Upsherin, which means the minhag, the custom that we have, that when a boy becomes three years old, you give him his first haircut. Till then, you do not cut his hair, and then when he becomes three, that's when you give him his first haircut. And not only do we give him the haircut, but we make a whole fuss over it, and we make a whole party, a simcha, and some places even say that the parties that are made should be similar to a party that you make by a brit. And this is all when we give the child the first haircut. Now what I would like to really discuss is the source for this custom, the source, the reason why we make a party in connection to this custom of cutting the hair, and also, if it's so important, why don't we find that it's written in Shulchan Aruch? In Shulchan Aruch it doesn't mention it. In the poskim, in the codifiers, we don't find anywhere that it should mention it. And nevertheless, it's a very, very important custom as we know that we make it with a great simcha, with a great party, so obviously there must be a lot to it. So what I would like to explain is the meaning behind it, the simple interpretation, simple peshat, and also mainly to go a little bit deeper into the esoteric, into the kabbalistic explanation. And the truth is, this is a minhag that is based more on Kabbalah than on simple halacha, because this is basically a spiritual thing. Not like other things that we do by a brit, it's a halacha thing, a chatunah is a halacha. This is something that has to do more with the spiritual aspect, and therefore the real explanation is really Kabbalah. And I will get a little bit into the kabbalistic explanation, and I hope that I'll be understood. And if not, you know, that's what Kabbalah is, you expect not to understand it. Because if you understand everything, then you'll say that's not Kabbalah, that's understood. So I expect that what I'll say, unless you're familiar with the terms and know what it says in Kabbalah, I'm sure things will not be so simple, but I will try to explain it to the best of my ability. There is a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe, from the previous Rebbe, where he refers to Upsherin and he says that Upsherin is a דבר גדול במנהגי ישראל, that doing the Upsherin, this cutting the hair of the three-year-old, is a great inyan, a great thing when it comes to Jewish customs. In other words, it's a very important custom. And then he continues in the letter and he says that from the moment that you give him the haircut, we are mehader, we try to see that he should start wearing the the child should start wearing a tallit katan, start wearing tzitzit, and you make sure that the child should start being careful with making berachot, Birkat Hashachar, in the morning to say the berachot before when you wake up, before davenen, also to start training the child to Birkat Hamazon, which is bentching, and also that's the time when we start training the child to קריאת שמע על המטה, to say the Shema before he goes to sleep. But the first expression of the letter is that this is a דבר גדול במנהגי ישראל, that it's a very great thing concerning the Jewish customs. And this letter is quoted in every letter that the Rebbe wrote as an answer to an Upsherin. Every time someone would notify the Rebbe that his son is becoming three and they're making an Upsherin, the Rebbe would send a letter with a beracha, like he did to a chatunah, like he did to a brit, and in the the first part of the letter was the beracha that the Rebbe would give to the parents and to the to the child that's becoming three years old and getting the upsherin, and then after the signature, in every single letter, the Rebbe would say נ\\"ב, which means PS, I would like to quote a part of a letter from my father-in-law concerning upsherin. And this is the letter that the Rebbe would quote. And there the expression is that it's a דבר גדול במנהגי ישראל, that it's something great amongst the customs, the Jewish customs. So we have to know what is the source of this custom, and what is the reason for this custom, what it's all based on. There are some more of the modern authors of sefarim that claim that there is no source for this custom. Obviously, these doesn't these authors are not chassidim, and they say that there is no source for this custom and therefore it's not a real custom and we don't really have to follow it. The truth is, this is a very big mistake, because we do find a source to it. The earliest we find in the sefarim concerning the custom of making upsherin, cutting the hair three years old, or בכלל making a fuss over cutting the hair of the child, is from the Arizal. Now the Arizal himself lived over 400 years ago, and the Arizal is the source of all Kabbalah that we have now, Kabbalat HaArizal. So we find that R'' Chaim Vital, who was the greatest student of the Arizal, writes that his Rebbe, the Arizal, when he still lived in Mitzrayim, when he still lived in Egypt, traveled special to Meron to the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and brought his son to have his first haircut there. And it says he took his wife along, and he stayed there for a few days, and he made a big simcha out of it. And that's still from the Arizal. And Rabbi Chaim Vital writes that this is what he did כמנהג הידוע, like the famous custom. So obviously, already in the time of the Arizal, this custom was a famous custom. Now it doesn't say there exactly how old his son was when he did it, but it seems from everything else that he writes there that his son was three years old when he did it. And this is actually the accepted custom to do the first haircut when the child becomes three years old. There are other customs, very, very few different communities that have those other customs. Some start as early as 13 months, and some go as late as five years old. Some have two years old, four years old, different customs, but the accepted custom that spread amongst Klal Yisrael is to have the child his first haircut should be at the time when he becomes three years old. And this is all based on a Midrash, the reason that it's three years old, on a Midrash. When the pasuk in Parashat Kedoshim talks about the mitzvah of orlah, which is actually a prohibition that when you plant a tree, for the first three years you're not allowed to cut its fruit, take its fruit off, and it says when it comes when the three years are up, so then when it comes to the end of the three years, when it starts the fourth year, then this it says the fruit, the perot are קדש הלולים לה׳, is holy as a praise to Hashem, and