there is something higher than his reach.

And this is why all these dinim are codified even though, for generations, we lack a literal king in Israel. For Torah is eternal; if a command is written, it is because its light is needed in every time. When the simple pshat—actual approach to a Davidic king—is absent, its inner content must find expression in other garments. And in truth, the generations of Chassidim have already shown how this inner training can continue even in the absence of a physical melech.

For it is known how Chassidim would prepare to enter the Rebbe’s room for yechidus. They would immerse in a mikveh, review in their mind what they wished to say, farher their own thoughts so as not to stand in confusion, and they would enter with trembling, with a sense that they are stepping out of their own private domain into a place that is not theirs. There were hanhagos not to turn one’s back as one left the room, to recede slowly, to avoid raising one’s voice, to be careful with every gesture. And no one imagined, G‑d forbid, that the Rebbe is G‑d; they knew well that he is flesh and blood. But precisely for this reason, their conduct becomes for us an instructive mashal: how Jews, saturated with the teachings of Chassidus, understood that awe before a tzaddik is itself avodas Hashem, an exercise in shaping the body into a vessel for higher yirah.

And this extends not only to a Rebbe, but to every authority whose standing is rooted in Torah and kedushah: a Rav in his beis din, a teacher in his class, the Sefer Torah on the bimah, the Aron Kodesh in the shul. When one refrains from sitting in the Rav’s fixed seat, when one rises upon the entry of a talmid chacham, when one does not rest an elbow upon the amud where the Sefer Torah lies, this, too, is the same training. The point is not to inflate the person’s ego, G‑d forbid, but to accustom the body to distinguish between ordinary space and space that is set apart by Torah. In this way, the “muscles of awe” are formed: small fibres in the animal soul that contract whenever it encounters a border established by kedushah.

And here we may add, in the spirit of the Eighth Generation, that in our time, when the direct experience of a melech Yisrael is not present, Divine Providence has arranged that we are surrounded by many miniature forms of such discipline. There is the fixed place in shul that one does not take from another; there is the halachah not to walk before one who is davening the Amidah; there is the respect shown to parents and to teachers. All these are opportunities to practice, in reduced scale, that act of stepping back, of not taking the “horse” or the “throne” of another. Each time a Jew restrains his natural impulse to sit where he pleases, to speak when he wishes, to interrupt or to lean upon something holy, he is bending his nature toward the pattern of malchus: there is an Above, and I am a subject.

And the innovation here is that this training is not an end in itself but a redirection. The awe that is cultivated through these acts must not remain stuck to the vessel—neither to the mortal king, nor to the Rebbe, nor to the Rav, nor to the object—but must be consciously turned, again and again, toward the One in whose Name all these stand. When one rises before a talmid chacham, he should think: I rise not only before this person, but before the Torah that rests within him, and before the Giver of the Torah. When he steps aside for one who is saying the Amidah, he should know: I am making space here not only for this individual, but for the King before whom he stands. Thus the “muscles of awe” that are formed in relation to flesh and blood are, in truth, being trained to respond to the invisible sovereignty that fills these forms.

And this is the preparation needed for what will be explained further—that when a Jew approaches the daily Amidah, he must come to it not only with an intellectual recognition that he is “standing before the King,” but with a body already educated, already accustomed to back away from a throne, to lower the head, to still the hand. Then, when the mind awakens to the awareness of Malchus HaAtzmis, the body will not rebel; it will already know its place. And thus the halachos of awe before flesh and blood become the ladder by which the natural soul ascends to stand, in truth, before the King of kings in tefillah.

18 · Preparing for Amidah

And from this it is understood that the standing itself in Amidah, with all its angelic stillness, cannot come in a hefsek, as a sudden leap from the marketplace into the innermost chamber. For even by flesh and blood, as explained before, the awe that grips the body in the king’s presence is prepared by the corridors, by the guards, by the washing of hands and the arranging of garments. All the more in tefillah, where the King is the King of kings, that the halachah requires a seder hakdamah, a preparation in body and in soul, before the words “Hashem sefatai tiftach” can truthfully be uttered.

And this is what is ruled in the beginning of Hilchos Tefillah in Shulchan Aruch, that one must prepare himself before prayer, and not daven like one who is performing a burden which he wishes to throw from his shoulders. Rather, he should sit a little beforehand, to direct his heart toward his Father in Heaven; and he should see himself as if he is standing before a king of flesh and blood, and all the more before the King who is the King of kings. And there are detailed laws there with regard to the place of prayer, the state of his body and garments, and the kavanah of his heart. For the Torah does not suffice with a general feeling of “standing before the King,” but sets out concrete actions by which that awareness is engraved into the limbs.

