Monthly Archives: June 2011

Oops…

I had had a quote from Ramchal’s comments to Brit Menucha that spoke to his understanding of the Aleph-Bet in a unique way but I can’t find it. Please send me a copy of his (short) work on Brit Menucha if you can, folks, … or forgive me. We’ll go on with this section tomorrow, please G-d.

Ramchal on the Aleph-Bet

Ramchal’s initial idea is that the supernal Lights must enter into the mystical realm of letters before they can actually bring about physical actions, as letters are a particular order of phenomena that exist to bring things about in the physical realm (Petach 18).

As he explains it in his comments there, “The Lights … (perform) on the mystical level of ‘thought’” which he equates there with Adam Kadmon [1]. “But it’s another matter actually bringing things into existence,” he goes on to say there, “as just ‘thinking’ about something doesn’t necessarily make it come about”. That’s to say that while physicality is rooted in the highest realms, it only comes to fruition by means of lower phenomena — the letters, which are a particular order of phenomena (i.e., a specific system [2]) that exist (i.e., that’s suited and designed) to bring physical things about.

Then he offers in Petach 19 that the letters are (i.e., function as) twenty-two different orders (of phenomena) — no less and no more. And he adds in his comments there that “the reason why there are twenty-two letters (explicitly) is rooted in the first principles which we’re not to inquire into, as we’d determined earlier” in Petach 15.

That’s to say that just as there are specific reasons why there are ten Sephirot specifically which we’re not privy to (and why we have two arms, one head, and the like), there are likewise specific reasons why there are exactly 22 letters to the AlephBet (27 counting the end-letters as we pointed out). For as we indicated in 4:4 above, God works from a “recipe” if you will in His interactions with this world which needs to be “exact, with neither too much nor too little of anything”. Twenty-two is apparently just the right number of letters and we haven’t the right to question why that’s so.

We’ll see what Ramchal adds about the AlephBet in his other writings.

 

Notes:

[1] See note 12 to Section 2 above as well as 3:1-2.

[2] We derived our idea that the letters are a “system” from the statement Ramchal made in his comments to Petach 19 that “each letter is one of various orders of interconnected groups of lights necessary to bring about action”.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

More on Ari about the letters

Ari introduces one other illuminating factor about the Aleph-Bet that we’d need to explore before going on to Ramchal’s treatment of it. He says in Sha’ar HaHakdamut (1) that as is well known, “there’s no ‘body’ or any ‘bodily function’ up above, God forbid” and that all the imagery and symbolism used to seemingly express the details of a body or a function of it don’t signify that they exist there, but they’re only meant to “assuage the ear” — i.e., to sound right and to make sense in context — “so that one might understand supernal and spiritual phenomena” as best as possible. As such, “permission has been granted to speak in metaphor and symbolism (that suggest bodily phenomena)… throughout the Zohar and the Torah itself”. After all, he goes on, isn’t reference made to God’s “seeing”, “hearing”, “smelling”, “speaking”, in the Torah? And aren’t we taught that we were created “in God’s image” which would all have us believe that there are physical phenomena and functions above? The truth of the matter, though, is that there are only “fine and utterly spiritual (i.e., abstract) Lights up above”, and that goes to explain the depiction of the Sephirot.

Then he offers the following there which goes to explain the use of the AlephBet in Kabbalistic symbolism. “There’s another way to explain what lies up above metaphorically and symbolically, which is by means of the makeup and shape of the (Hebrew) letters”, as “each and every letter alludes to a supernal Light as does its form”. We’re never to forget, though, that there “aren’t any actual ‘letters’, ‘points’ (etc.) up above” and that they’re also only used to “assuage the ear”.

The point of the matter is that nothing in the upper realm is physical and thus it’s all largely inexplicable to us. But there are a couple of things that we can fall back upon to understand it: our own situation, given that we were somehow or another created in God’s image, and can thus understand something about Him and His realm in light of that; and the AlephBet, given that “the heavens were made through the word of God” (Psalms 33:6), and so we can understand this world and the forces that went into its creation and maintenance by examining the elements of God’s “word”, the letters.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.