that was a halachah that the fourth year the fruit becomes נטע רבעי, it was called, that they would have to take the fruit to Yerushalayim. So it says that it's in Midrash that when the first three years you're not allowed to cut its fruit, the Midrash says, it's a Midrash Tanchuma, the Midrash says that this refers to the first three years of a child. That the first three years of a child, a child doesn't can't talk yet, and he can't really he's not he's not really in any way in understanding, and those are the three years that you can't do anything with the child, but when it finishes the three years and comes enters the fourth year, when you finish the three, that's when it's קדש הלולים לה׳, that's when it's holy, and that's when you cut off its fruit. Just like you cut the fruit after the three years, you you cut the hair of the child after the three years. So here we compare the child to the tree, which is basically based on the famous pasuk where it says כי האדם עץ השדה, that a person is like the tree of the field. And just like by the tree for three years you cannot take its fruit off, you cannot cut the fruit off, you cannot cut the hair of the child. After the three years, when the three years are up, that's when you cut the hair. And when you cut the hair, what you really do is you fulfill at that moment the mitzvah of pe'ot. And that's the whole idea. The mitzvah of לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם, it says you're not allowed to cut the pe'ot of your head. Actually, the expression of the pasuk is לא תקיפו. But לא תקיפו, the word הקף means surrounding. That means you're not allowed to make your head that should be equal from the beginning to the back through. Like this, the forehead has no hair, the back of the neck there is no hair. In the middle you have the hair. You're not allowed to make that the area in the middle should also be without hair, like skin, and then the whole head will be surrounded with skin. That's what the pasuk says, and that's where the mitzvah of pe'ot comes. When you cut the hair of the child, you leave him pe'ot, you fulfill the mitzvah of pe'ot. And the inyan of pe'ot is compared to is by a tree. We know that by fruit of the field there is a mitzvah of pe'ah. Pe'ah means that when you cut the crop, you have to leave the corners without cutting them for the poor people. And it says in Yerushalmi that by a tree we also find the mitzvah of pe'ah. And the Yerushalmi says, where do we find pe'ot by a tree? So it says, yes, by a person we find the mitzvah of pe'ah. It says לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם, you have to leave the pe'ot of the person, and a person is like a tree, so we find the mitzvah of pe'ot by a tree. So basically, because there is a din by a tree that for three years there is orlah, you can't cut the fruit, and after that you do, so by a person, by a child, the first three years you don't cut, and then you cut it and you leave the pe'ot, and you fulfill the mitzvah of pe'ot. So basically, the whole fuss that we make over the first upsherenish is that we fulfill on this child the mitzvah of leaving פאות, לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם, do not cut the pe'ot of your head. And when do you fulfill the mitzvah? When you don't take a haircut at all, when you let your hair grow, you don't fulfill the mitzvah of leaving pe'ot, because you're not doing anything. But when you take that machine or that scissor, and you cut your hair, and you skip that area of the pe'ot, then you fulfill actually the mitzvah of pe'ot. And when do you start fulfilling the mitzvah of payot? When you give him the first haircut. So that's the simcha that we have that now we are able to be mechanech, to educate the child to fulfill this mitzvah of leaving payot. And we do it only at the age of three, because before that, it says you shouldn't cut it at all, like the ערלה, the fruit of the tree. And now when you start cutting it, you leave the payot, and that's why we make a big fuss over it a fuss over it. But the question is, why do we make a big fuss over specifically over the mitzvah of payot? We educate and train the children when they're still young to all the mitzvot, and as time goes along and they become older, you train them to more mitzvot. So why do we make a fuss specifically when we train the child to the mitzvah of payot? Obviously the mitzvah of payot must be a very, very important mitzvah.

Well, it says in sefarim that the the mitzvah of payot is the siman, is the sign that you are a Jew. Just like we make a big fuss over the mitzvah of milah, because that's the mitzvah that we perform in the body of a Jew, and that stays with a Jew, and that makes the Jewish body show that it's Jewish, so too the payot. The payot are on the body, and by having payot, and later on when you grow older and you have a beard, but even earlier when you have payot, that is a siman that you are a Jew. And that's why we know in history that in many cases when the goyim came out with terrible decrees against the Jews, the first thing they did was force them to cut off their payot. You know there's a picture of the Holocaust, a famous picture where you see two Nazis standing on both sides of a Jew with a scissor, and what did they do trying to laugh, make fun of him? Cutting his payot. That's where they would start, because they also knew that this is like a Jewish uniform. This shows that this person is Jewish. So the payot are not just a mitzvah like other mitzvot, that we're not allowed to cut our payot just like you can't eat treifah food, and we train a child not to eat treifah food too. This is a a siman that you are Jewish, this describes that you are Jewish, and therefore the payot is so important. Besides that, the Rambam, when he explains the mitzvah of payot, the Rambam says that why is it that Hashem commanded us not to cut our payot? He says, because the כומרים לעבודה זרה, which means the priests for the idols, used to cut off their payot. Used to cut off their hair. They used to cut their whole head, including the hair of the payot. They used to cut everything off. They used to become completely completely bald. That's what they used to do. So Hashem says, I want you not to do the same things that the priests to the avodah zarah do. And as the chinuch explains, this is a form of Hashem taking us away from avodah zarah. Hashem wants us to stay away from idol worship as far as possible. We shouldn't have any comparison, any connection to avodah zarah. And one of the ways Hashem took us away from avodah zarah is