Monthly Archives: May 2011

Taking a break

We’ll be taking a break here until after Shavuos. Chag Samaiyach!

Ari on the letters

Ari discusses various aspects of the AlephBet in a number of sections of Eitz Chaim and in various contexts, but he hardly addresses the notion of their overall role in the universe. But he does say this: “(while) all the worlds were created by means of the twenty-two letters in Malchut … The letters Mem, Nun, Tzaddi, Pei and Chof  derived from Zeir Anpin which hovers over it” (Eitz Chaim 5:3), which calls for explanation.

The discerning reader should have raised this objection right away. “Aren’t there twenty-seven letters in the AlephBet, if you include the end-forms?” In explanation, the “end-forms” are those letters that are formed one way when they’re at the beginning or in the middle of a Hebrew word, but are formed another way when they end a word. And, yes, there are in fact twenty-seven letters when those five end-forms are included. And the five of them are the very ones Ari cited at the end of his remark — Mem (which ordinarily appears thusly, מ, but appears thusly ם when an end-form), Nun (נ versus ן), Tzaddi (צ versus ץ), Pei (פ versus ף) and Chof (כ versus ך).

Ari acknowledges that fact and thus offers that “the letters Mem, Nun, Tzaddi, Pei and Chof derived from Zeir Anpin (a Partzuf that is a combination of Chessed, Gevurah, Tipheret, Netzach, Hod and Yesod which all sit over Malchut as we’ll see later on) hovers over” the ordinary “twenty-two letters in Malchut” which sit beneath it, and that the latter are the ones by means of which “all the worlds were created”. Thus we see that the five end-forms are the sources of the twenty-two regular forms. Accordingly, the statement in the Talmud that the five end-forms were instituted by the prophets (Shabbat 104a) should be understood to mean that while their shapes were instituted by the prophets, they existed from the first, even before the rest of the universe.

Ari also offers that while the letters played a role in creation, “the combination of them maintains the world” (Ibid. 5:3), and that the letters are in fact “the essences of the Sephirot” (Ibid. 5:7), i.e., their building-blocks if you will.

We’ll now explore what Ramchal offers here in this section about the letters as well as in his other works.

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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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”.

Ramak on the letters

Ramak explains a lot about the makeup, function, derivation, and the outcome of the combination of the letters in Shiur Komah (85). He says there that “the letters are (utterly) spiritual and subtle” in their source, but that “they become ‘light’, which is to say, somewhat revealed” or tangible “when they descend” into this world.

He says that they “are compound of the four lofty spiritual elements”, meaning to say of the “four animals of the Chariot” (see Ezekiel 1:5).

We learn there that each letter falls into a numerical grouping, as when Aleph (1) is aligned with Yod (10) and Kof (100); when Bet (2), Chaf (20), and Resh (200) are all aligned; when Gimmel (3), Lamed (30) and Shin (300) are aligned; etc.

He addresses their shapes and advises that one is to take their “length, which is (rooted in) Chessed” into account, along with their “width, which is (rooted in) Gevurah”, their “depth, which is (rooted in) Malchut”, and their “height, which is (rooted in) Tipheret” into account. That means to say that the shape and the amount of space each letter occupies determines it potency and makeup, and that the sages who know how to use that to our best advantage should take that all into consideration.

And he points out that “all of the letters should rightfully be square-shaped” since that would point to their fullness and potency, but they aren’t. Hence the world, which is under the sway of the letters, is less than perfect because like the moon, the letters are “round-shaped” instead of square, so “only a part of them shines forth” to help govern the world.

(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”.

Zohar on the letters

There is an entire discourse on the mystical significance of the Aleph-Bet and their place in the Divine names that’s known as Sitrei Otiyot (“The Secret of the Letters”) in Zohar Chadash (1b-10d). But the Zohar offers insights into the over-all importance of the Aleph-Bet from its inception when it says that “The letters (of the Aleph-Bet) were in hiding when God formed the world. But two thousand years before He created it He reflected upon the letters” and considered their role in it (1, 2b).

Here and there it offers a lot about the letters, including the ideas that “man was created by means of the letters” (2, 42b) and that “man (i.e., his makeup) alludes to the letters” (1, 34b; the letters are “from the point that emanates from Ein Sof (Himself)” (Tikkunei Zohar Chadosh 162b); they derive from four (non-material) elements (1, 80a; also see Tikkunei Zohar 8a, 105a); it confirms the role they played in creation (1, 204a); it tells of their lofty and inscrutable nature (3, 73a; also see 2, 179a and the end of Tikkunei Zohar Chadash to Shir HaShirim); it addresses the three Imot spoken of in Sefer Yetzirah (2, 159b; Tikkunei Zohar 104b) as well as the seven Kephulot (Tikkunei Zohar 104a); and it offers much, much more about the importance of the letters per se as well as about the unique role each individual letter plays.

(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”.

Sefer Yetzirah and Sefer Bahir on the letters

The authors of Sefer Yetzirah, Sefer Bahir, and the Zohar, like those who preceded them and from whom they drew their inspiration, were clearly struck by the letters of the AlephBet. They were so enamored of their names, shapes, pronunciations, ordering, and the fact that the letters allowed for whole worlds of ideas and revelations that they could be said to have “toyed” with them in their minds, concentrated acutely upon them, and dwelt on them for long stretches of time much the way we might dwell on nature perhaps, on beauty, on deep emotions, or on the states of our souls. Few of us in modernity, who are so blasé about the fundamentals, would allow ourselves that luxury, but they certainly did, and to a very great extent.

