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 Aleph–Bet (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 Aleph–Bet 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
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