by telling us have payot. There's an interesting peshat, the Chatam Sofer says, why did the goyishe priests, the priests of the avodah zarah take off their payot, cut all their hair including the payot? He has an interesting peshat. Because those that worship idols used to make idols in the shape, in the form of a human being. Many of the idols were statues of human beings. You can make an idol have everything a human being has except hair. You can make eyes, you can make a nose, you can make a mouth, you can make teeth, you can't make him grow hair. You could take hair from someplace else and put it into into the statue, but it's something that you can't do. So therefore the idols that they used to make didn't really have didn't have hair. And the priests, in order to follow their idols, would also make sure they have no hair. So they'd cut off their whole hair. So Hashem says, I want you when you cut your hair, don't cut it all off. Be different. Leave the payot on both sides, and that way you'll be far away from avodah zarah. In other words, keeping the mitzvah of payot is not just a mitzvah like all other mitzvot or a prohibition like any other prohibition. It's a very major one. It's a prohibition that is connected to keeping a Jew away from idol worship, which is the worst aveirah. That's why it's such an important mitzvah. And that's why this is how we start off the education of our child. And as the Rebbe writes in that letter, afterwards already, at the time when you give him the haircut and you leave his payot, then already teach him a tallit katan, teach him the other מצות, ברכת השחר, ברכת המזון, קריאת שמע שעל המטה, but it all starts with the payot, because the payot, that is the way we keep him away from avodah zarah, and that's the way we implant in the body, besides brit milah, in in the body that this person is Jewish. And that's why this is said keeping the mitzvah of payot is a segulah to be able to keep more mitzvot. There is a vort that says in sefarim, it's like a joke, but it's an interesting vort. There is a pasuk that says חנוך לנער על פי דרכו גם כי יזקין לא יסור ממנה. You have to really know Hebrew in order to appreciate this joke. חנוך לנער על פי דרכו means train the child according to his way. גם כי יזקין, so also when he will get older, לא יסור ממנה, he will not turn away from it. If you train a child when he's small to do the right thing, when he gets old he won't turn away. The word יזקין also comes from the word זקן. Zaken means a beard. So the pasuk says חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, if you train the child when he's small to have פאות, גם כי יזקין, when he gets older, his זקן לא יסור ממנה, he will not shave off his beard. So חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, if you give him a real upsherin in the proper way, that's the segulah that when he grows up he'll have a beard, גם כי יזקין לא יסור ממנה, he won't take it off. Because the inyan of having the pe'ot is a very very important thing. It's, it's a mitzvah that is the foundation of every other of all other mitzvot. There is a Midrash that the Midrash says on the pasuk that the Yidden are called, so as, בת ציון. The Yidden are called בת ציון, the daughter of Tzion, which means that the word Tzion refers to the Jews. The Jews are called Tzion. Why are Jews called Tzion? We know Tzion is the name of a place. Yerushalayim is also called ציון, כי מציון תצא תורה. Torah comes from Tzion, which is Yerushalayim. But it says also that the Jews are referred to as Tzion. So the Midrash says, why are the Jews referred to as Tzion? Because the word Tzion means distinguished, different. And the Midrash says that the Jews are different in which way? So it says like this, an interesting thing. It says they're different that they have tzitzit, they have milah, and they have תגלחת. תגלחת means a haircut. They're different in the fact that they have milah, they have tzitzit, and they have a haircut. But the mefarshim say, what do we mean they're different they have a haircut? In the way they have their haircut. They're different that when they take a haircut they don't cut their pe'ot. But the mefarshim ask, why did he pick milah and tzitzit and a haircut? In the Gemara in a different place, in Menachot it says that a Jew is different in the fact that he has tzitzit, tefillin, and mezuzah. That's the one that's usually written. These are the main three: tefillin, tzitzit, and mezuzah. And here it says milah, tzitzit, and תגלחת, and cutting of the hair, the way you cut your hair. So the mefarshim say, you know why? We're not talking about an adult. We're talking here about the first haircut! We're talking here about a child who doesn't have a home of his own to have a mezuzah, a child who doesn't have tefillin. And this child has milah, this child has tzitzit, and this child has pe'ot. So the Midrash says, why is the whole Jewish community, klal Yisrael called Zion? Because of the child that gets his haircut when he starts getting his haircut and has pe'ot, and that has, he has milah before and then he puts on tzitzit. That makes the אידן בת ציון. That's how important it is. So since it's so important, that's why we make such a big fuss over it. And we make a big party, because that's the time when we start training the child to this very very important thing. And the simcha is so great that according to many poskim, not poskim that are brought down lahalacha, but in sefarim it says that it's considered a seudat mitzvah. The party that you make an upsherenish is a seudat mitzvah. And it's נוגע להלכה. If, for instance, a person makes a neder, a vow, there used to be people used to make such a vow that he will not enter a party unless it's a seudat mitzvah. If he's invited to a סעודת הרשות, a party that's not connected to a mitzvah, he wouldn't enter. Some people who wanted to be extra careful would do that. Is he allowed to go to the party of an upsherenish? He's allowed to go to a brit, because it's a party of a mitzvah, to a chatunah, to a pidyon haben, all these different things. What about an upsherenish? So they say, yes! He's allowed, because this upsherenish is a, called a mitzvah. And it's called a seudat mitzvah. And it's so important that the poskim write that Chol Hamoed, you're allowed to give a haircut to a child who becomes three years old. Sefirah not, and the three weeks not, but Chol Hamoed, which Chol Hamoed you're not allowed to take a haircut, but because this is such an important mitzvah, you're allowed to give the first haircut on Chol Hamoed, because this is like a mitzvah.

