This model also applies to the relationship between HaShem and Israel, where He is the groom and they are the bride. Their commitment evolves through a similar progression of intimacy. R. Schneur Zalman proves that the Torah’s revelation effected HaShem’s betrothal to Israel, the first stage of intimacy where externalities engage. Their relationship will consummate in messianic times.
Just as a man effects betrothal with a ring, so did HaShem, for the ring’s circular form parallel’s the metaphysical concept of surrounding lights. In kaballah, lights that can be grasped and integrated are called inner and internalizable (אור פנימי), lights that are present but too “high” or “deep” or “vast” to be contained within their vessel of consciousness are described as surrounding or hovering (אור מקיף). Both types descended at Sinai.
According to Jewish tradition, the Torah’s revelation was the most profound manifestation of G‑d that ever transpired on the planet. An estimated four million people experienced that historic event. A searing revelation of Presence engraved the souls of an entire nation with the-truth-of-the-universe compressed into a single burst of light. Its impact continues to impel their generations to be seekers and servants of G‑d, and will do so till the end of time.
Sinai is different from all other prophetic encounters not only in its amount of light but also in its quality. Other Biblical prophesies only accessed the aura of Divinity, the glow that surrounds the Blessed Luminary. At Sinai the Infinite Light itself, the actual source of illumination, was manifestly present. And yet, the people could not contain that intensity of revelation. Its bolt of insight impacted their souls, but only a fraction integrated as conscious awareness. The rest overflowed into a ring of surrounding light that holds all the possibilities of future consciousness within its glow. With each passing moment the vessel of awareness expands and a drop of surrounding radiance slips inside and integrates there. Eventually all the encircling lights will be internalized by our infinitely expanded capacity to know G‑d.
R. Schneur Zalman defines both integrated and surrounding lights by their relationship to Torah. Integrated lights are truths and teachings that are accessible to us now, at this point in our development. All the accumulated wisdom of the Jewish people, its Torah commentaries, legal rulings, moral lessons and mysticism are all integrated lights to the extent that they are known and incorporated into life.
Conversely, the inner dimension of Torah, the repository of secrets hidden within the text elucidating the deeper reasons behind its laws, stories, and textual structure, this came down at Sinai but was not actually revealed at that time. Embedded within each letter, word, and story are all the unrealized possibilities of interpretation daily elucidated. These ungraspable lights (along with the higher states of consciousness that accompany them), form a shimmering halo around the integrated lights of the revealed Torah, enclosing them as if in a sphere of radiant consciousness. With this encircling band as His engagement offering, HaShem betrothed the Jewish people at Sinai and secured their commitment to marry at the end of days.
Throughout their engagement period Israel’s relationship to HaShem daily ripens. It is not a time of passive waiting; only active preparation will do. Our task is to labor in Torah, to release its hidden teachings and allow ourselves to be transformed by its truths. Each day Israel exposes another layer of concealed lights and soon there will be no secrets left. The Torah’s soul-satisfying wisdoms will illuminate every question, resolve every doubt, and explain every suffering.
The fullness of Divine light will shine through the Torah and fill Israel’s collective heart, bones, cells and spaces with Holy Presence. There will be no place inside them that is not permeated with G‑d and nothing of G‑d that does not fit inside them. A perfect marriage, a consummate union of glory and awe.
This transition from betrothal to marriage happens through the gradual integration of surrounding lights. The transfer of consciousness from above to below, from its infinite source on high to its final expression as expanded awareness in the minds of mankind, follows one path of descent now, in the engagement period, and will follow an alternative route in messianic times. Now, this stepwise relay of consciousness begins with mother who passes it on to man. He internalizes what he can and the rest spills over as surrounding light. Man then separates out a portion of his newly integrated lights and passes them on to woman.
The rule is stated thus: The higher the partzuf, the greater its capacity to hold light. Consequently at each transfer only some illumination actually fits into the vessel below. The rest gets displaced into a ring of transcendent awareness that holds all the possibilities of future apprehension, and that encircles the head of the lower partzuf. In this way each upper level becomes a crown to the level below.
This is the order of descent in pre-messianic times, while the moon is diminished and woman’s stature is less than man’s. In this configuration woman cannot access her own transcendent lights, for she cannot reach them on her own. She needs man to draw them from mother and pass them to her.
Woman’s preparation for marriage requires that she heal all traces of diminishment and reattain her full stature. Consummation can only happen when man and woman match from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet, and this is only possible when they meet as equal statures. As long as woman remains diminished, their union can never consummate and “marriage” cannot happen.
Then, explains the Rav, their relationship evolves to a higher level still. Woman recovers her full stature and then supercedes man. When this happens their polarity inverts. Now she becomes “the crown to her husband,” holding the superconscious lights that are destined for him, but which he cannot reach on his own. Like a rubber band stretched and released, she springs beyond man and becomes the intermediary in their relationship, a service he will have provided for six thousand years. Since she can now access levels that he cannot, she transfers their illuminations to him, some of which he integrates and some of which he cannot, for his vessel of consciousness is too small to contain them. Instead they encircle his head as a crown, fulfilling the verse which states “the woman of valor will become a crown to her husband.”
The seventh marriage blessing depicts this shift in the polarity of man and woman with its closing words, “…Blessed is HaShem who rejoices the groom with the bride.” Its use of the word with (as opposed to the word and in the sixth blessing) indicates that woman is now the primary source of joy and man comes along with her. In the first six milleniums of history consciousness (and its joys) flows from man to woman, but this dynamic will change in messianic times. The supersconscious lights of G‑d awareness will pass first to woman, and then, afterwards, to man.
Rav Schneur Zalman depicts this gender transformation as a two-step process. First woman comes into her voice. Her current lack of voice manifests in two ways. Now her betrothal happens through a one way flow of speech. The groom talks while the bride stays silent. He pronounces his intention, “Behold you are sanctified [betrothed] to me…” and she does not respond. Her silence expresses her lack of protest which establishes the criteria of mutual consent. Their engagement, with all its contractual responsibilities, activates by her muteness. Second the Shemona Essrei,[5] the epitome of prayer and woman’s essential expression of Divine service, (as opposed to Torah study, which is man’s) is a silently offered prayer.
The seventh marriage blessing reads, “Let there soon be heard …the voice of the bride.” R. Schneur Zalman reads this as an invocation: Let the bride come into her voice. Let her express herself and project herself in fully audible speech, the very opposite of the whispered prayers we now employ in our Shemona Essrei
In the future woman will return to her root and receive her lights straight from the very source of consciousness itself, the inwardness of the Infinite light. The relationship between groom and bride, God and Israel will then be fully consummated, as woman attains her full stature and they now meet at every level of their beings. Woman will recover her voice, and the roles of man and woman will invert. Man will receive his light and bounty from the transcendent levels of HaShem via the agency of woman as his intermediary, a state described by the seventh marriage blessing, “Blessed are You, HaShem who rejoices the groom with the bride.” All the promised pleasures of the messianic times are merely effects of this profound shift in gender relations.