However, we must understand: if the essence of Amidah is the inner encounter with Malchus HaAtzmis, with that kingship that is beyond all relation, why is there such emphasis on the externals of place and dress, and even on the sitting a little before? Seemingly, the more one stresses the preparation, the more one delays the actual encounter; it would be more fitting to hurry into the King’s chamber the moment one feels ready in his heart. And moreover, in our times, when the mind is scattered and the hours are pressed, how is it possible to speak of “a whole hour before prayer,” as the Gemara tells of the pious ones who would tarry thus before their tefillah? Does this not place the true avodah beyond the reach of the ordinary Jew?

But the matter is that precisely because Amidah touches the inner throne, it demands kelim in all the levushim of the soul—maaseh, dibbur, and machshavah. If the revelation of Malchus HaAtzmis were to shine without prior arrangement in these garments, they would break, Heaven forfend; the person would either be overwhelmed and flee, or else he would trivialize the encounter in order to protect himself. Therefore, the halachah institutes a structured preparation, through which the lower garments are gradually aligned to receive the higher light. And this is the sod of the three concentric preparations that can be distinguished in the dinim and minhagim concerning the approach to Amidah: garment‑prep, language‑prep, and throne‑prep.

Garment‑prep is the most external, yet it is the gate for all the rest. In Shulchan Aruch it is written that a person should not stand in prayer with a bare head, or in an immodest state, but with garments that are fitting to stand before great men. One must gird himself, close his collar, and not stand in his house with a lightheaded bearing, but with awe and fear. And likewise concerning the place: there should be a fixed makom for his prayer, a place that is clean, not in the middle of the thoroughfare, not among distractions, and he should not have things that disturb the eye before him.

The inner meaning is that the body and the environment are themselves levushim of the soul. When one covers the head, fastens the belt, and clears the place from clutter, he is, in effect, teaching his nefesh habehamis that “here begins a different realm.” Just as one does not enter the king’s palace in work‑clothes, and does not speak there in the tone of the street, so too the act of dressing and composing oneself for tefillah is already a first kabbalas ol, a first mini‑coronation of the King in the realm of action. The person demonstrates to himself that tefillah is not squeezed into the cracks of life but demands a re‑garmenting of life around it.

Yet garment‑prep alone is not sufficient. One can stand dressed like a prince and yet his mind be running after his business. Therefore there must be language‑prep. The Shulchan Aruch states that a person should not begin to pray suddenly, but should first contemplate matters that bring the heart to submission and direct the mind to the words he is about to say. And Chazal tell of the chassidim harishonim who would tarry an hour before prayer, in order that they should direct their hearts to their Father in Heaven. In the writings of Chassidus this takes the form of hisbonenus—the contemplation, before davening, of the greatness of the Creator and the lowliness of the creature, and of the specific inyanim of malchus that one will articulate in the tefillah.

Language‑prep means that the mind descends into the very words of the siddur even before the Amidah itself. One reviews the pesukim and berachos that precede, he reflects on their meaning as much as his capacity allows, and he habituates his tongue to speak them without haste. In this way the dibbur becomes a vessel, not a stranger’s clothing. For if the words are foreign to his consciousness, then when he reaches Amidah, where speech is reduced to a whisper, the words may turn into mere sounds, and the inner kingly encounter will remain outside his language. But when he has already bound his thought to the words in the earlier parts of davening, the words themselves begin to draw his heart; they become, as it were, the palace‑walls within which the King will soon be revealed.

This is also the inner content of “sha’ah achas kodem tefillah.” Not necessarily a measured sixty minutes, for not every generation and not every soul is equal in this, but an inner hour—meaning, a distinct segment severed from the ordinary flow of time, dedicated to gathering one’s thoughts into the channel of prayer. Even a few moments of deliberate settling, in which a person closes the book of his weekday preoccupations and opens the sefer of his standing before Hashem, are a taste of that “hour.” The point is not the quantity but the qualitative break: to cease from other languages—the language of profit and loss, of honor and resentment—and to enter the language of “Baruch Atah.”

And after garment‑prep and language‑prep comes the deepest circle, throne‑prep. This is already not a matter of external halachos alone, though it is hinted in the requirement to “see himself as if standing before a king,” and in the ruling that one should remove from his mind all distracting thoughts. Throne‑prep is the awakening, in the inner awareness, of the sense that he is approaching a Face.

In the older generations this was expressed through the contemplations of Chassidus before davening: one would reflect how all the worlds are as nothing before Him, how His malchus fills and surrounds all, and yet He chooses the particular Jew, in this place, to stand before Him now. In the language unveiled above, throne‑prep is to arouse, to the extent possible, the awareness of machshavah ha’melechit—that the King’s simple gaze holds my life and my day—and to feel that Amidah will be a stepping into that gaze. The person can quietly tell himself: “I am not going merely to say words; I am going to stand in the point where His choice and my choice meet.” This thought, even if only touched briefly, straightens the inner posture just as the belt straightens the outer one.