Now there is a special connection between taking this first haircut and Lag BaOmer. That's why If it happens in Sefirah, if the child was born in Sefirah, you wait till Lag BaOmer, which you have to wait anyway, but there is something special in Lag BaOmer. To take Lag BaOmer and to be in Miron would be even more, if it's only possible in Eretz Yisrael to take the child to Miron to the kever of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. But even not, but to make it on Lag BaOmer, and the Rebbe spoke about it many times, the importance of making an upsherin on Lag BaOmer. And it says one of the things is that the word והתגלח, which means you should take a haircut. And that talks about a person who became had leprosy and you have to make him טהור, so the pasuk says והתגלח, which means take a haircut. The word והתגלח is פסוק ל״ג, is the 33rd pasuk in קפיטל י״ג of Parshat Tazria. So that's a remez, that's a hint to ל״ג, ל״ג to Lag BaOmer. Now even though we know that the chapters, the קפיטלאך of the Chumash are not, were not made by the chachamim, actually as it seems it was made by goyim. When the goyim had their translation of the Bible, they divided it in chapters different than we have our parashiyot. And for some reason or other this was transferred to our Chumash, and all the Chumashim have it. So it doesn't have really a Jewish source. But the Rebbe says nevertheless, because it was accepted by Jews, and that's studied that way, and whenever you want to write a מראה מקום, a reference to a pasuk, the only way you could write to show which pasuk you mean is by writing which chapter and which pasuk. So it became part of Torah. Some reason the one that made that had some kind of zechut, some goy had the zechut, but it became part of Torah and there are many, many remezim, many hints that we can learn out from the place of the chapter and the pasuk. And here we see that the פסוק ל״ג is the word והתגלח, which shows its connection to Lag BaOmer. And Lag BaOmer we all know is the yahrzeit which we call the יומא דהילולא of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Concerning upsherin, we said before from the Midrash the connection to the where it says on the fourth year the פירות are קודש הילולים לה׳. So the Degel Machaneh Ephraim writes that here we say the word הילולים and we know it's הילולא דרשב״י. So there is a connection between the upsherin and the הילולא, the Yom Tov of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. And actually the word הילולא really means a חתונה. In in Aramaic it's חתונה. And the yahrzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is called the חתונה of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. And that's why those children that get their haircuts on Lag BaOmer are called חתני דרשב״י, the chatanim of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, that's what they're called in the קבלה ספרים. Because they're doing something in connection to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, because this is his הילולא and this is also a הילולא, and that's a special day to do it, if you're able to do it on that day. If you're able to go to Meron to do it there on the קבר of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai like the Arizal did and like the custom is in Eretz Yisrael if you're only able to, that's more special. But even if not, if you do it on Lag BaOmer it's a special thing. This is what the inyan of upsherin is generally.

Then we find in קבלה ספרים and in the שיחות of the Rebbe it's brought down that an upsherin is connected to something else and here is where we're going to get into some kabbalistic inyanim. There is a mitzvah called ראשית הגז. ראשית הגז is that the first shearing of the wool of the season has to be given away to the kohen. That's called ראשית, the first, the beginning, הגז. גז is גוזז, גוזז הצאן, when you shear the wool of the sheep it's called גז, ג׳ ז׳. ראשית הגז, it's the first shearing you have to give to the kohen. It's one of the כ״ד מתנות כהונה, it's one of the four 24 presents that you give a kohen, like you give to a כהן פדיון הבן, and they would give to a כהן תרומה. So you have to give to a kohen ראשית הגז. So it says that cutting the hair of the child is connected to the mitzvah of ראשית הגז. It's also cutting hair, what's wool? It's the hair that grows on the sheep. You're cutting the wool. So this is, and that's a mitzvah. Then cutting the hair of the child is connected to ראשית הגז. And in some of the שיחות when the Rebbe referred to the haircut, to doing an upsherenish, the Rebbe called it actually ראשית הגז. He's going to do the ראשית הגז. To explain what is the Kabbalah explanation in the mitzvah of ראשית הגז, and from there we will go on to see the connection of an upsherenish to ראשית הגז. In Kabbalah it says that the word גז, גז is ג׳ ז׳. ג׳ is three, ז׳ is seven. When we talk about three and seven, we know right away what we're talking about. We know that in the sefirot, we have the עשר ספירות, the ten sefirot of Atzilus, in the high world, the spiritual world called עולם האצילות. We have the ten sefirot. And the ten sefirot are divided into two parts: three parts of the intellect, חכמה בינה דעת, and then seven parts of the emotions which are חסד, גבורה, תפארת, נצח, הוד, יסוד, מלכות. And together it's ten. It's עשר ספירות, the ten sefirot. גז, גימל זין, is three and seven, that represents the ten sefirot of Atzilus. ראשית הגז, when we cut the hair, when we cut the wool, so in קבלה it says what it means is that we have a המשכה from above אצילות into אצילות. We know that אצילות has the אור אין סוף, the light of Hashem, but certain mitzvot that through doing it has more light from the level higher than אצילות into אצילות. Every mitzvah has its spiritual explanation. Every mitzvah that that we do causes some ruchniyusdike, some spiritual happening in higher worlds. And some mitzvot we know exactly what we cause. So, it says that when you do the mitzvah of ראשית הגז, what you do is you