MYSTICAL MEANING of the HEBREW ALPHABET 3 of 4 – Rabbi Michael Skobac – Jews for Judaism

the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter Alf we studied the letter Alf in some detail we saw that it points to the idea of godliness of divinity the olive comes right over here I should have printed on the page for us we're going to proceed to the next letter in the alphabet although we've covered a few other letters last week we looked at the lamid at the V at the Z uh we'll probably be hitting some of the letters of the alphabet during the four weeks but not all of them the bet is the second letter of the alphabet and in the code of first words we learned this idea that you can learn about the meaning of a letter in the alphabet by finding the first time that letter appears at the beginning of a word now you might think that the first time bet appears in the Bible is in the word bit in the beginning the very first word but there the bet is really not at the beginning of the word that's a prefix the bet there means in so it really isn't part of the word per se it's a prefix to the word so the first time bet appears as part of the word proper as the first letter of the word proper is in the word bar so bit bar second word of the Bible in the beginning created right in Hebrew the verb and the noun are switched around in English we have God created in Hebrew literally created God but that's Hebrew grammatical strangeness so the second word of the Bible is bar created so the letter bet has some connection to the idea of creation to create so the two first letters begin acting out a bit of a play in the talmud they actually go through the entire alphabet and they show how the letters in the order in which they come really give a presentation of very very deep spiritual truths so here we have the first letter ol of God what does God do in the very beginning he creates so the first letter Olive God the second letter bet speaks about creation that's what happens in our Bible right in the history of human of the world in history of the planet God creates Alf bet my man is taught that if we want to really understand anything about God and he says specifically if we want to come to love God we should study creation we should study s science so the fact that God Al is followed by bet creation is very significant there's a tremendous connection a tremendous relationship between the creation and the Creator if you want to understand an artist you look at the art they produce so if we want to understand God what we try to understand is what are the works of art that God produces we know that one of the things that God produced is the Bible that's one of God's creations that's one of his Revelations but another one which is even more evident to us is the world that we live in and if we study human anatomy if you study cell theory if you study the complexity of the creation itself mman says we can come to understand a tremendous amount about the Creator we understand about the Creator through his creation bet is the number two so again Al if is number one God is Numero Uno right we say God is one which means many things God is one meaning not more than one God is one meaning perfectly single God is one meaning primary the most important there are many many ways of looking at this idea of Adonai God is one it's not as simple as we often think when I was in Israel in 1980 I found a book in May sharim which was very very thick a whole book just on that one verse in the Bible is here Israel the Lord Our God the Lord is one it's not as simple as we often assume it to be but the number two is bet that's our letter for tonight and bet is going to be connected to a number of Concepts bet is connected to Creation we'll see why in a few moments bet is also create is connected to the idea of blessing of braa why is BET connected to blessing to bra so we have here the word to bless and we'll see that the letters in the word b are the letters to re is 200 is 20 so there's something about blessing and tuness that somehow tuness is connected to the idea of blessing so we have this letter bet bet we know now speaks about creation it speaks about the number two it speaks about blessing now why is the number two an appropriate number for creation so one of the things that we can observe very easily about the world is that the world is very dualistic we live in a world that is very dualistic we have light and darkness we have masculine and feminine we have good and evil life and death physical and spiritual we have this world and the world to come the nature of the world we live in is a dual world we have this physical world and a spiritual existence after this world we have a Torah which is a two-part Torah there's a written Torah and an oral Torah we have the ideas of high and low of hot and cold of positive and negative of Yin and Yang if you will in the Chinese systems in the cabalistic way of thinking of the world there were the two poles for example ofed and gured is overflowing love and overflowing giving gura is withholding pulling back and we have these polarities there's giving there's holding back and we live in a world which is basically R full it's defined by the fact that it's a dualistic kind of world it's a world which seems to be split between different poles and it's interesting that one of the major ideas that is addressed in the