And one can say, in the way of the new explanation, that these three circles of preparation correspond to the three circles of malchus that were unfolded earlier. Garment‑prep aligns the world of action with malchus as it appears in seder hishtalshelus, as a rule and protocol. Language‑prep aligns the world of dibbur and sechel with malchus as it is in the sefiros, as the peh through which inwardness turns toward relation. Throne‑prep aligns the pnimiyus halev with Malchus HaAtzmis, as it is in the King’s own self‑knowing. When these three are arrayed like concentric courtyards, the Amidah that follows can indeed be a stepping, with joined feet, into the innermost.

And according to this we also understand that the halachah which forbids one to stand in prayer while troubled, angry, or distracted is not merely to ensure that his kavanah will not be scattered, but because such states block throne‑prep. When the heart is entangled in its own storm, it cannot sense the King’s Face; it sees only its own reflection. Therefore one must first quiet the anger, settle the worry as much as he can, or at least lift it into the words of supplication before the Amidah, so that when he comes to “Hashem sefatai tiftach,” there is room in the inner throne‑room for Another.

Thus, all the details of preparation—washing the hands, covering the head, fastening the belt, choosing a quiet place, sitting a little beforehand, meditating on matters that bring to yirah and ahavah—are not ancillary to the Amidah but are its outer layers. Through them the body learns to wear the garments of a subject, the mind learns the language of the palace, and the heart begins to feel that it is being summoned to a throne. And then, when the moment of standing arrives, the transition is not abrupt; it is the natural culmination of a whole approach.

In the continuation we will explain how, once he has entered through these three circles and stands with joined feet, the speech of Amidah itself is to be spoken—not as one who calls to a distant king from the far end of the hall, nor as one who shouts in fear, but as one who whispers in the King’s very ear.

19 · Speaking in the King’s Ear

And now, after he has traversed these preparations and stands with joined feet, we must understand: what is the form of the speech itself in Amidah. For behold, the halachah rules with great precision that he must cause his lips to move, yet his voice shall not be heard even to his own ears, and if he raises his voice it is called a lack in prayer. At first glance this is wondrous. If prayer is avodah of the heart expressed through the mouth, why not with an audible voice, at least to himself. And if the essence is in the heart alone, why the necessity that the lips move at all.

However, according to all the above it is understood. For the Amidah is not like one who cries from afar to a king sitting at the other end of the hall, but like one who stands very near. When one is distant, one must lift up the voice in order that his sound reach the throne. But when the king himself has drawn near, it is not fitting to shout; such raising of the voice would already imply distance and concealment. Rather, then the proper manner is a whisper, as one who speaks mouth to ear.

And yet, it is still not the inner point. For even a whisper, in the manner of man to his fellow, is altogether too coarse a mashal for Amidah, which is the inner court of Malchus. In human speech, the whisper is still a sound that leaves from one and enters into the hearing of another. Here, in Amidah, the halachah requires that there be no sound that exits beyond the body; the words are drawn only to the boundary of the lips. It is as if the Torah tells us: you are not speaking across a space, but within a single interior.

This is the meaning of what is explained in the teachings of Chassidus, that Amidah is “like speaking to a friend,” yet with fear and trembling. On the one hand “like speaking to a friend,” that the closeness is not in the manner of a subject who cannot open his heart, but like one who pours out all that is within him before a beloved companion. On the other hand, it is with awe, for that “friend” is the King of kings, before Whom “the heavens and the heavens of heavens cannot contain” and before Whom angels are as naught. The synthesis of these two—the intimacy of friend and the trembling of subject—is expressed precisely in this halachic form: lips that move in quiet.

For when one speaks to a friend, truly close, he need not arrange great speeches; a few simple words, even broken, are enough, for the friend hears also what is in between the words. So too, in Amidah, the main thing is not eloquence but truth. The halachic requirement that the words be articulated with the lips, letter by letter, guards against the heart’s confusion and flightiness; yet their being inaudible teaches that the essential hearing is not through physical ears at all.

And here we can add, in the manner of an inner allusion, a further point fitting to the time. It is explained above that there is in Elokus a mode of knowing called machshavah ha’melechit, the kingly thought, in which the King knows Himself together with the point of Israel as one simple act. When the Jew stands in Amidah and whispers the words that the Anshei Knesses HaGedolah fixed, he is not only addressing the King; he is allowing the machshavah ha’melechit to pass through his own thought and mouth. This is why our Sages say “Amidah hi b’chesed”—that the very standing is an act of kindness from Above. For according to the order of things, how could a finite creature stand as if in the inner chamber and speak. Only because the King, in His great chesed, inclines Himself, as it were, and lowers His ear to the subject, allowing that the subject’s small words should be received as royal speech.