bring more אור אין סוף, more light of Hashem, into גימל זין, into the ten ספירות, from where? From its source. What is the source of עולם האצילות? Where do the ten ספירות come from? So we all know that beyond אצילות, higher than אצילות, is what we call כתר. The translation of כתר is the crown, but what it means is there is a level higher than אצילות, which is made up of two parts: עתיק and אריך. אריך is the lower level, עתיק is the higher level, and the two together make up the level אצילות, and that basically is the link between Hashem Himself and אצילות. So, you have the two levels in between. And we know that the level of עתיק, the level of עתיק, which is the higher level of אצילות, is referred to, the higher level beyond אצילות, is referred to as the י״ג מדות הרחמים. We know that there are thirteen attributes of mercy of Hashem. It says these thirteen attributes of mercy come from the level of עתיק. And they are connected, it says, to י״ג תקוני דיקנא, to the thirteen areas in the beard. And we see that the beard is hair. And the reason that's connected to hair is because hair shows on המשכת החיות. It brings life. The hair has two opposites. On one hand, hair is part of the body, and it has it draws life from the body. The best proof that it has life, it grows. If it wouldn't have life, it wouldn't grow. But it has such a minimal amount of life, and the proof to that is that when you cut it, it doesn't hurt. If you cut your hand, it hurts. You cut anything, it hurts. So nails and hair show on a very, very מצומצמדיקע השפעה, מצומצם, very concentrated, contracted השפעה that comes from that comes from the body. So, when we talk about the level of עתיק, which is such a high level, so the המשכה that comes usually from Atik to the lower level, being that Atik is so high, and actually the Hebrew translation of the word Atik is removed, נעתק, removed. It's so high that it's removed even from Atzilus. And therefore, all you get from there is only שערות, only a המשכה, only the light that comes in the form of hair, which is very, very little of chiyut, little of light of Hashem. And that's why it's compared to hair. That's why it says in the pasuk, the pasuk which is the source of this whole term Atik. There's a pasuk that says that the navi saw Hashem, and He looked like an עתיק יומין. Atik Atik also means old, olden days, an old man. And it says שער רישא כעמר נקי, the hair was like white wool. לבושא כתלג חיור, and His His garment was like white snow, very white and old, and He was sitting on the throne. So in Kabbalah, it says that this refers to the spiritual level called Atik. And we see in that pasuk that we refer to Him We talk about His hair, and we talk about, and the hair, it says, was like like like wool, and wool is hair. Then it says His clothes was like white like snow, and snow is connected to wool because the pasuk says שלג כצמר that he makes שלג, snow like wool. So we connect the snow and the wool. Why does the pasuk, the way Kabbalah explains, why does the pasuk refer to Atik with wool and with hair? It's all because the המשכה from Atik is very small, because it's so strong that a little bit comes out and that turns into Atzilus, which is made up of the ten sefirot. ראשית הגז, cutting that wool, that first shearing of the wool, represents, and it's a mitzvah, represents taking from the wool, which is the level of Atik, which we said before represents the wool and the שערות and the hair, and bringing down more light than the natural המשכה, the natural amount of light that comes from Atik into Atzilus. And that's what happens when you do ראשית הגז. When you cut, the mitzvah of cutting the wool of the sheep and doing a mitzvah with it and giving it to the kohen, that causes the גז, that causes the ג' ז', the ten sefirot of אצילות, to get the המשכה from עתיק, from that high level of עתיק, which is made up of the concept of hair and and and wool and things like that. And it says that this is the idea also of payot. Payot is a mitzvah in connection to the hair. And it also represents the connection to the המשכה from the level of עתיק, from this high level. Payah is, פ is 80, א is 1, and ה is 6. 86. ה is 5, is 86. Elokim is the gematria 86. Elokim is spelled א-ל-ה-י-ם, not with a ק. People always get confused, they think Elokim with a ק, by the way it's 100, how can you have 86? But it's א-ל-ה-י-ם, it's 86. Payah is the gematria 86. Two payot, what are two payot? Two payot is Havayah' הוא אלקים. It says Elokim, and then there is something that's connected to Elokim, which is the second, that's Havayah'. Havayah' and Elokim are one. And it says, from which level do we get this great concept of Havayah' הוא אלקים, that Havayah' and Elokim are one? From the lower levels, even in Atzilut, Elokim represents one מדרגה, and Havayah' represents another מדרגה. But Havayah' הוא אלקים, the truth is Havayah' and Elokim are כולי חד, are one. That's when you get the המשכה from עתיק. From the higher level, that's when you have הוי' הוא אלקים. So when you have the two pe'ot, the two pe'ot represent הוי' הוא אלקים, that's what it says in קבלה. And therefore, doing the mitzvah of pe'ot is similar to the mitzvah of ראשית הגז. ראשית הגז is when you cut the wool, and that is the mitzvah that brings the המשכה from עתיק into אצילות, because it reaches such a high מדרגה of עתיק יומין, where there it talks about the wool, the garments of wool, the mitzvah of פאה reaches the same מדרגה. Reaches the מדרגה of עתיק. When is the beginning, when it's possible for a child, a Yid, to have that המשכה, is when he's three years old. Because it says, just like by אברהם אבינו, בן שלש שנים הכיר אברהם את בוראו, that Avraham Avinu was three years old when he recognized ד'. That's when he started his connection to ד'. So a child, when does he start his connection to ד'—we're all like Avraham, we're all children of Avraham—is when you're three years old, that's when you already have that ability of reaching out into the level of עתיק. And it's connected to