shma shma Isel is this polarity the has two different names of God it has Adonai yud V and has Elohim and the rabbis teach us that these two names of God reflect two different aspects of the way we perceive the way God interacts with the world the rabbis teach that the yud V the T Graton what we call Hashem is theid it's God's overflowing love to the world it's God being imminent it's God being close to us we speak about for example God our Father so there is this relationship this this perception that we have of God of God being near to us God being a parent God being loving God being close God being imminent but then the Bible speaks about Elohim Elohim is called the mid the attribute of Justice that's not ainu our father that's malanu our king that's not God as imminent that's God as Transcendent and we experience the world in this way we seem to experience God sometimes as very close to us and sometimes very distant sometimes very merciful sometimes seeing to be very cold maybe and hard and harsh and so the shma tries to deal with this what kind of world is it the zor asrian the the zor asrian basically said you know what it's a world where there seems to be good and evil how do you explain good and evil in a world they said there must be two Gods a god of light and a god of Darkness a God that's good and a God that's evil so when the world is going nicely the good God is winning and when the world is going terribly the bad God is winning but that's a very compelling answer to the question of the duality of the world it seems that the world has these two poles so the zor asrian and other dualistic religions said there are two Gods two forces the incredible statement of sh Isel is to say sh Isel listen everyone listen up there's Adonai there's elohenu it seems that God sometimes is distant and God sometimes is close God sometimes is merciful god sometimes is strict and it says at the end of the day it's Adonai it's one loving God in God's Essence he's loving and giving and good and close we don't always see that it's hard for us to see it but the shma is telling us it's all one it's not two different forces so the number two is appropriate for creation because the world we're living in seems to be a world that is dualistic the maharal from Prague the great Jewish Mystic says what is the connection between the idea of Duality and the idea of blessing and the idea of creation how do these ideas tie together the number two blessing creation he says that blessing is only possible when opposites are able to come together in harmony that's when you're able to have true blessing for example a human being has a physical side and a spiritual side what we sometimes call our yov our good inclination our inclination for spirituality and our yahar our inclination for the physical for The Superficial for the material so how do we deal with this Duality how do how does Judaism approach the idea that we have two sides to us so some religions try to resolve the tension by saying look what did epicurus say eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you shall die you know what you're going to live in this world have a good time Live It Up embrace your animal side just have a good time and other religious philosophy said you know what if you want to really live a proper life you've got to take a vow of poverty and a vow of Chastity and you have to give up all your possessions and you have to sit in a Lotus position on the top of a mountain and drink yak's milk and meditate all day long there were these different approaches either you embrace the spiritual and reject the physical or you embrace the physical reject the spiritual Judaism said no we want somehow to have the physical operate in service of the spiritual we want to somehow basically synthesize everything and the Mahar from Prague is saying that the world is a world of thesis antithesis or antithesis and synthesis that that's how things ultimately reach their highest level where you have different streams different poles like we have and gur we have this idea of giving and this idea of holding back well the synthesis is tiferet taret is called the the the spher of beauty because that's the resolution of these two opposites that somehow it's beautiful it's special it's spiritual it's wonderful when you're able to somehow work out how to properly navigate these two poles why does the Torah begin with a bet rather than alive it's one of the topics that the rabbi discuss at Great length I mentioned I think last week I have an entire book written by a friend of mine from Miami Florida called why does the Torah begin with a bet but one way of looking at the question is not why does it begin with a bet why doesn't it begin with an Alf why does the Torah begin with the second letter of the alphabet and pass over the first letter it's interesting that not only does the Torah begin with the letter bet but if you studi talmud you'll know that every book of the talmud there's no page one every book of the talmud begins on page two why is that why does the bible begin with p with the letter two why does every page of the talet begin on page two so one approach to this is that the Torah ultimately has no beginning and no end you shouldn't ever really think that you've ever finished it right so the fact that you don't really even get started on some level you never get to the alive that's