Wrapped and Bound: Two Ways of the Tzaddik

22There is another way to read “So the feeble ones went to Lavan and the sturdy ones to Yaakov”: it speaks of the tzaddik who wraps the worlds one in another and rises in thought to the whiteness above. It is written, “A prayer of the poor man who is faint (ya'atof) …”¹ The tzaddik must raise the lower worlds from below to above, up to their root, and this is called ituf, wrapping, the word heard in ya'atof: each world becomes a garment and a wrap for the world next to it, and so on to the end of all the levels. Tefillah, prayer, speaks of joining, like naftulei Elokim, “bonds of God.”² And the attribute of Malchus, kingship, is called “poor,” for, as the Zohar says, it has nothing of its own.³ Read this way, “a tefillah of the poor man who is ya'atof” speaks of a joining for Malchus, made as the worlds are wrapped one in another. “And pours out his speech before Hashem”: in his deveikus, his cleaving to Hashem, the tzaddik must rise in thought to the very height of the heights, the place of whiteness, which is all compassion. That place is “before Hashem …”; and it is the Lavan, the whiteness, to which “the feeble ones,” the wrapped ones, “went.”

23It is written, “And Moshe would take the tent and pitch it for himself … and he called it the Tent of Meeting.”⁴ For the tzaddik, in his seclusion and in his thought, cleaves to his root at the height of the heights, binds his soul to the upper worlds and draws the flow of blessing down below. That is Ohel Mo'ed, “the Tent of Meeting”: mo'ed speaks of an appointed festival, Yom Tov and Shabbos, for on Yom Tov and Shabbos it is a time of favor, when “the Will of all wills is found, and all judgments are subdued.”⁵ And that is “and the sturdy ones,” the bound ones, “to Yaakov”: by binding themselves in their thought, as we said, they draw flows of blessing to Yaakov. Of Yehoshua, who stood on a lower level than Moshe, it is written, “Yehoshua son of Nun, a na'ar, a youth, would not depart from within the tent.”⁶ For we know that on weekdays the Shechinah is clothed in the angel Metatron, who is called na'ar,⁷ and all the worlds receive through him. With this, the tzaddik cleaving to his root, we can explain the verse “And she called his name Moshe, for from the water I drew him.”⁸ This was the Egyptians' intent: they knew that Moshe came from the root of all the chassadim, the kindnesses, and so they threw him into the water, to cut him off there from his root, as it is written, “and let it divide between water and water,” the upper waters from the lower.⁹ But Pharaoh's daughter returned him to his root: she took him out of the lower waters, and he cleaved to his root. Understand this.