the number three, and that's why it's three years old. We all know that the number three has a very special significance when it comes to Torah. The Gemara says concerning Torah that the Torah is a Torah of three. It's made up of Torah, נביאים, and כתובים. It was given to a nation of three: כהנים, לוים, and ישראלים. On the third month, we have ניסן, אייר, and סיון. Through a person who was the third of his family: Moshe, because he had Aharon, Miriam, and Moshe was the third. And this is a Gemara in Shabbos. And Rabbeinu Nissim Gaon there says that there are more things in Torah which are connected to the number three. And the Rabbi explains: What's so special about the number three? Why make a big fuss over three? It could've been five. We all have five. Why three? And the Rabbi explains that three is a very, very high מדרגה. And he says like this, just in short: One represents unity. There's only one, nothing else. Two, that's פירוד. Two already shows two, that's many, that's separation, we have two. The number three represents the concept that even though you have two, you make the two together. There's a third one that puts the two together and makes the two into one. ובא הכתוב השלישי ויכריע ביניהם. The third pasuk comes and machria, machria would mean decides between the two. Now it doesn't mean that the third pasuk is a third another contradiction. The third pasuk shows how the two are not really contradicting. That's why in halacha we find a lot of times you have an argument between two opinions, and then you have a third opinion which is a combination of both, the הלכה כדברי המכריע, we always pasken like this third one. The third one is not a third opinion, it takes these two opinions and puts it together. So the number three represents not more than two, the contrary, it represents the one that comes after the two. And that's the great great thing. You have one, let's say you look at Hashem as one, so you say, oh, there's nothing but Hashem, that's fine and that's true. But you might say that, and then later on you go out and you say, that's not true, what do you mean there's only Hashem? I see all kinds of things. That's why they say that you sit in shul and you say שמע ישראל השם אלקינו השם אחד, השם is one, you cover your eyes, Hashem is one, nothing but Hashem, fine. You finish davenen, you walk out to the street, you bet there's things. You walk out into the business, and you walk out into the street, you see all kinds of things. But if you realize that it's not one, there is two, and the two is not a contradiction, that mean that even though there are other things other than Hashem, כביכול, so to speak, in truth they are nothing but Hashem, that's the highest level of unity of Hashem. That's the greatest מדרגה of אחדות of Hashem. And that's represented in the number three. And that's what three is. And that's why the Torah was given in the third month, that's why we make a fuss about the number three. And here too we say there is this concept of three. The the the the boy who has the upsherenish is three, because in order to be ממשיך from that high מדרגה of עתיק which comes through the upsherenish, that is the level where from there comes the unity. The unity even after you have the two to have the one, it's a higher level than just having one. Having one is one thing, but having two and not really knowing that that's really one, that's a much higher מדרגה, and that's connected to the number three. That's why the the upsherenish is in the number three. Then we find in Kabbalah a deeper explanation that the concept of upsherenish is even higher than that. Till now we were saying that the mitzvah of peyos, which is connected to the the level of of of רישא'ס, I guess, which means that reaches the level of עתיק, which are the י״ג תיקוני דיקנא, י״ג מדות הרחמים, that's how far you reach. Then it says in Kabbalah in other places that it's even higher than that. It's based on this: the י״ג, the thirteen attributes of mercy, as we say it in davenen every day in Tachanun is השם השם קל רחום וחנון ארך אפים, that whole pasuk. There are different opinions where we start counting the thirteen, because if you look at the words there are more than thirteen there. So we have to know exactly where do we start. Now one opinion basically in Kabbalah is that קל is number one. השם השם is like an introduction to קל. So השם השם, קל רחום וחנון ארך אפים, we go on from קל. So really the thirteen attributes of mercy start from קל, and the two הויה הויה, the two names השם that are written before קל, is a madrega, a level higher even than that, higher than the thirteen attributes of רחמים. And it says that's the level of pe'ot. That's why there are two, השם השם קל רחום, השם השם are the two pe'ot, two sides, two השם's. The beard, as we said before, is connected to י״ג תיקוני דיקנא, י״ג מדות הרחמים, that starts from קל רחום. So the pe'ot are higher than the beard. And that's what the Arizal says. The Arizal used to cut his pe'ot. By the way, some people think the Arizal had long pe'ot. The Arizal had short pe'ot like Lubavitch. The Arizal used to cut his pe'ot, and he made sure that he when When did he cut his pe'ot? That when the pe'ot started entering into the גבול הזקן, he calls it, into the area, the territory of the beard, he would cut it. And he claimed that they're two different madregot, you can't mix the two. So you can't have the pe'ot hanging down. That's why some people who do have long pe'ot make sure to have it around their ear, higher up, not to have it hang down, because it's against what it says in Kabbalah. You shouldn't have the pe'ot mixed with the beard. So he would cut off his pe'ot to make sure they don't mix. And the reason is because the pe'ot is the level of עתיק, י״ג מדות הרחמים, the thirteen attributes of רחמים, and from the pe'ot from the beard comes great ענינים come from the beard. It says that the beard brings all kinds of המשכות that come comes along. I know that somebody once went in יחידות, one of the bachurim of a מתנגדישע ישיבה that learned chassidus by me. So, he went into יחידות, and he asked the Rebbe, what's important about the beard? So, the Rebbe told him all the things. Then he told him על פי קבלה it's י\"ג מדות הרחמים, that brings down. So, the guy, I would say, had the chutzpah, says to the Rebbe, \"So how come so many great people, scholars, תלמידי חכמים, not chassidim, don't have beards?