And yet, if we look more deeply, even this is still in the language of mashal. For the King’s “ear” is not an organ that hears from without, Heaven forfend, but the very machshavah ha’melechit itself, which is the atzmi knowing that includes Israel. Thus we may say, by way of possibility, that in the highest truth the King does not bend His ear toward the subject from without; rather, He awakens within the subject that same inner hearing by which He eternally knows and chooses him. The whisper of Amidah is therefore not simply the Jew making his voice heard; it is the Ein Sof desiring to hear Himself in the Jew’s voice.

This is a very great novelty, and it must be guarded from misunderstanding. For certainly the Creator and the created remain utterly distinct, and there is no speaking of identity, Heaven forfend. The intent is only this: that the words of Amidah, as they are in their root, are the will of Hashem that His kingship be received in the heart of Israel. When Israel utters these words with bittul, his mouth becomes a vessel in which this will is spoken from within. The “ear” that hears them is the same Divine will and knowing from which they issued. Thus, in the inner point of Amidah, speaker and hearer meet within the simple act of Malchus HaAtzmis.

And according to this we can understand the experience that befits one standing in Amidah. He is to imagine, as brought in the poskim, as though he stands before the Shechinah, in the Holy of Holies. But not in such a way that he pictures a great distance between himself and the Presence, and he shouts across the expanse; rather, he senses that the Presence has drawn near until there is almost no interval. This knowing produces a double movement in the heart. On the one hand, such closeness arouses the most profound shame and bittul; he feels how every thought and stirring is laid bare before the King, and he is silent within himself. On the other hand, this very knowledge that the King desires his words, awaits his Amidah, gives him courage to speak plainly, without hiding, “like a man who speaks with his fellow.”

Practically, this means that in Amidah he should take each word slowly, as if presenting it into the very ear of the King. He does not rush to finish, as one who must discharge an obligation and be free; nor does he let the words roll by habit from the lips. Rather, each berachah is a distinct nearness. In the first three, of praise, he as it were draws near to the King’s face, arranging the crown on His head. In the middle berachos he places his needs, but in such a way that they are no longer his alone; he feels that the King Himself desires that these lacks be spoken, in order that His kingship be revealed in their fulfillment. And in the last three he withdraws backward, still facing the King’s ear, gathering the residue of that closeness into thanks.

When one davens thus, he can also understand why the voice must not be heard. For if he were to hear his own sound, there would be the danger that he would begin to listen to himself, to how he is praying, and the “I” would again become an object. The silence of voice, with only the motion of lips, protects the intimacy: there is no third thing between him and the King, not even his own audible sound. There is only the word as it rises within the shared interior of hearing.

And this hints also to the future time, when “no longer shall a man teach his fellow … for they shall all know Me,” that the knowledge of Hashem will be an inward hearing in which the word and the ear are one. In Amidah, a ray of this future enters into the present: the King allows His ear of eternity to be felt within the heart of a finite being.

With this, the form of Amidah is clarified as a standing in which awe and closeness are perfectly joined: the body like an angel, feet together and unmoving; the heart like a subject, trembling before the throne; and the speech like a friend, whispering into the King’s very ear. In this light it will be understood further how there is once in the year a day when this inner pattern spreads over all twenty‑four hours, until all the limbs and powers of the soul stand as in an extended Amidah before the King. This is the day of Yom Kippur, which, as will be explained, is itself a white palace of such whispering, in which the world’s noise falls away and only the simple “I before You” remains.

20 · Entering the White Palace

And from this we can understand that when we say that there is one day in the year when the pattern of Amidah spreads over all the hours, this does not mean merely a multiplication of prayers, as if many Amidos were placed side by side, but that the day itself becomes a single prolonged standing, and all that belongs to the weekday order of life is suspended. This is the inner meaning of the day of Yom Kippur.

For the prophet has already alluded to this when he says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” At first glance, the verse speaks only of the transformation of the blemish — that the redness of sin is washed away — but, however, we must understand: why “white as snow”? It would have been sufficient to say that the stain is removed. What necessity is there to depict a new color, and specifically the color white?

Furthermore, we observe in the conduct of Israel that on this day it is customary to wear white garments, and in many communities a kittel, resembling the shrouds of the dead. This is so widespread and so ancient a custom that it has entered into the very face of the day. And we need to understand: what is the connection between the promise “they shall be white as snow” and the minhag of whitening one’s garments? Is this merely a sign of joy that sins are forgiven, or is there in this whiteness itself an avodah, a form of standing before the King?