how ultimately INF infinite the Torah is also Alf means as we learned the first week alaf means to teach right Ulan is a place of instruction so let Al means to teach so Al has the idea of teaching and alof we saw that Al means a master a ruler a king the prince so the Torah begins with a bet because it wants us to remember that there is a teacher there is a master that gave us the Torah that is the teacher that is the master that is the master teacher but the Master teacher can be found in the text but is beyond the text the alff can be found in the text but ultimately can't be captured entirely by the text so the alive is not there we begin with the bet the rabbis say that the alive was very upset when it was passed over and God began the Torah with the BET The Olive started to complain why you skip me so God says don't worry when we have the Ten Commandments that are given on Mount Si you will be the first letter of the Ten Commandments the first word of the AER wrote is Ani I am the Lord your God Ani begins with an Alf so the ALF was appeased but the rabbis teach us something that's very important we have the creation Story the world the physical world we're living in that begins with a bet the secondary letter but the Torah the re ation of God at Mount Si that begins with an alive that's more primary meaning if we're going to prioritize what's more important the physical or the spiritual so the Torah the teaching of the Torah begins with an Alf that's more important that's more primary than the physical world we're living in which really comes as a secondary idea to the [Applause] spiritual the word bet in Hebrew very to the word b it bait is a house bait is a house a b it and it provides protection you have a little bit of a wall here and a wall back here and a roof over here and you can go into the house there's a little entrance over here it provides protection but the rabbis teach us our house should be open the house should be open the rabbis also teach that in our perspective in terms of encountering the world we should basically live in the present moment meaning we should try to live in the present moment we shouldn't try to think too much about what came before what's below us what's on top of us keep your eyes straight ahead be focused on the present moment the letter Beth tries to teach us the importance of living in the present moment the word bu it house if you take the letter bait itself bait you would spell out the same way You' spell out the word bi it bait and bi it are spelled bait y tough tough is 400 Y is 10 bait is two so the letter bait equals the number 412 and again bait is a bu it a house but then we know there's something else in the Bible called a sanctuary the temple right God says in the book of Exodus chapter 25 the mikash build for me a sanctuary the and I'll dwell among you meaning not I'll DW not that I'll dwell in that Sanctuary God says when you build a sanctuary I'll dwell within you on some level each of us is a holy Temple each human being is where God resides in our heart but we do have this structure called the mishan or the mikdash the Holy Temple the temple a temple is spelled mikdash me is 40 K is 100 doid is four Shin is 300 for a total of 444 so the rabbis teach what is the difference between a regular house and a temple what is the difference well 444 minus 412 is 32 32 is the numerical value of La heart meaning what can transform a regular bricks and mortar building just a house a simple house into a holy Temple is when we put our heart into it properly interesting by the way the letter bet is the second letter in the word La heart bet is the first letter of the five books of Moses and lamid is as we saw last week the very last letter of the five books of Moses so the five books of Moses are totally cap encaptured surrounded by bet l in the word is the five books of Moses is our way of learning how to direct our heart in the proper direction the next letter in the alphabet is the letter gimmel so we have the BET which is the house we have the letter gimmel now gimmel comes it's related to the Hebrew word Gamal Gamal means to nourish something nourish a plant or a vegetable or fruit even until it becomes ripe so Gamal means to nourish something until it matures and Gamal also refers to the weaning of a baby so Gamal has this idea of nourishing and weaning and giving and supporting Gamal also in Hebrew is the name of animal called something that sounds like gal which is a camel so camel is gal the rabbis teach us that the gimmel this long part of the gimmel is like the long neck of the camel the word gol gimel is very closely related to the word g g means to give G is the Hebrew word of to give there's an expression called means to give kindness or to do acts of kindness the camel is described as an animal that has this quality the camel is able to endure a tremendous amount of stress to help Travelers survive the Perils of the desert the camel is able to store up a tremendous amount of water and the rabbis teach us just like a weaned child is able to go for a long time without drinking the camel as well can go for a long time without drinking but because of that the camel is able to give to give to give to The Travelers the Hebrew letters giml or Gamal add up to 73 gimmel is three me is 40 lamid is 30 73 the Hebrew worded loving kindness is 72 is eight Sam is 60 valid is