{"id":693,"date":"2011-06-15T16:30:44","date_gmt":"2011-06-15T20:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramchal.wordpress.com\/?p=693"},"modified":"2011-06-15T16:30:44","modified_gmt":"2011-06-15T20:30:44","slug":"going-from-letters-to-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/2011\/06\/15\/going-from-letters-to-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Going from letters to words"},"content":{"rendered":"

(For the record: Ramchal discusses the Aleph-Bet on a very esoteric level in Kinat Hashem Tziva\u2019ot \u201cTseirufei haotiot\u201d and in Pitchei Chochma v\u2019Da\u2019at 30.)<\/em><\/p>\n

We go now from letters to words, which is to say to intelligible combinations of letters. Now, many early Kabbalistic texts refer to non<\/em>-intelligible combinations of letters in conjunction with what\u2019s termed \u201cpractical Kabbalah\u201d or taken to be \u201cwhite magic\u201d, but Ramchal and many others steered clear of all that (except when it concerned composing komayot <\/em>for \u201cmedicinal\u201d purposes). And both early and later Kabbalists made reference to non-intelligible terms as illustrations of concepts or as instances of acronyms, gematria<\/em>, notrikon<\/em>, atbash<\/em>, or the like rather than as letter-combination that affect reality. But we won\u2019t discuss any of that.<\/p>\n

Understand of course that words can simply be the nouns, verbs, etc. that refer to this and that in heaven and on earth, or they can refer to various Divine names. While the former matter very much, as we\u2019ll soon see, it\u2019s the latter that factor most especially into the Kabbalistic system as we\u2019ll see later.<\/p>\n

Chassidic literature focused quite a bit on words as nouns and verbs, most especially the works of R\u2019 Schneur Zalman of Liady and R\u2019 Nachman of Breslov who based their statements on the teachings of the Ba\u2019al Shem Tov.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re taught that God\u2019s \u201cword is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens\u201d (Psalms 119:89). Basing himself on a statement made about this verse in Midrash Tanchuma<\/em> the Ba\u2019al Shem Tov remarks that the words themselves that comprised God\u2019s remark \u201clet there be a firmament in the midst of the waters\u201d (Genesis 1:6) remain firmly fixed in the heavens to this very day (just as the words God used to create everything else remain in place).<\/p>\n

R\u2019 Schneur Zalman expanded upon that and actually said that were those words to depart from the heavens (or anything else they were a part of the creation of), then those things would cease to exist, as their very being is bolstered and fixed by the role that the words that went into their creation play from moment to moment (Sha\u2019ar HaYichud v\u2019Haemunah <\/em>Ch. 1) [1]. He goes on to make the point there that that\u2019s not only true of things created by the Ten Utterances that went into creation in general; it\u2019s also true of everything, in that the (Hebrew) letters that comprise their names maintain them.<\/p>\n

This then is an understanding of letters and words as not mere helpmeets of the Sephirot<\/em> but as the very power-sources that they use in this world.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 See RSZ\u2019s Likkutei Torah, Parshat Achrei Mo<\/em>t; also see Ari\u2019s Eitz Chaim<\/em> 50:2.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/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":"

(For the record: Ramchal discusses the Aleph-Bet on a very esoteric level in Kinat Hashem Tziva\u2019ot \u201cTseirufei haotiot\u201d and in Pitchei Chochma v\u2019Da\u2019at 30.) We go now from letters to words, which is to say to intelligible combinations of letters. … 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-693","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\/693","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=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rabbiyaakovfeldman.aishdas.org\/ramchal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}