To clarify this we must preface the known halachah that on Yom Kippur there are five inuyim: not to eat and drink, not to wash, not to anoint, not to wear leather shoes, and abstention from marital relations. Seemingly, these are only denials, matters of affliction; but, in the way of Chassidus, it has been explained that the inuy is not merely to cause pain to the body, Heaven forfend, but to suspend the ordinary colors of life — the tastes, scents, and touches by which the animal soul feels itself. The day is “beyond taste and smell,” as is known in the teachings of our Rebbeim. And this itself is wondrous: for all the year we serve Hashem precisely through drawing holiness into eating and drinking, into clothing and marriage; why is it that on this day the service is to cease from all these?

However, the matter is that all year long the King’s presence clothes itself in many garments. There is the garment of food, in which He gives life to the body; the garment of business, in which His providence is enclothed; the garment of family, in which His kindness is expressed. In each of these garments there is a certain color and taste: this one sweet, that one sharp; this one soft, that one hard. The soul’s work is to recognize the King behind the garment, to see His malchus within the colored texture of worldliness.

But there is once in the year a day when the King desires to be seen not through any garment, not through any color, but in a light that is simple, without mixture. For this, He draws Israel into a different kind of palace, which we may call, in the way of mashal, a palace of white. White is the color that contains all colors yet shows none; it is the simplicity that precedes differentiation. When the prophet says “they shall be white as snow,” he is not describing only the removal of red, but the entrance into a higher tone of being, where the soul stands in a light before any particular hue of conduct. The day itself becomes snow-white — a blanket that covers and equalizes all hills and valleys, all peaks and pits of the year’s life.

In this light we can understand the five inuyim in another way. They are not only negations; they are the closing of the outer chambers of the palace, so that one may be brought into the inner hall which is entirely white. Eating is the taste by which one appropriates the world, making it his own flesh; on Yom Kippur this is withheld, for the soul is not busy with taking the world in, but with being seen as it is. Washing and anointing are the polishing of the outer skin, by which a person presents a certain color of self to others; on Yom Kippur this is stilled, for the day is not about how we appear to the world, but how we stand nakedly in the King’s gaze. The shoe is the separation between the foot and the ground, the instrument of going and doing; leather shoes are removed, to feel that one is not now a doer in the world but a stander before Hashem. And the intimacy of man and wife, which is the deepest color of life in the body, is also set aside, for the day’s intimacy is elsewhere — it is between the soul and its Maker.

From here it is understood why the custom is to wear a white kittel, similar to the garments of a dead person. It is not, G‑d forbid, to dwell on death in a dark sense, but to reveal that on this day one stands stripped of all titles and roles. The wealthy and the poor, the learned and the simple, the elder and the youth — all are equal in the white garment. The kittel is like an outer garment that proclaims: today I am not my profession, not my family role, not my accumulated successes and failures; I am only a soul in a body, standing before the King. It is as though one has already passed beyond this world and stands in judgment with nothing but his “I.” And precisely this is the greatest life, for when all the borrowed colors fall away, the inner point of Israel, which is never blemished, can be seen and whitened.

According to this we may say, in the way of Eighth Generation explanation, that Yom Kippur is not only a day with many tefillos, but an entrance into a certain “white palace.” All year, the palace we spoke of has many courts and gates, each with its own decor and protocol; but on Yom Kippur the King opens a different wing, in which everything is suffused with a single, soft, bright light. In this palace, there are no thrones of judgment in the familiar sense, no ranks and uniforms. There is only “I before You.” The inner Kohen Gadol of each Jew, which we spoke of earlier, recognizes this palace immediately, for it is its own home. The soul does not need elaborate concepts here, for the light is so even that thought’s distinctions cannot catch; what is needed is only presence.

Therefore the avodah of this day in its inner content is not so much deep contemplation and analysis, as is fitting for other times, but simple truth-telling. A person comes before Hashem and says, in the language of his heart: so I am, and so I have lived; here I have been straight, here I have twisted; here I have remembered You, here I have forgotten. There is no need to justify or to adorn; the whiteness of the day itself will cleanse and reorder. As it is written, “before Hashem you shall be purified” — the purification is not fashioned by the person, but is an effect of his standing “before Hashem.” His part is to stand and not to flee, not to busy himself with bargaining and measurements, but to let himself be seen in that pure, uncolored light.

This explains also why the Chassidic masters emphasized that Yom Kippur is “beyond taste and smell.” Taste and smell are the senses that discern fine distinctions, that savor this over that. They are the inner critics of the body. On this day, the soul is invited to put down its critic’s tools and to dwell in a simplicity where there is nothing to compare. Even in Torah thoughts, the avodah is not to sharpen and to dissect, but to hold a simple word or verse before one’s mind as a window through which the white light can shine. Likewise in vidui: the many words are only different doors for the same movement of the heart, which is to say “I have not been true to You” and “I desire to return.” The main thing is the tone of simple, unadorned speaking.