four now we mentioned previously and we'll do more of this tonight that in the rules of gatria in the rules of Jewish numerology you can add one the value of one for the value of the word itself so according to the teachings of gatria could be read at 73 we'll see a little bit why later tonight and therefore is considered to be equal in value to gimel giving loving kindness the words are very much related you could word read the word can be read as to have compassion Al doid is D someone who is impoverished soed can have the meaning of to have compassion upon the one who is impoverished or poor what gimmel represents the letter gimmel represents the idea of giving the idea of nurturing the idea of sustaining the idea of kindness so gimmel represents God's overflowing kindness anded To The World God is always in a position of giving to the world according to the cabalists the shape of the letter gimel looks like a leader bringing down water from the roof of a building again it's a flow the Divine flow from up on top and down towards the bottom so if we look at the Hebrew alphabet the first three letters we see something very profound that's being taught the first letter we have is alive alive the letter of divinity of godliness we saw that God bet Bria B Barat creates why did God create what was behind God's Act of creating so if you remember in the Bible during the first six days of creation after every single day of creation the Bible says Elohim Kito and God saw that it was good some of the commentaries point out that it's not an accurate translation what does it mean God saw that it was good meaning that God created something and then maybe it didn't turn out okay maybe God didn't have good quality control maybe he messed up he's got to look at it and say oh that's pretty good so some of the commentaries say that the word vayar in Hebrew doesn't mean that God saw but vayar would be in the causative meaning and God caused it to be seen God caused it to be seen meaning God brought it into existence kto because he is good meaning that when it says at the end of every day of creation Elohim it's not telling you God evaluated his work as being good work it's saying that God brought it into existence kto because he is good so it says in the Book of Psalms the world is created out of an act of loving kindness the God created the world as an act of compassion as an act of giving God if you want to use the word desires to give and so you have Alf God bet creation through gimel through loving kindness through giving it's an act of giving it's the motivation that led God to create the world not only does God create the world out of loving kindness but the Torah itself begins with acts of loving kindness God provides food for the human beings in the Garden of Eden not just any kind of food pretty good food pretty amazing food and then we know that Adam and Eve eat from the tree they weren't supposed to eat from the Torah tells us that they saw they were naked and what does God do he makes clothing for them so the making of clothing providing clothing to the poor is considered an act of loving kindness and throughout the Bible the Bible has God performing acts of loving kindness God visits the sick when Abraham is sick after his circumcision God Comforts the mourners God buries Moses at the very end of the Bible as a matter of fact the rabbis teach us that is is EMS that God's seal is truth meaning the ending is truth and burial is considered to be there are many kinds of loving kindness many kinds of giving but the rabbis teach that the most true form of giving is the giving we do on behalf of the dead because they can't pay us back we can have no expectation that by doing kindness to the dead we're going to get something in return from this person every other Act of loving kindness that could be some in your mind quid proquote that I'll scratch his back he'll scratch my back but bearing the dead is considered to be so at the very end of the Bible the rabis say that the the Seal of God is truth because the very last thing God does is to bury Moses so God provided clothing for Adam and Eve after they sinned but what's interesting is that what's the real clothing that God gives us what's the ultimate clothing that God allows us to wear it's not our physical clothing the ultimate clothing the ultimate garment that God gives us is spiritual clothing meaning that God gives human beings Direction and instructions and those instructions are called Torah and Torah is the ultimate garment that we're able to wear we're able to put on God's Torah and so what happens is in the Torah when it says that Adam and Eve opened their eyes and they saw they were naked it's like the emperor has no clothes not simply that they didn't they saw that they weren't wearing clothing they were now naked of the one commandment they were given they were given one instruction and now they realize that they're naked meaning they don't even have that one commandment they were given but God provides both physical food and spiritual food at the very beginning of the Bible the shape of the gimmel is very interesting it stands outside the house just like Abraham who didn't just sit inside his house and wait for people maybe to come knocking at the door the Bible tells us that on the day of his circumcision when he was already in his 90s an old man and having gone through