What Is the Meaning of Baal HaSulam’s Nigun “La Menatzeach al Shoshanim”?
The Nigun “La Menatzeach al Shoshanim (To the Leader upon Lilies)” is based on the text of King David’s Psalm 45:
My heart is moved with a good theme;
I address my verses to the King;
My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
You are the most handsome of the sons of mankind;
Grace is poured upon Your lips;
Therefore God has blessed You forever.Strap Your sword on Your thigh, Mighty One,
In Your splendor and majesty!
And in Your majesty ride on victoriously,
For the cause of truth, humility, and righteousness;
Let Your right hand teach You awesome things.
Your arrows are sharp;
The peoples fall under You;
Your arrows are in the heart of the King’s enemies.Your throne, God, is forever and ever;
The scepter of Your kingdom is a scepter of justice.You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You
With the oil of joy above Your companions.
All Your garments are fragrant with myrrh, aloes, and cassia;
From ivory palaces stringed instruments have made You joyful.
Kings’ daughters are among Your noble women;
At Your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir.Listen, daughter, look and incline your ear:
Forget your people and your father’s house;
Then the King will crave your beauty.
Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him.
The daughter of Tyre will come with a gift;
The wealthy among the people will seek your favor.The King’s daughter is all glorious within;
Her clothing is interwoven with gold.
She will be brought to the King in colorful garments;
The virgins, her companions who follow her,
Will be brought to You.
They will be brought with joy and rejoicing;
They will enter into the King’s palace.In place of your fathers will be your sons;
You shall make them princes in all the earth.
I will make Your name known among all generations;
Therefore the peoples will praise You forever and ever.
- Psalm 45
A lily is Malchut that contains all vessels, desires — our whole life. “A lily among the thorns” means using all of Malchut’s vessels and desires in the upper nature of bestowal, in resemblance with the Creator.
We can only reach this state via the thorns, which are various discernments, disturbances, and scrutinies. We then become victors, as it is written, “What is a victor to the sons of Korach?” A victor achieves and learns the song of love.
It is solely from Malchut, the innermost point in the heart, where we start feeling the Creator, a feeling of unification and true love. It comes at the end of the spiritual path. Until then, we undergo revelations of hatred, fear, confusion, doubts, dependence, and every complaint we could possibly imagine. We then turn to the Creator, blaming Him for these myriad negative revelations. Afterward, everything opens up to us, and we can view the entire picture. We then praise the Creator, connecting with, adhering to, and loving Him.
We then say to the Creator, ”My heart has acquired a good thing.” That is, there is only one good thing in the world: adhesion with the Creator — the quality of love, bestowal, and connection. We are initially created in an opposite form to the Creator, as egoists who solely consider our self-benefit, wishing to exploit the world and the force of the Creator for our own needs.
In the process of our spiritual work and progress in our desire to discover the truth, we eventually experience a revelation of our opposition in form to the Creator, called “the revelation of evil.” When the forces of evil, the Klipot (shells/peels), surface in ways that we can control, we then reach a state of goodness — in the fullest spiritual meaning of the term. As it is written, “My heart has acquired a good thing.”
How does our “heart acquire a good thing”? On this point, it is written, “I say my deeds are for the King.” That is, everything within us becomes directed at the King — the Creator, the quality of love, bestowal, and connection. We then praise not ourselves, but the Creator, because we discover that by attaining the Creator’s qualities of love, bestowal, and connection, thereby understanding them, we ourselves then ascend to their levels.
It is then written about us that “You are more beautiful than any man.” That is, we become heroes and the entire creation that the Creator created is below us. We grab hold of it in order to work in the same form of bestowal as the Creator.
“La Menatzeach al Shoshanim” (“To the Leader Upon Lilies”) is a Nigun that can only be sung by those who have indeed reached the end of the spiritual path. My teacher, the RABASH, used to sometimes sing it when he was alone in Tiberias. I would hear him singing it from the adjacent room during long winter nights. Singing “La Menatzeach al Shoshanim” would insert RABASH into a special state. I saw how deeply absorbed inside himself he was while he was singing it, how detached from the corporeal reality and attached to the forces, levels, and states that the flowing song depicts — those of love, friendship, and unity with the Creator.
You can listen to “La Menatzeach al Shoshanim” here.