And this is also why the day is long, and the body is tired and heavy, yet the soul is light. The five tefillos, the many words, the standing and sitting — all of this, when seen from the outside, appears as strain; but from within the white palace it is one extended being-with. Time itself is whitened; the hours lose their sharp boundaries. One does not calculate how much remains until the fast is over — when he is in the inner light, there is no “until,” there is only “now” before the King.

From all the above we may distill a practical guidance in the spirit of our discourse. When a person approaches Yom Kippur, he should picture to himself not only the awe of judgment, but that he is about to cross the threshold of such a palace. He prepares his body by the five inuyim, and his garments by whiteness; he prepares his mind not with complicated reasonings, but with a readiness to be simple and true. He should know: today I am not coming to negotiate with the King, to argue my merits and debts, but to stand in His seeing and to allow His essential compassion to wash me. If he holds this image, then each confession, each psalm, each “Baruch Shem” said aloud will be like another step deeper into the white hall.

And in this way the day itself becomes an extended Amidah, as was said — the whisper of the heart continues without cease, even when the lips are silent. All the public service, the Torah readings, the piyutim, are like ornaments of that palace, but the inner thing is the silent line of “I before You” that runs through them. At the close of the day, when the sun inclines and the Neilah stands to begin, then it will be further understood how, within this palace of white, there is yet an inner chamber where the King and His people are sealed together alone. This is the subject of the continuation.

21 · Neilah: The Sealed Audience

When thus the whole day has been spent within the white palace, we arrive at that tefillah which Chazal established at its close, the unique Amidah of Neilah. And here it is necessary to pause and to understand: what is this additional tefillah, that is not found on any other day of the year; what is the inner content of the “closing of the gates” which is its constant refrain; and why is it specifically then that we conclude with the cry “Hashem Hu HaElokim” many times, until voice and being are one shout?

For at first glance, if the entire day is “before Hashem,” and if the gates of compassion have been open from the night of Kol Nidrei, why should there be, at the very end, a notion of gates closing? Is this not the opposite of what was explained, that the bond of Malchus HaAtzmis is not subject to opening and shutting as a thing outside oneself? And if we say that the “closing” is only a borrowed expression, why do our Sages so emphasize it, and why is the whole pathos of the day gathered into that image?

However, the matter will be understood by prefacing the known saying of the Zohar that in certain times the King is “in the field,” and at other times the King is “in the palace.” When the King is in the field, anyone can approach; the barriers are dropped, and the distance of protocol is less felt. When the King returns to His palace, there is again seder and gavul, chambers and guards, and entry is according to level and merit.

Now, Yom Kippur is paradoxical in this regard. On the one hand, it is the innermost palace, as explained; on the other hand, in its revelation of Malchus HaYichud the King is with Israel alone, as it were without any garments of world at all. This duality is resolved in the following manner: the entire day of Yom Kippur is the King in the palace with the gates flung wide, and Neilah is the moment when He remains in the palace but the gates are gradually closed to all that is not of the palace itself. Not that the King departs from His people, G‑d forbid, but that He gathers them with Him to a place where nothing foreign can enter.

This is the secret of “closing of the gates.” All the day, a person stands with his mixed inner life: memories of the year, fears, hopes, scattered thoughts; he brings all of them into the white hall, and there they are whitened. At Neilah, the avodah is no longer to bring in more, but to let go of what is not essentially he and his King. The gates that close are primarily in the soul: the gates of distraction, of imagination turned outward, of self-observation. One after another they are shut, until only a single opening remains, an inner doorway between the yechidah and Malchus HaAtzmis.

And this is the new point that can be said in the way of our generation: that Neilah is the “turning of the key” in the inner throne-room. Throughout the year the door of the yechidah-throne stands, as it were, on its hinges; sometimes more open, sometimes more closed, but rarely is the key itself consciously taken in hand. On Yom Kippur the inner Kohen Gadol of the soul, after traversing all courtyards, arrives before this door. He stands there for the length of a day. But if he only stood and did not turn the key, the encounter would remain potential. At Neilah, the key is turned; the lock is engaged on both sides at once. This is the covenantal gaze.

To explain: the “key” is that point of bechirah atzmis in the soul, the power to say a simple “yes” or “no” at the root of one’s being, beyond reason and beyond emotion. All year this key is mostly used outwardly — to choose between permitted and forbidden, between this path of life or that. On Yom Kippur, and especially at Neilah, the key is redirected inward, to lock oneself together with the King’s essential choice. The inner Kohen Gadol takes his own bechirah and places it opposite the bechirah of Above, Malchus HaAtzmis; the two keys, as it were, turn in the same lock. In that moment, there is sealed a quiet decision that defines the inner script of the coming year.

