What happened to the vessels when they were broken. The difference between the breaking and the repair.
The broken vessels existed but could not function. A new MaH (gematria 45) radiation from AK's Forehead arrives to complete them via selection-and-purification — and the result is the Partzufim.
Op. 54 opens the 288 Sparks unit (Op. 54–58) by stating what happened to the broken vessels and what the operational difference is between breaking and repair. The chapter introduces the new MaH from AK's Forehead — the operational arrival that makes the entire World of Repair unit possible.
The broken vessels did not disappear. They existed — but they could not function. The light that was supposed to flow through them could not enter; the Sefirot that were supposed to operate could not coordinate; the cosmic government was, at the operational level, broken-and-stalled.
The new MaH from AK's Forehead is the cosmic response. MaH (the active expansion of the Four-Letter Name) emerges from AK's Forehead as a new radiation — not the original MaH that was already operating, but a new one specifically calibrated to complete the broken vessels. The new MaH descends into the broken structures and performs selection-and-purification: it discriminates the good sparks from the surrounding husks, cleanses them, and reassembles them into the integrated cosmic structures we now call Partzufim.
The difference between breaking and repair is therefore structurally specific. Breaking is the lights overflowing the vessel's capacity; the vessel cracking; the sparks scattering. Repair is the new MaH's selection-and-cleansing work; the gradual reassembly; the Partzufim emerging as the integrated forms of the original Sefirot. Breaking is a single cosmic event with operational consequences for the rest of the cycle; repair is a long process that runs through the cycle's middle phase and is completed by human service.