a very painful surgery of circumcision the Bible says that Abraham went out into the heat of the day into the hottest part of the day sitting outside his tent to look to make sure he wants to find maybe someone's going to come by he he just can't it's hard for him not to be giving it's hard for him not to be helping people so he's sick and he's old and he goes out into the hottest part of the day he stands outside of his b it outside of his house because he wants to give he wants to be a goil just like God is a giver God is a nurturer God is a sustainer Abraham wants to imate God and do exactly what God does the giver extends their foot The Giver is almost walking towards the do do we saw before means D the one that's impoverished the one that's poor so what happens is the giver doesn't just sit back and wait for the poor to come to them the giver tries to actually reach out and extend himself toward the Dal towards the poor person what is the code of first words for the letter gimmel anyone know what the first word in the Bible is that begins with the letter gimmel so it's found in the story of the creation of the celestial spheres and bodies on the fourth day where God created the great luminaries and they're called the Great luminaries so the first time this letter gimmel appears at the beginning of a word in the Bible is in the word gim great gim great g means great a person that's a Gad is considered a great person a person that's great grown a lot spiritually what's the connection between gim or Gad to be great to be big and the idea of giving so we see in the story of Moses Moses grew up very much like the Buddha in the house of the Palace of the king but Moses we're told leaves the palace and it says in the Torah that Moshe grew up he grew upal he became big Moses became big he became a big person how Torah says by going out to his Brethren the way we become big is by giving the more we give it's not that the less we have the more we give the more we have we become much biger bigger and much bigger people by giving and giving and giving so Moses goes out to his Brethren to see how they're doing to see their burdens and we know that in the stories that follow Moses comes to the aid of people he breaks up fights he saves people but he's concerned and he's giving not just a few dollars to people he's risking his life he gets involved he extends himself so by extending yourself you're becoming bigger and so that's the relationship between Gad the code of first words here and the idea of G to give not only does giving make the person Greater Giving also elevates the place in which the giving takes place the rabbis tell an amazing story there were two brothers one was a bachelor one was a familyman they owned together a very large field they divided the field evenly one day The Bachelor the brother that's living by himself says to himself you know what I don't need as much as my brother my brother has to support a very large family so I'm going to take some of my crop and he decides in the middle of the night when no one's watching he sneaks into his brother's field and he leaves bundles of his produce in his brother's field that same night his brother had a very similar thought he said to himself you know I have a bunch of children and they'll be able to take care of me when I'm an older person my brother's all alone you know what maybe I should help him so this brother took some of his produce bundled it up and he brought it into his brother's field and left it there in the morning each one got up and saw wait a second I still have the same amount of produce what happened this went on night after night for many many months until one night in the middle of the night these two people met as they were crossing the fields to each other's field they saw that each one had a bundle of produce in their hands each one immediately realized what was taking place what was going on the rabbis teach us that at that moment the brothers dropped their bundles they embraced they cried they kissed each other and the rabbis teach us that on that spot God chose to build ultimately the Holy Temple in Jerusalem that was the spot upon which the Holy Temple the beta mikdash was ultimately built because giving is something that elevates and makes holy the place in which the giving takes place that's why the rabbis teach us something amazing that when we had a temple in Jerusalem the sacrifices were part of the way that we got close to God the word sacrifice is Corban from the root kov to become close but the rabbis teach now that we don't have a temple and sacrifices the same is accomplished through the guests that we host at our chabas table or even during the week when we bring people into our homes and we host them we don't just give them food the word company means come pan with bread meaning that the the the food is just a vehicle to have a shared experience that you want to have companionship you want to be with people so the rabis teach that when we bring people into our homes we host them at our table that's what elevates Us in the same way that the sacrifices in the temple used to elevate the Jewish people back then and the Jews the pious Jews of France used to have an amazing custom when people passed away and had to be buried they would be buried in their chabus table they would take their table on which they hosted people for so