Chassidut.ai

Opening — One Question

Let me open with a simple question: where, would you say, is the easiest place to encounter the Almighty — to find G-d?

Most of us, if we pause for a moment, would point upward. In the synagogue. At the Kosel, the Western Wall. In the Land of Israel. In Gan Eden. In the higher, spiritual worlds — far above the noise of daily life. Somewhere quiet, spiritual, clean.

And yet — the maamar we are going to learn together in this series opens with the exact opposite claim. A claim that, once you truly understand it, changes the entire way you look at your life: the place the Almighty wanted more than anywhere else is davka here. Specifically down here. Specifically in this world — the physical, busy, messy world we actually live in.

Welcome to the first lesson in a series in which we will learn, slowly and in depth, one of the most important and far-reaching maamarim in all of Chabad Chassidus — the maamar “Basi LeGani” of the year 5711.

In this series we are not going to settle for a general, uplifting “message.” We are going to open the maamar itself, word by word, and understand what stands behind every single expression. And it is built for everyone: whether you have never opened a maamar of Chassidus in your life, or whether you are already used to learning — we will go together, step by step, so that each person can not merely listen, but truly understand.

And today, in this first lesson, we will not yet enter the words themselves. Today we paint the big picture: what is this maamar, where did it come from, why is it so important, and what is the one idea that holds the entire maamar together — from beginning to end.

The Story Behind the Maamar

To understand why this maamar is so special, you have to know the story behind it. And it is a story about a moment of transition.

In the year 5710, on the tenth of Shevat, the sixth Rebbe of the Chabad dynasty passed away — Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, known as the Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz. (“Histalkus” is a term of honor for the passing of a tzaddik, and a “yom hahilula” is the annual anniversary of that day.)

And even before his passing, the Rebbe Rayatz did something extraordinary. He prepared, in advance, a maamar of Chassidus — a maamar he asked to be distributed on the day of his passing. As if to say: when I am no longer here in a body, these are the words I leave in your hands. The maamar opens with the verse “Basi LeGani Achosi Kallah” — “I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride” — and it is built out of twenty chapters.

Now picture the moment. A year passes. The tenth of Shevat, 5711 arrives — the first yom hahilula. The eyes of all the chassidim turn to the Rayatz’s son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — the Rebbe. Everyone senses that he is about to take upon himself the leadership, the nesius. What will he say? How does one open a new era?

And here is the enormous chiddush — the novelty — that is worth pausing on. The Rebbe did not open a new path. He did not choose a new subject of his own. He took, specifically, the very last maamar of his father-in-law — “Basi LeGani” — and chose to explain its first chapter.

Think for a moment what that means. When a new leader rises, the natural expectation is that he will bring his own imprint, his own signature. And the Rebbe did precisely the opposite. He was, in effect, declaring: this mission does not begin with me. I am not erasing the one who came before me — I am continuing him. I take the last words of the previous generation, and I carry them forward.

And this did not remain a one-time gesture. For decades, every single year on the tenth of Shevat, the Rebbe would take another chapter, and another, of that same maamar of the Rayatz, and explain it — until he had gone through all twenty chapters, and then he began again. In this way “Basi LeGani” became, as it were, the anthem of the generation — a maamar we return to year after year.

And the maamar with which this entire chain opens — the one we will learn in this series — is “Basi LeGani” of 5711. It is based primarily on the first chapter of the Rayatz’s maamar, and it was delivered on the tenth of Shevat, 5711.

So when we open this maamar, we are not merely learning one more piece of Chassidus. We are standing at the very opening point of the Rebbe’s leadership — and hearing the definition of what is being asked of us, here and now.

The Name, and the Central Idea

So what is the maamar about? To discover that, it is enough to listen closely to its name: “Basi LeGani” — “I have come into My garden.”

These words are taken from Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs: “Basi LeGani Achosi Kallah.” And Shir HaShirim, as is well known, is a song of love — a parable for the love between the Almighty and the Jewish people. And here our Sages, in the Midrash Rabbah, notice a tiny grammatical nuance, almost imperceptible — that changes everything.