This is why the last Amidah of the day carries a different tone. The nusach is close to the other tefillos, but its matzav hanefesh is unique. The requests are not expanded with many words; the heart is already weary of speaking. Instead there is a pressing inwardness, a simple insistence: “Open for us the gate at the time of the closing of the gates.” Which means: allow that one remaining inner gate to be open from within, even as all the outer gates close. Do not let me be left outside my own yechidah.

And from the side of Above, the same occurs in reverse. All the external gates — of hashgachah as it clothes itself in nature, of the many tzinorim through which the shefa comes to the worlds — are, as it were, gathered and concentrated. There is a silencing of the outer channels, a stillness in the supernal palaces. What remains active is only the simple gaze of Malchus HaAtzmis upon the chosen point of Israel. This stare is not emotional storm, not chessed or gevurah, but the calm of “I have chosen you and I will not exchange you.” When the soul’s gaze and this Divine gaze meet, that is the turning of the key from both sides.

According to this we can also understand the repetition of “Hashem Hu HaElokim” at the close of Neilah. For this cry is not merely a remembrance of the moment at Har HaCarmel, but the soul’s final act of setting the seal. All day long we have been involved with details of sin and atonement, with vidui of particulars. Now, at the climax, we no longer speak about sins at all; we affirm the unity of the Name. “Hashem” — the Name that denotes the Infinite beyond worlds; “Elokim” — the Name that denotes the power as it clothes itself in concealment and in the multiplicity of nature. To cry “Hashem Hu HaElokim” is to lock together these two Names, to acknowledge that even my lowest states, my externalities and garments, are in truth nothing other than the revelation of the King’s essence.

Thus, when the community cries it seven times, they are in fact inscribing this unity through all dimensions of their inner palace — through all the seven middos of the soul. Each shout reaches another chamber and seals it, so that in the coming year, when that middah awakens in its ordinary clothing, it should remember its root in the shout of Neilah. The voice is strained, hoarse from fasting, yet precisely because of this it expresses the yechidah more purely; there is no ornament of tone, only the bare will that “Hashem Hu HaElokim.”

And with this we can also answer the earlier wonder: how is it that Neilah is portrayed as “closing of the gates” without contradicting the endless openness of Malchus HaAtzmis? For the closing is not an exclusion of the soul, G‑d forbid, but of everything that is not atzmi. When a king withdraws to his innermost chamber and locks the door from within, excluding even his ministers and beloved friends, this does not lessen the intimacy with the one person he brings in with him; on the contrary, it intensifies it. So too, the “closing of the gates” means that all external relations — even holy ones, even angels and upper palaces — are left outside, and only the bond of King and Israel remains within.

From this follows a clear instruction in avodah. When a person reaches Neilah, he should not add complexity; he should diminish it. The time for explanations, for analyses of failings, has passed with the earlier confessions. Now he must gather himself in a very simple kavanah: I wish to be Yours, and I know that You have chosen me. He should imagine for himself that all the noises of the world are being gently shut out, one door after another; that even the voices in the synagogue grow faint, and only his own whisper remains before Hashem. Not in the sense of separating from the tzibbur, G‑d forbid, but that the whole tzibbur is one body, one inner Kohen Gadol, and he is its point of yechidah.

In that awareness, each “Shema Yisrael,” each “Baruch Shem,” each “Hashem Hu HaElokim” of Neilah becomes not merely a statement but a key turned. The person does not necessarily feel lofty emotions; sometimes he feels only exhaustion and a quiet persistence. But if he allows his simple bechirah to align with the words, the covenantal gaze is established nonetheless. And though he may forget it many times in the year, the script that was written then will continue to play itself out in hidden ways, drawing him back again and again to that inner throne-room in miniature, in every Amidah, in every moment of honest truth before Hashem.

With this the circle of the year’s audience is completed. From the king-mashal of flesh and blood, through the daily Amidah, through the white palace of Yom Kippur, we arrive at this sealed encounter where no mashal suffices any longer, for there is only the soul and her King in a bond beyond example. And from this point the heart naturally turns not to further analysis, but to tefillah itself — that this knowledge should permeate our days, that we should live continuously from that sealed audience. This is the union of Torah and Tefillah which is drawn in the conclusion, in the manner of a psalm before the King.

22 · A Psalm Before the King

Fortunate is the people whose King is You, whose years are measured by comings and goings before Your face, whose days are bound as pearls upon the thread of Your favor.

Master of all kings, King of glory, let it be Your will that the wisdom we have heard should become for us not only knowledge but standing; that the words which have traced the courts of Your palace should fashion in us a path, that our feet may walk it in truth.