\" So, the Rebbe said, \"What can I tell you? So they must feel that they don't need the י\"ג מדות הרחמים. That's all it is.\" Then, he told the Rebbe other all kinds of things. I mean I was standing outside the room when he came out of יחידות, cuz he told me he's going to ask the Rebbe about the beard because his ראש ישיבה had told him that he shouldn't grow a beard. And he told him it was those years in the '60s when the hippies had beards. He said, \"If you grow go with a beard and חילול השם, they think you're a hippie.\" That's what he told the Rebbe, what his ראש ישיבה told him. So, the Rebbe said, \"One thing I can tell you is that amongst the hippies you have a lot of Jews, and תמה if there is a Jew of the hippies has a beard, so he does with one thing wrong less. Adrabah, that gufa itself is good. There's nothing wrong with...\" But it tells that the beard is very important. It brings the י\"ג מדות הרחמים. There's a story of the Rebbe Rashab, that there was once a man, didn't have a beard, but he's a פרומער ייד, and in Yiddish, the expression is דעם ס'האט נישט געהאלטן קיין קינדער. In English, the word doesn't make sense, but it means his children didn't live. But in Yiddish, it means his children didn't hold. That's how the expression goes, ס'האט נישט געהאלטן קיין קינדער. So, he came to the Rebbe Rashab, asked him for a brachah. So, the Rebbe Rashab says, \"The kids when they sit on your lap, they have to have hold, something to hold onto. You don't have a beard, they can't hold onto it. You grow a beard, they'll hold onto it.\" So, he grew a beard, and he had a child, and the child was fine. So, a beard is mamash big inyanim. Payot are above the beard. Payot are on top, and that's the level which is even higher. That's the level of ה' ה' before קל רחום וחנון, which are the י\"ג מדות הרחמים. It's ה' ה' which is the level which is above. And that comes when you're three years old, because when you're three years old, you have that level of three, and the level of three is a very high level from which we have the true, true unity of Hashem, the אחדות של השם. So, before I explained it just in kabbalah, that's connected to the level of עתיק, which is pretty high in kabbalah, pretty high spiritual level. But here it says it's even higher than עתיק. It goes to the level beyond the י\"ג מדות הרחמים. And that's where you have the המשכה of a beard, of of the payot. And that's the fuss we make over the upsherin and the and the start of the child with having payot, with a mitzvah of payot, we make a simcha, we make a big party.

Then there are other remezim, just listen, just a moment, other remezim concerning the payot. The pasuk that talks about payot says like this: \"לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם ולא תשחית פאת זקנך\", which means do not cut, but the word is תקיפו, the payot of your ראשכם, of your head, it says plural, and do not destroy the payot of your beard. And there it talks actually about using a razor on your beard. The word תקיפו, which means to circle actually as I said before, but it means to cut, in Hebrew has another meaning. מוקף means to put together, too. That's what it means, put together. I mean like מוקף, in גמרא לשון, it means to put together. So, there are some sefarim write a remez like this: \"לא תקיפו פאת ראשכם\" - do not put together the payot, means the end of the word ראשכם. What are the ends of the word ראשכם? The beginning of the word ראשכם is a ר', and the end of the word ראשכם is a ם'. Don't put the two words together, letters together. Because if you put the ר' and the ם' together, it's רם. רם means high, gaavah, arrogance! Do not put it, do not become arrogant, because if you become arrogant, \"ולא תשחית פאת זקנך\" - do not destroy the ends of the word זקנך. The word זקנך has also two ends, ז' and ך'. ז' and ך' is זך. זך means clear, pure. And what it says here is that if you're going to put together the ר' ם' and be a בעל גאוה, then what will happen is you will destroy the purity that you had. So, don't put together the ר' ם' so you will not come to destroy the זך. That has to do with the hair, because in the Gemara we find that some of the ways that people would try to be בעלי גאוה was by making their hair nice. Obviously, not talking about women, talking about men. It says about Avshalom, Avshalom, he got caught by his hair, that's how he got killed. Because it says he was מתגאה, he was a בעל גאוה, he had nice hair, so he became a בעל גאוה. So in the mitzvah of cutting your hair in the proper way, it's an expression of not having רם, לא תקיפו, not putting together the ר' ם', and then you will not have the destruction of the זך, of the ז' ך', of the purity, because if you have gaavah it destroys you. And that's connected to the mitzvah of payot because, as we said before from the Rambam, that the mitzvah of payot keeps you away from עבודה זרה, from idol worship. עבודה זרה is connected to gaavah. What is עבודה זרה? People think עבודה זרה means you take an idol and you bow down to it. Yeah, that's the simple meaning of עבודה זרה. עבודה זרה means to giving חשיבות, importance to anything but Hashem. And if a person is a בעל גאווה, a person holds of himself and he's a big shot, he gives importance to himself, so he makes himself into an idol. So cutting the payot is a way of getting rid of the idols, staying away from the idol worship, which means staying away from gaavah. And that's what it says here, like keep the payot so to not have the רם, ר מ, which is the elevation, the greatness, the gaavah, and that's connected to payot. But all this shows the importance of a minhag Yisrael. It sounds like it's a small thing, it's only a custom. What's upsherenish? A custom, doesn't say Shulchan Aruch. Some people who who are not chasidim and they'll say, \"Yeah, we do it, we don't.