many years and that table became the wood that was used to build their coffin now we saw over here that gatria has this rule of the K that you can take the value of the word and add it to the number of the word itself is there a source for this in the Bible meaning is there a place where the Bible teaches you that you should actually do that so when Jacob was blessing his children we know that Jacob blessed all his children but his son Joseph had two sons Ephraim and manasha and what what Jacob did was to say that his grandchildren his grandchildren Ephraim and manha will be considered like children to him so Jacob says epim man [Music] and this is in Genesis 485 Jacob is saying that Ephraim and manasha my grandchildren will be just like Ruan and Shimon my oldest two boys the rabbis teach something amazing if you take the two names Ephraim and Min if you want anyone have a calculator here you may want to check up on me Alf is one p is 80 re 200 yud is 10 me is 40 me is 40 nun 50 Shin 300 hey is five for a grand total of 682 and Shimon re is 200 Alf is One V is six bet is two nun is 50 Shin 300 me 40 a 70 v 6 n50 for a grand total of 683 682 683 they're one of apart but what does the Torah say the Torah says epim and man will be considered equivalent to Ru and shim so the rabbis teach that this is one of the sources that teach us that a gatria can be one off because here you have these two expressions are oneof and yet the Torah says they're considered to be equal the Bible teaches us that the Affliction the spiritual Affliction called SAS sometimes it's translated as leprosy it wasn't really the kind of leprosy that we have as a physical disease but in the Bible there was a spiritual malady called s and the rabbis teach that this was something that attacked people who went about tail bearing and slandering others so the Bible says don't go about as a tail Bearer among your people if you take the numerical value of this phrase It's equal to the numerical value of Nega the plague of so when the rabbis taught that came about as a result of slander we find that the numerical value of both of these phrases is equal to 883 exactly we don't need to fudge one both of these phrases come out to 883 in the Passover ha we know that there are four children that have discussed at the very beginning of the evening there's the wise son and then there's the son that's called the Rasha the wicked son and the hag has what seems to be a pretty strange directive given to the leader of the household and how to deal with The Wicked Child says shov hake literally means to hit HOV hit him in the teeth sometimes translations of the Hagar say blunt his teeth whatever that means it seems like what it's saying is just give him a sock in the mouth it doesn't seem to be good pedagogi it doesn't seem to be the kind of action that's going to really help that much but the rabbis noticed something interesting the word Rasha for an evil person the numbers Rasha add up to 300 and 200 for 500 and I in 70 Rasha is 570 hake at shov hit him in the teeth but shav is teeth but Sheen is a letter in the alphabet so they say should take this Russia and knock out his sh knock out his shin not his teeth knock out his shin so you take the word shav Shin is 300 nun is 50 yud is 10 and six for a total of 366 if you subtract 366 from 570 you're left with how much a grand total of 204 204 is the numerical value of sadik a righteous person so K is 100 Sadi is 90 yud is 10 for 200 and Dal is four 204 so the godess says if the child is wicked knock out his shin meaning transform him into a righteous child don't beat him up you got to do something that's going to transform them one of the scariest chapters in the B Bible is we read last week in the synagogue from called the to it's the admonition it's the long series of maledictions that God promises we will receive if we totally abandon God in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy we have another set of toak another list of maledictions of curses that God sends our way if we don't listen to his voice for it will be if you don't listen to the voice of God on this phrase on this phrase if you don't listen to the voice of God the midash the rabic midash quotes a verse from The Book of Psalms it says in the Book of Psalms rot raot sadik the righteous one has many terrible things that happen many terrible things happen to the righteous oneu Hashem but from all of them God Saves him so many things that are difficult might happen to the righteous person but God Saves that person from all of them something incredible was discovered the word raot here evil Terrible Things adds up to 400 + 200 which is 600 + 70 and6 600 and 76 the numerical value of the word raot if you count the number of words in that portion of the Bible the to all of those curses it has 676 words what's amazing is the name of God Appears 26 times in that chapter the name of God again is the YK VK the tetragramaton yud he V he 10565 for a total of 26 so God's name of 26 appears 26 times 26 squared is 676 so we see in this horrible chapter of curs and what's amazing is the rabbis teach that whenever you have this word it's a word of a word of Joy so even though the chapter promises that horrible things can happen to us the truth is if we learn to read it properly all of these curses can be transformed into blessings and that's why the midash says on this