It says “LeGani” — “to MY garden.” Not “lagan,” “to a garden.” And the Midrash says: “It is not written lagan, but legani — leginuni,” to My bridal chamber. In other words: I have not come to just any garden. I have come to MY garden. And what is “ginuni”? Not merely the private garden, but the chamber of union — the most intimate room of all, the place where bride and groom are alone, with no stranger present. The most private, most inner place there is.

And then the Midrash continues and explains which place is meant: “to the place where it was My essence at first — for the ikar of the Shechina, the essence of the Divine Presence, was in the lower realms.”

Now stop on one word. The word on which the entire maamar hangs: “ikar” — “essence,” the main thing.

Notice what the Midrash does NOT say. It does not say “the Shechina was also in the lower realms” — that down here too, somewhere on the margins, there was a bit of light. It says “ikar Shechina” — the essence of the Shechina. The main thing. The center. The heart. The inner core. Davka down here, below.

And who are these “tachtonim,” these “lower realms”? Let us emphasize this, because it is easy to miss: this is not a parable, and not some abstract spiritual idea. “Tachtonim” means this physical world, literally. The world of dust and stone, of body, of money, of work and of routine. The world we actually live in, with all its physicality.

And now feel how opposite this is to our intuition. If I were to ask you, “Where is the essence of holiness to be found?” — your heart would answer: above. In the higher worlds. Among the angels. In the world of souls, pure and clear. And here below, in a world full of concealment, struggle and hardship — that is seemingly the last place we would look. And the Midrash comes and says exactly the opposite: the deepest, most inner desire was that the essence be davka here.

And one word about “Shechina” — just a taste, and we will expand on it in the next lesson. The word “Shechina” comes from the root “shochen,” to dwell, from the verse “v’shachanti b’socham” — “and I will dwell within them.” It does not describe the Almighty as He is, lofty and hidden beyond all grasp, but rather the way in which He “dwells” — reveals Himself and is present — within reality.

We can picture it like a king. A king rules over the entire country, even the most remote village at the edge of the border — there too he is the sovereign. But where is his kingship felt openly; where do you actually see the king? In the palace. There his presence is visible to the eye. “Shechina” is that revealed presence. And the chiddush of the Midrash is that His “palace” — the place of His primary revelation — the Almighty wished to set davka here, below.

We will open the full depth of “Shechina” slowly, in the coming lessons. But this sentence is worth fixing in your heart already now, because it is the thread on which we will string the whole maamar: ikar Shechina b’tachtonim haysa — the essence of the Divine Presence was in the lower realms.

The Big Story — in Three Chapters

Good. We have our starting point: the Almighty wanted the essence davka here, below. But immediately a great question arises — and it is really the question that drives the entire maamar.

If this is true, if this world is meant to be the palace of the Almighty — then why does it not look that way? Look around you. The world is full of concealment. It is hard to see G-dliness in it. Sometimes it looks like the very opposite of His will. If the greatest revelation was meant to be here — where is it?

The maamar’s answer is a great principle: what we see now is not the original state. In the beginning, the light was here, openly. Something simply went wrong along the way. And let us tell this story — not in technical terms, but as a story. A story in three chapters.

Chapter one — the concealment. In the beginning, G-dliness was felt in the world openly. But then came a sin — the first sin, the sin of the Tree of Knowledge — and in the words of the Midrash, “the Shechina withdrew from the earth.” The revealed presence pulled back. And after it came further falls of humanity, generation after generation, each one pushing the light one more step away, until it was almost impossible to see. This, to a large extent, is the chapter we ourselves live in — a world in which G-dliness is hidden.

Chapter two — the return. But the story does not stop at the fall. Great souls arose who began to draw the light back down. The maamar lists a chain of tzaddikim — seven generations — each of whom brought the revelation one step closer: Avraham our father opened the way, and after him Yitzchak, Yaakov, and onward, until Moshe Rabbeinu. And it was Moshe who completed the move: he drew G-dliness all the way down, into a physical world — into the Mishkan, a home the Jewish people built of wood, gold and curtains, and within which the Shechina rested openly.

And here comes chapter three — and within it, the surprise that touches us directly. The maamar pauses on Moshe and says something striking about him. His great virtue is bound up with the fact that he was the seventh in the chain. There is a phrase of our Sages: “kol hashvi’in chavivin” — “all sevenths are beloved.” Notice the precision: not because the seventh chose it, and not because he earned it through his toil — but the very fact that he comes seventh, and continues and completes what the first one began — that is what makes him beloved.

