The Alter Rebbe explained in the previous chapter that the light of the Shechinah, an illumination utterly transcending the realm of the world, must have a “garment” which enables it to radiate there. The “garment” of the Shechinah is Torah.

In every World there is found the “intelligence” of that particular World, namely, the Sefirot of Chochmah, Binah and Daat of that World. They constitute the shrine of the Holy of Holies in which the Shechinah resides. After the levels of ChaBaD (in which resides the Shechinah) descend into the level of Malchut of a particular World, the creatures of that World are then created.

By vesting itself in Malchut, moreover, the light of the Shechinah is then able to descend into the shrine of the Holy of Holies of the next lower World. The Alter Rebbe explained this process as it applies to all Worlds down to and including the spiritual World of Asiyah.

In ch. 53 he will go on to explain how the light of the Shechinah descends and illuminates this physical world. During the times of the First and Second Temple the Shechinah was housed in the Holy of Holies. Today it finds its abode in a Jew’s study of Torah and performance of the mitzvot.

He will also explain the difference between the level of the illumination of the Shechinah in the First and Second Beit HaMikdash on the one hand, and the level of Shechinah which is drawn down through the study of Torah and the performance of mitzvot, on the other.

והנה כשהיה בית ראשון קיים, שבו היה הארון והלוחות בבית קדשי קדשים, היתה השכינה, שהיא מלכות דאצילות, שהיא בחינת גילוי אור אין סוף ברוך הוא

At the time the First Temple stood, in which the Ark and the Tablets were housed in the Holy of Holies, the Shechinah — which is Malchut of Atzilut, that is, the revealed light of the Ein Sof, a light which intrinsically is infinite and transcends all Worlds, and which nevertheless was revealed in them —

שורה שם, ומלובשת בעשרת הדברות

dwelled there, and was clothed in the Ten Commandments which were engraved upon the Tablets found in the Ark in the Holy of Holies,

ביתר שאת ויתר עז, בגילוי רב ועצום יותר, מגילויה בהיכלות קדשי קדשים שלמעלה בעולמות עליונים

far more intensely, and with a greater and mightier revelation, than its revelation in the shrines of the Holy of Holies above in the upper Worlds.

This refers to the Worlds of Asiyah and Yetzirah.1 For even in the World of Yetzirah, the Shechinah illumines only insofar as it has previously clothed itself in the shrine of the Holy of Holies of the World of Beriah. The level of Shechinah manifest in the First Temple, however, though it too was manifest only through having first been enclothed in Malchut of Beriah, was less completely concealed. Even after this concealment, therefore, the illumination in the First Temple was still on the level of the World of Beriah, and not of Yetzirah.