{"id":673,"date":"2011-05-25T11:25:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T15:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramchal.wordpress.com\/?p=673"},"modified":"2011-05-25T11:25:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-25T15:25:31","slug":"ari-on-the-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/2011\/05\/25\/ari-on-the-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Ari on the letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ari discusses various aspects of the Aleph<\/em>–Bet<\/em> in a number of sections of Eitz<\/em> Chaim<\/em> and in various contexts, but he hardly addresses the notion of their overall role in the universe. But he does say this: \u201c(while) all the worlds were created by means of the twenty-two letters in Malchut<\/em> \u2026 The letters Mem<\/em>, Nun<\/em>, Tzaddi<\/em>, Pei<\/em> and Chof<\/em> \u00a0derived from Zeir<\/em> Anpin<\/em> which hovers over it\u201d (Eitz<\/em> Chaim<\/em> 5:3), which calls for explanation.<\/p>\n

The discerning reader should have raised this objection right away. \u201cAren\u2019t there twenty-seven<\/em> letters in the Aleph<\/em>–Bet<\/em>, if you include the end-forms?\u201d In explanation, the \u201cend-forms\u201d are those letters that are formed one way when they\u2019re 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 <\/em>(which ordinarily appears thusly, \u05de, but appears thusly \u05dd when an end-form), Nun<\/em> (\u05e0 versus \u05df), Tzaddi<\/em> (\u05e6 versus \u05e5), Pei<\/em> (\u05e4 versus \u05e3) and Chof<\/em> (\u05db versus \u05da).<\/p>\n

Ari acknowledges that fact and thus offers that \u201cthe letters Mem<\/em>, Nun<\/em>, Tzaddi<\/em>, Pei<\/em> and Chof<\/em> derived from Zeir<\/em> Anpin<\/em> (a Partzuf<\/em> that is a combination of Chessed<\/em>, Gevurah<\/em>, Tipheret<\/em>, Netzach<\/em>, Hod<\/em> and Yesod<\/em> which all sit over Malchut<\/em> as we\u2019ll see later on) hovers over\u201d the ordinary \u201ctwenty-two letters in Malchut<\/em>\u201d which sit beneath it, and that the latter are the ones by means of which \u201call the worlds were created\u201d. Thus we see that the five end-forms are the sources<\/em> of the twenty-two regular forms. Accordingly, the statement in the Talmud that the five end-forms were instituted by the prophets (Shabbat<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Ari also offers that while the letters played a role in creation, \u201cthe combination of them maintains<\/em> the world\u201d (Ibid. 5:3), and that the letters are in fact \u201cthe essences of the Sephirot<\/em>\u201d (Ibid. 5:7), i.e., their building-blocks if you will.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll now explore what Ramchal offers here in this section about the letters as well as in his other works.<\/p>\n

(c) 2011 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman<\/p>\n

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org<\/a><\/p>\n

———————————————————-<\/p>\n

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here<\/a> at a discount.<\/p>\n

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here<\/a> at a discount as well.<\/p>\n

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

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence<\/a>\u201d and \u201cRamchal<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ari discusses various aspects of the Aleph–Bet 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: \u201c(while) all the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}