\" It's a small thing. The Frierdiker Rebbe writes in the letter, it's an ענין גדול, a minhag Yisrael is great. And it's a minhag, not even a דין. And you know why it's a מנהג? I'll explain to you why it's a מנהג. The fact that it's so great, that it reaches to the level of עתיק and so high, that's why it's only a מנהג. We learn in Chassidus that a מנהג ישראל, a custom of Yidden, is greater from a certain angle than even a ציווי, than a commandment, for many reasons. One of the things is it says that if you do a commandment, you basically are forced to do it. You're told to do it. You do what you're told. Sometimes you're forced with a gun, sometimes you're not forced, but you know you're told, you're pushed into it. A מנהג is something that you don't have to do, and still you do it. So when you do it, you know it's good, Hashem is happy with it, and you do it without being told, then there is more of you that's in it. And not only more of you that's in it, there's more of Hashem is in it. A mitzvah, and this is just when I'll finish with this, this in short, a mitzvah is the will of Hashem, is Godly as it was already put into a limit of a commandment. A מנהג was not even put into the limit of a commandment, it's it's still only a מנהג. That's why it says הקפות is such a happy time, happier than Yom Tov. Yom Tov is a מצוה דאורייתא, הקפות is only a מנהג, and it's the happiest time because it says it comes from a higher שורש. So אפשערעניש is such a great thing, it has connection to such high מדרגות, that's why it can't even come down in a form of a mitzvah, of a ציווי. It comes down in a form of a מנהג. So we see here how important that is, things that we don't realize, we think it's a small thing, and it's a very great thing. It's a סעודת מצוה, and it says it's a סגולה for אריכות ימים for the child, it's a סגולה for יראת שמים for the child, and it's a way you train a child to the most important things, and that starts him off in the right way. And when he starts off in the right way, we hope that גם כי יזקין לא יסור ממנה, that when he gets older he'll continue more and more, and he'll do all the mitzvot the way Hashem wants, and the child will be a נחת to the parents and obviously to the Oibershter and to everybody else. No, it's only it's only a מנהג. Those that have long פאות is not a דין. I'm saying it's a מנהג that they have. What I meant to say, not only a מנהג is great. Saying it's not If it's a דין it's for everybody. מנהגים, there are certain מנהגים which are certain communities have, certain communities not. Those that have it have to stick to it, and by them it's a מנהג. And if they will cut off their פאות, I'll say they're going against their minhag. But it doesn't mean that other people who don't have it are doing something wrong or have less than they have. I'll even tell you where it's you asked where its source is, in Shulchan Aruch it says, it describes the area of the pe'ot, and it says, \"The whole area we shall not touch.\" So all the mefarshim say it doesn't mean you shouldn't cut the hair from there, it means you shouldn't cut it off all the way. And they say since the expression is don't touch it, לא יגע בו יד, so we don't touch it at all. Some people have a minhag to have pe'ot till here, till the middle of the chin. Minhag of Sanz, Divrei Chaim, the Sanzer Rebbe said to have it here. I don't want to say out loud what he said concerning anybody who has pe'ot longer than that. Something that rhymes with pants. So but but that's but basically it's only a custom that they have, but if you see the Arizal, the Arizal cut his pe'ot like we do. Yes. How come girls don't have pe'ot? We have shame Girls don't have beards. That's the reason. It says that the pasuk puts it put together, so they don't have. They have bigger pe'ot. They tell stories how pe'ot say They tell a story, this is a a recent story, not with the Rebbe, but with with some other, see that there was a chasid that was going to Australia from Eretz Yisrael, a Lelover chasid. And before he went, and he had a little child, but before he went, he went into his Lelover Rebbe. Previous one, I guess, I don't know, maybe the only. And the Lelover Rebbe says, \"You know, I think you should give your child a haircut.\" Child was only two years old, and we give only, we give by three. So he didn't ask anything, he went out and gave the child a haircut, and left pe'ot. But he couldn't understand why did he do it. Came, took the trip, came to Australia, and with the airport, they looked around after a few moments, the child got lost. And they didn't, it was a long time, I don't know, a few hours, that a Yid, somebody, police, but I don't know, through a Yid anyway, brought the child, they found the child and they brought the child to the parents. And what happened was, the child wandered away and got lost, and lost, separated from the parents, and people walked over to him, he couldn't speak English, so he didn't know what to say, so they didn't know who he was. But the fact that he had pe'ot, I don't know, long pe'ot, short pe'ot, they recognized he's a Jewish child, so they went around looking and they found the father and they gave him. So had he not taken the haircut, had pe'ot, who knows what would be. Yeah? Halacha? Halacha. What? What is the shiur of pe'ot? There is to a bone. The she'eilah is which bone. We know it's till this bone, he held it's to this bone. Also על פי קבלה he felt that it shouldn't go longer than the beard, but it could mix with the beard. It's קבלה'דיגע things that he had, why he held like that. But also he said that you should, after that you should cut it. Longer than you're supposed to, you shouldn't have. But the Arizal didn't do that. The Arizal cut his pe'ot right here when it was, came to the beard. Okay.