Plant within our hearts a dwelling-place for Your sovereignty, that the inner throne which You have hewn in Israel from before the worlds should be revealed within each one of us, quietly, without noise; that in the secret of the soul there shall be set a small seat of kingship under Your great throne, and upon it shall sit our daas bound to Yours, our will consenting to Your will.

May our life become as a gentle Amidah before You: in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night; in the days of radiance and in the hours of concealment. Let every place where we stand be as the place of standing, every breath as a whispered word to You, every joining of our feet in the narrowness of this world as a preparation to stand with joined feet in awe before You.

Guard us, that we should not forget before Whom we stand. When we are scattered among our affairs, gather our thoughts as a shepherd gathers his flock; when we are bent beneath the burden of the day, straighten us with the straightness of the leg of the angel; when we seek to flee from Your face into the noise of the market, close gently before us those gates and open for us instead the gate of prayer.

Let our speech be refined by Your service, that our lips should learn the craft of quiet, that we should know how to speak much within and little without; that we should learn to whisper to You even in the midst of men, to spread our heart before You as water even as our hands are engaged in the labor of the world. Make our tongue faithful to Your words, that the language of the siddur shall become our mother-tongue and the meditations of our heart shall be acceptable as offerings upon Your altar.

Cause us to merit that the fear and love we have contemplated in relation to kings of flesh should be transformed and elevated as awe of Your exaltedness and love of Your truth, so that we tremble not before man nor are broken before circumstance, but only humble ourselves before You, rejoicing that You have chosen us to be near to You. May there rest upon us the dignity of those who know that they are subjects of the King of kings, and the humility of those who know that the King has bent Himself to hear their whisper.

Establish, we pray, the order of our days according to the order of Your palace. Let our mornings be like entering the outer court with song and praise; our afternoons like approaching the inner court amidst toil, stealing away from our labor to stand before You; our nights like trusting in the darkness of the inner chambers, where sight fails and only faith remains awake. And in the turning of the year, on that single white day, bring us in again to the white hall, to the simple truth of “I before You,” to the washing of our souls in Your compassion.

Teach us to recognize the steps of Yom Kippur as steps of our own soul. When we fast, let it be that our inner coarseness is thinned and not only our body weakened; when we stand in white, let it be that our borrowed colors fall away and our original likeness to You shines out; when we restrain the senses, let it be that the inner hearing grows subtle, able to receive the whisper of Your kingly thought as it passes through us.

And when the day draws to its close and You draw us close behind Your doors, may we know how to choose You simply. Give us courage for that choosing, strength for that last Amidah when our feet are heavy and our heart is worn; let the key of our bechirah find the lock of Your bechirah, and let them turn together. Inscribe upon our inner tablet at that hour a covenantal “yes” that will not be erased, that in all the dispersions of the year we may hear within us the echo of that sealed audience.

May it be Your will, Merciful King, that the hall of mirrors which is the world should not confuse us; that in every reflection we meet, in every face, in every event, we should glimpse a hint of Your kingship and of our rootedness in You, and thus return again and again to the one Face from which all faces shine. Save us from mistaking the mirror for the King; train us, through all the small reverences and restraints of halachah, to reserve our deepest bowing for You alone.

Place within us the portion of those who sit in Your house all the days of their life—not only those who dwell in the study-hall, but all who carry within their breast a small sanctuary; that in the midst of business and family and journeying, their inner point remains as one who sits before the King. Let our joys be gladdened by Your presence, as a king rejoices in his God; let our sorrows be lightened by the knowledge that You look upon us with the gaze of the inner throne, where no fall can touch the bond between us.

Bless, we beseech You, every man and woman of Israel, that their inner Kohen Gadol be awakened at least once in the year, and from that awakening a fragrance should remain throughout all their days—a faint incense of Yom Kippur that sweetens anger, that softens pride, that draws them to prayer, that reminds them of the white palace in the midst of colored life. And more than once in the year: let there be many small Neilahs, many moments when the outer gates close around them for an instant and they stand alone with You—in a word of Tehillim said with truth, in a sigh, in a decision made in Your light.

And upon all this, our Father our King, spread the canopy of Your peace. Rule over the whole world in Your honor, and over us in particular with a revealed kingship that is only good and only kind. May the day come soon when all flesh together will see that You are King, that all palaces are but extensions of Your palace, and that the inner throne fixed in the heart of Israel shines openly in Zion, city of our festivals.

Then shall our prayers be nothing but praise, our Amidah nothing but song, and our Neilah nothing but an eternal standing in the radiance of Your countenance. Until that day, strengthen our hearts to serve You in the hidden way we have learned, to stand gently, persistently, as Your people before their King, now and for ever.