passage that many evil things 676 might be all the righteous person but all of them he'll be saved from who from Hashem Hashem whose name appears 676 times in this passage is able to cancel out the 676 Words In this passage of maledictions the bottom of the page we have the word Suka the Feast of Tabernacles in the Bible commemorating our sojourn in the desert when we dwelt in booths in Huts every year we build Huts after yam kipur we live in them for a week the rabbis pointed out something very interesting if you look at the shape of the letters in the word sukka it illustrates the laws of how to build a sukka ideally a sukka should have four walls one of them can be a door if it doesn't have four walls it could be okay if it has three walls you can build a kosher Suka with three walls and as a matter of fact even if it's not three full walls but two full walls and a fraction of a wall that's also at the very least a kosher Suka so the shape of the letters in the word Suka tell you how you can build a kosher sucat in the book of Exodus 20:2 this is the first of the The Ten Commandments we read it before we learned it before the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt the word aare that is shin 300 200 Alf is one for grand total of 501 501 if you remember from the Passover seder the rabbis gave the 10 plagues a pneumonic if you can't remember all 10 plagues so so they said if you remember these three these are the 10 plagues if you add up the letters here the numerical value of these letters they add up to 51 and therefore there were people who read this verse as follows I am the Lord your God a it was these 10 plagues that ultimately took us out of the land of Egypt that God took us out through the agency of these 10 plagues the same numerical value 501 501 we had the word last week if you recall Torah Torah is tough for 400 v six race 200 hey is five for a total of 600 and 11 I mentioned earlier that there's a two-part Torah that God gave us there's a written Torah and an oral Torah the word written is Torah Torah in writing baz is two is 20 T is 400 baz is two for a grand total of 424 then there's the oral Torah it's called Torah B Al Torah that is oral the AL is 30 and 70 for 10 and 2 102 pay and hey is 85 85 and 102 is equal to how much 87 87 yes I'm going to trust you and if you add 187 to 424 what do you get 6 611 so the numerical value of written and oral is 611 which is the word for Torah when I was in Israel back in 1980 I met with one of the greatest rabbis of the generation he was called the stier Goon he lived in Ben brch and I purchased his entire library from him most of the books went to my school but I kept three for myself one of the books is called beat perets and he does something that's quite astounding in this book he did it without the use of an adding machine or without the use of computers he did it in his head I showed you one of his calculations last week when it says in the Bible that the whole world was sa one language and Rashi says what was that one language Rashi says L Hesh the holy tongue the stier Goon pointed out that the numerical value of lones the Holy tongue was the same numerical value as sa one tongue so what he does in this book incredibly is he shows that if you read rashi's commentary to the Bible there are dozens and dozens and dozens of places where he finds that if you take rashi's commentary and you take its numerical value it's exactly the same as the numerical value of the words he's commenting on another example when the brothers and and Jacob come down to Egypt we're told that Joseph gives them a possession a place to live in Egypt he gives them a place in the land of Egypt and we're told it was in one of the best places of the land from the word Tove he gave them a tract of land where beit Ramses in the land of Ramses on this passage Rashi says that the land of rames was in the land of Goen the Torah here doesn't say it was in the land of Goen Rashi tells you it was in the land of Goen the stier gone pointed out that the numerical value of beet in the best part of the land is equal exactly to the word Goen 359 the numerical value of this also 359 and he shows in this book beat peret countless examples of the Torah rashi's commentary they're equal numerically the word staka very familiar to us is the word often translated really mistranslated as Charity it's not really charity charity is from the Latin karitas based upon your feelings like Charisma is not based upon feeling sorry for people it's from sedc which means righteousness Justice we are obligated to givea and the rabbis teach how we can givea what are the parameters so we're told that if you have a 100 K is a letter for a 100 you can make the 100 into Sadi 90 and give 10% that's the minimal amount that you're supposed to give we're supposed to give 10% of our come toak we can make 100 into 90 or if you want to be very generous you can make hey five into four by giving 20% that's the maximum you could give you're not supposed to give more than 20% the rabbis didn't want you to become poor yourself so if you want to give the minimal amount 10% the maximum 20% and if you add up the letters here it's 90 and4 and 105 for a total of 199 why is that because that was the amount of money that you were able to have and still receive pay P was the biblical requirement for people to take the corner of their field