And why does this touch us? Because the maamar says: we too are a seventh generation. Seven generations from the Alter Rebbe, the founder of Chabad Chassidus, down to the Rebbe. And “all sevenths are beloved” — not because we did something special to earn it, but because this is the task that fell to our lot: to finish the work. To complete the drawing-down of the Divine revelation all the way below — all the way to the end — here, in this world.

And how do we actually do this? Why is davka such a low, physical world the place the Almighty wishes to dwell? And what is the surprising thing that happens to the world precisely after it has fallen and been repaired? — these are exactly the things we will open, one by one, over the course of the series. For now, it is enough to hold the storyline in hand: the Almighty wanted a home here below; that home was concealed; and the task of the generations — with ours at their head — is to bring it back and complete it.

What This Means for Us

Before we summarize, let us stop on a question we cannot sidestep: beautiful — a deep and moving idea — but what does it mean for me? What does it change about my life, on a Monday morning?

The answer is: it changes everything. Because here lies one of the greatest novelties of Judaism, and of the teachings of Chassidus in particular.

Many approaches in the world teach that to reach holiness you must flee from the material. To leave the world behind. To disconnect from the body, from money, from the affairs of daily life, and to seclude yourself somewhere, spiritual and clean. The material, in that view, is the enemy of the spirit.

The maamar teaches exactly the opposite. The Almighty did not create this world so that we would escape from it. He created it because it is davka within it that He desires to dwell. And therefore the goal is not to flee from physicality — but to sanctify it. Not to escape the world, but to turn the world itself into a home for the Almighty. And this “home” has a name in the maamar: “dirah b’tachtonim” — a dwelling in the lower realms — that the lower world itself become a residence for the Almighty.

And what does that mean in practice? Take a simple example. A hundred-dollar bill. In itself, it is a piece of paper. But if a person gives it to tzedakah — that paper becomes a vessel for holiness. The paper has not changed in the slightest. But its true purpose has been revealed.

And so it is with the entire world. Your business can be holy. Your home can be holy. A meal, a conversation, even the phone in your hand — all of them can turn from a vessel of the mundane into a vessel of holiness. The world is not an obstacle on the way to holiness. It is the raw material of holiness.

And the moment you grasp this, something flips in your entire way of looking at life. If the world is an obstacle — then every encounter with it is a threat, something to guard against. But if the world is the dwelling of the Almighty, simply waiting to be revealed — then every encounter with the world is an opportunity. This is exactly the avodah, the work, to which the maamar calls us — and this is the mission of the seventh generation.

Summary, and a Teaser for the Next Lesson

So let us gather it all into one hand.

“Basi LeGani” of 5711 is the maamar with which the Rebbe opened his leadership, as a direct continuation of the last maamar of his father-in-law, the Rebbe Rayatz. It is based on the first chapter of that maamar, and it was delivered on the tenth of Shevat, 5711.

And the one idea that holds it all together: “ikar Shechina b’tachtonim haysa” — the essence of the Divine Presence was in the lower realms. The Almighty wanted a home — a dirah — davka here, in this world. All of history is the story of the concealment and the return: the light was revealed, was hidden because of the sins, and was brought back by the tzaddikim, generation after generation. And our generation, the seventh, has received both the privilege and the responsibility to complete the task — to turn the world itself into a dwelling for Him, may He be blessed.

In the next lesson we will finally begin to open the maamar itself, word by word. We will begin with chapter one — ois alef — and stand on the opening lines: “Basi LeGani Achosi Kallah — legani, leginuni, to the place where it was My essence at first, for the ikar of the Shechina was in the lower realms.” We will see the precise grammar of the Midrash, and dive into the great question: what, in fact, is “Shechina” — and why specifically “ikar Shechina,” the essence of the Shechina.

And along the way, slowly, we will meet the rest of the concepts out of which the maamar is built: dirah b’tachtonim, iskafia and is’hapcha, shtus dikedusha, mesirus nefesh, and also deep concepts from the teachings of Kabbalah. Do not be intimidated by the words — each one will be explained in its time, step by step.