And so we find that Sefer Yetzirah famously begins with reference to the twenty-two “foundational letters” of the AlephBet (1:2) which, along with the ten Sephirot, form the “thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom” (1:1). And we discover that it divides those twenty-two letters into three categories: the three Imot (“mothers”), comprised of the letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin; the seven Kephulot (“doubles”), comprised of the letters Bet, Kaf, Peh, Resh, and Tav; and the twelve Peshutot (“elementals”), comprised of the remaining letters (1:2, 10). And it goes on to explain the roles played by the letters (as well as the Sephirot) and to give insight into the roles they play in creation and in the ongoing governance of the universe.

Sefer Bahir speaks of God having “carved all the letters” and of then fashioning them into “forms” (143), meaning to say into the building-blocks of creation, and it goes about analyzing the shapes and makeup of the letters (as well as the trope, “crowns”, etc. to be discussed below) (17-44).

We’ll next see what the Zohar offers.

(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”.

A couple of quick diversions

I forgot to cite the only time that Ramchal goes “off-message” in this section to address an extraneous point. He says at the beginning of his commentary to Petach 18 that “the whole purpose of the science of Kabbalah is to understand the specific root of each phenomenon”. That’s to say that thanks to Kabbalah we’re able to trace everything back to God’s own input, step by step, and that the Hebrew letters factor into all of that, too.

It’s important to point out that R’ Yehudah HaLevi discussed the Hebrew letters in his well known Kuzari (see 4:25 especially) in the context of his analysis of Sefer Yetzirah, which we’ll focus upon below. His analysis is interesting in that he draws upon early Kabbalistic as well as non-Kabbalistic philosophical works.

(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”.

Letter after letter

We already referred to this section’s subject at the very beginning of the previous one in passing, but we’ll now expand upon it in the context of traditional non-Kabbalistic sources, earlier Kabbalists, and Ramchal’s own works.

Since, as Ramchal indicates here, the supernal Lights must enter into the mystical realm of letters before they can (actually) bring about (physical) actions (Petach 18), we’d first need to explore the significance of the Hebrew letters before going on to explain the other subjects brought up in this section.

Yet (as Ramchal points out there), we’re taught that “the Heavens were fashioned through God’s word” (Psalms 33:6) and we’re told elsewhere that “the world was created through ten utterances” (Pirkei Avot 5:1), so it seems that the word is the basic unit. But since, as Ramchal explains, speech only exists in (the context of) letters, we’d obviously have to start off with letters. The truth is that we’re likewise taught that the heavens and earth were in fact created by the letters of the Aleph-Bet at bottom (Berachot 55a), so there’s actually no contradiction [1].

Several early works stressed the significance of the letters, including Otiyot d’Rebbe Akiva, the Aleph-Bet of Ben-Sirah, Sefer Yetzirah, the Heichalot writings, Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, Sefer Temunah, Shiur Koma, Sefer haYashar, Sefer Raziel HaMalachSefer Bahir, and others. And the Zohar even made the point that the letters written in the Torah are reflections of the “heavenly letters” (2:228; cf. 3:220). So we’ll explore some of the statements made in Sefer Yetzirah, Sefer Bahir, Pardes Rimonim, Eitz Chaim, and the Zohar, specifically before we touch on Ramchal’s own.

Note:

[1]       Also see Menachot 29b which speaks of this world having been created with the letter he and The World to Come having been created with the letter yod.

(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”.

The gist of Section 5

In short, this is what’s being said in this section (and note that Ramchal doesn’t introduce any extraneous themes here other than a quick one at the very beginning as we’ll see).

The Sephirot are meant to bring about physical phenomena, but they can only do that by means of the Hebrew letters, as “The Heavens were fashioned through God’s word” (Psalms 33:6), which is to say, through the letters that comprise God’s words (Petach 18).

There are exactly and exclusively twenty-two letter-orderings (Petach 19).

These twenty-two letter-orderings form three separate columns: Chessed, Din, and Rachamim, which is to say, right, left, and center. And they form various combinations that are represented as being “closed” and “compressed” for example, or “open” and “expanded” the latter of which is represented in the form of a “line” or a “point” (Petach 20).

While the letters themselves are the main factors in bringing about actions the trope, vowels, and the “crowns” that are attached to them all contribute in their own way (Petach 21).

The ten Sephirot, as well as the trope, vowels, “crowns” and letters, are all subsumed under the four letters of God’s name as well as the four esoteric names and their combinations (Petach 22).

It’s in fact the Divine names that enable the Lights to bring about actions in the world, and the Torah is the sum total of all those names (Petach 23).

We’ll thus be focusing on

1. The significance of the Hebrew letters;

2. The “words” used to create heaven and earth;

3. The role of the right, left, and center columns as well as of the so-called “closed” and “compressed”, or “open” and “expanded”, or “line” or “point” formations;

4. The roles played by the trope, vowels, and “crowns”;

5. The makeup of the various Divine names;

6. And the role of the Torah in activating things in the world.

(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”.

Petach 23

סוד השמות הוא מה שבאים האורות לבחינת פעולה, וכללותם היא התורה. לפיכך נקראת כלי אומנתו של הקב”ה:

The mystical import of the (Divine) names lies in the fact that they enable the Lights to bring about actions and that the Torah encompasses all those names, which is why it’s referred to as God’s “tool”.

(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”.


Petach 22

כל מיני פעולות הנמצאות בספירות – כולם מתנהגות תחת סדר עשר ספירות, והוא סדר הד’ אותיות השם ב”ה. ובסדר הזה מתנהגים טעמים נקודות תגים אותיות, בסוד ד’ אותיות, וד’ שמות שבכל אחד

The entire range of functions of the Sephirot is governed by the order of the ten Sephirot, which is the order of the four letters of God’s Name (Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh). This is (also) the order that governs the trope, vowels, “crowns” and letters (spoken of above) through the mystical import of those four letters as well as the four names contained in each individual name.

(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”.