After the terrible warning presented in Sedra Bechukotai, the Torah states “I will remember the covenant [with the twelve Tribes]”. A few verses earlier it says “I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and I will also remember My covenant with Abraham..”
The Tzemach Tzedek cites the Midrash which says ‘just as I made an oath with the Patriarchs and I kept My covenant with them, so too with the Tribes.’
Thus, the earlier verse speaks of the covenant with the Patriarchs, which Hashem fulfilled by bringing the Jewish people from Egypt into the Land of Israel. In the same way, says the Midrash, in the later verse Hashem assures us that He will keep His covenant with [the descendants of] the Twelve Tribes, and bring their descendants back to the Land of Israel with Moshiach.
The Tzemach Tzedek explains that the Twelve Tribes, with the addition of the Tribe of Levi, making thirteen, relate to the twelve copper oxen on which was a large copper bowl, also making thirteen, made by Solomon for the First Temple. The oxen and the bowl (which held water for washing the Priests) represent the kabbalistic World of Creation, the level of the Tribes. The covenant with the Tribes is that there should be a flow to them from the exalted level of the ‘Thirteen Aspects of the “Beard”’ (like the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy), from the realm of Keter, Crown, the highest aspect of the Sefirot, which is also the spiritual realm of the Patriarchs.
This idea of the flow from a higher to a lower level is parallel to what it says at the beginning of this Sedra, ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My Commandments.. then the earth will give its produce..’. Rashi explains that ‘If you walk in My statutes’ does not mean the same as ‘keep My Commandments’ and it actually means making an effort in study of Torah. The word for ‘My statutes’, chukotai, relates to the Hebrew word for ‘engraving’. Thus Chassidic teachings explain that an exalted level of Torah is that of ‘engraved letters’, as was the case with the Tablets of the Law which Moses brought from Sinai. The Ten Commandments were engraved on the stone.
That is the higher level of Torah, in which the letters are part of the stone itself. Lower is the level at which the Torah is written with ink on parchment, as in a Torah scroll. Here the ink letters are separate from the parchment, and might be scraped off by the scribe.
Now let us consider this in terms of the soul of a person who is studying Torah. The Sages emphasise that when studying, the words of Torah should be pronounced aloud. These are Letters of Speech. However, one also has to understand the Torah one is studying (especially as regards the Oral Torah), hence one also has to be studying with Letters of Thought. These thoughts are not the essence of the idea, but a kind of garment of the Intellect.
We see this from the fact that several scholars (such as Tosafot, the Rosh and the Ran) can each express the same idea in completely different letters and words. Hence the letters are separate from the idea, like the ink letters written on parchment, which are separate from the parchment base.
A higher dimension is in the Intellect itself, thinking of an Idea on a level beyond words. Yet the Intellect still has some way of conceiving the Idea, which can be called ‘letters’, in the sense that they enable the thinker to define the Idea. At this level the ‘letters’ and the Intellect are joined, they are not separate, as they are when the idea has been formulated in words which can be expressed to another person.
This higher level is like the letters engraved in the stone base. The letters are part of the base and cannot be separated from it.
One can take this image even further – the way the Idea is not just in the Intellect but in the Soul, beyond the Intellect. Then it is like the engraved letters, but in an even higher way, engraved in the Soul.
How does this explanation of ‘you should walk in My statutes’, meaning ‘engraved letters’, relate to Rashi’s explanation that the same phrase means one should make an effort in Torah study? As mentioned above, the Sages tell us that Torah study has to be with actual expression of the words aloud. How does that relate to the letters engraved in the Soul?
The answer can be seen in the idea presented in Tanya (Iggeret Hakodesh) that ‘the father founds the daughter’. This means that the Sefirah Wisdom – not just Wisdom as it is at the top of the system of Sefirot, but a higher aspect of Wisdom which is completely beyond the downchaining of worlds – is the basis for the Letters which are called ‘the daughter’, meaning the lowest Sefirah, Malchut, Kingship.
Translating that into the life of the individual, this means that our external speech, saying the words of Torah, is actually rooted at a very deep level of one’s Soul. Hence, by a person making the effort to study Torah – as can be the case with any Jew, fixing times for Torah study, each person to their own measure – the essence of their own Soul is involved. Further, since the Jewish people and Torah (and G-d) are joined, when the person joins his or her own essence with the essence of the Torah they are studying, they reach the level of ‘engraving’ and oneness both in their own Soul and in the Divine.
This reaches the highest levels of the Divine, what the Zohar terms the ‘engraving’ which is the very beginning of the process of Creation.
One could say that the discourse is asking us to be aware that our efforts towards simple Torah study, saying the words aloud, and understanding as much as we can, reaches both our own essence and the essence of G-dliness.
The discourse concludes by explaining that this is the ‘covenant’ mentioned in the verse quoted at the beginning, the bond with G-d which lifts us up, through our Torah study, and joins us to the highest levels of the Divine.
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