and set it aside for the poor so how poor did you have to be in order to be able to collect Paya if you had a 100 zoos then I'm sorry if you had 200 zo you couldn't collect PA but if you had less than 200 meaning from 199 down then you could receive charity orak soak adds up to 199 because that's the number that you T that's the upper number you can have before you receive staka the Torah says in numbers 2511 that when Pinas shishkabob that couple that were fornicating in public we know there was a horrible scene in the Bible where a couple is having a sexual act right in front of moses' tent and God is very upset plague break takes out Pinas in an act of zealotry takes a spear and basically Rams it through this couple in the middle of their act the Bible says that by doing this he was able to turn he was able to turn around my wrath that in doing this Pinas was able to stop the plague and turn around my wrath in the Bible I'm sorry in the midash the rabbis say that this fulfilled this is explained by a verse in Psalms I believe Psalm chapter 106 I may be wrong which says that the act that Pinas did was an act of that the act of Pinas was an act of how was it an act of so in the Bible one of the major collections that was taken was called the M the half shek ction every Jew had to give three half shekels to the temple Sanctuary the word is an interesting word the middle letter is Sadi we can say that Sadi represents if you look at the two letters that surround the theadi you have and Y which is K is life living life the two words that are far away from theadi are me and T mate death has the ability to push aside death and to bring close to life that's what the rabbis teach that giving charity has the ability to push death away and bring close to life there's an expression thata has the ability to save us from death so when it says that P is Act was an act of he was able to push away met the death and bring closer to life that's what it means in numbers where it says that he was able to return around to push around at the word k has again mate in the middle mate here is in the middle M and K is on the outside so by his act of Charity P was able to turn around the word and bring the closer to the middle this word is an unusual word God willing you should never have to know from it it's the word get what is a get get is the Bill of divorce that ends a marriage a Jewish marriage has to have a kba a marriage document that basically formalizes the marriage but if a marriage unfortunately has to come to an end the rabbis teach us that when a marriage end ends even the altar of God sheds tears but when that marriage ends it has to be concluded with a bill that's given to the woman called a get the question is why is it called a get why is it called a get so there are several reasons that are given one reason is that gimmel and tough are three and nine for 12 the get is written in 12 lines it has 12 lines of writing but the more significant reason and this was pointed out by the Von and you can imagine the Von didn't have a digital Bible to figure this out but he was able to know that in the entire Bible in the entire Bible the letters giml and tet never appear side by side in the entire Bible you will not find one word where the letters gimmel and T appear near each other more than that not even at the beginning and end of a word you won't find one word beginning with A gimal and another word ending with a test they won't even appear next to each other at the beginning and end of words so just like these two letters symbolize a total separation that's what happens with the get document there's now a total separation between this man and woman in Exodus 19 the Torah tells us that when God was going to reveal the Torah at Mount Si he told the Jewish people Hagel atar make a boundary from the word Gul is a border make a border a boundary around the mountain the Kash to and make it holy we know that people were not supposed to approach Mount Si during the Revelation so God tells them set up a boundary a border make a boundary surrounding the mountain and then make it holy the holy Bellar rebi saw something in incredible he said take this word har Mountain here we have it over here and Surround it take the word har and find the surrounding letters right before a hey comes the letter doid right after the he comes a letter V take the letter re right before re comes K right after the re comes aim this is the letters of kados Holiness so the verse says surround the mountain and make it holy when you take the word Mountain har you surround these letters from the letters before and behind each letter it spells out Holiness Numbers Chapter 20 The Jewish people are very thirsty there's no water God tells Moses to approach there's a rock he says to Moses take your staff and speak to the Rock take your staff and speak to the Rock and it will give forth its Waters in the story Moses does not speak to the Rock instead he takes his staff and he strikes The Rock twice and the waters come out he smoked the rock with his staff twice and the water came out he struck the rock twice with his staff the water came out we take the word self is a rock and if you spell the Letters Out you don't just take but you spell out is the letter is the letter L what did he do he took this rock and he hit twice he hit the first letters knocked them away he hit the last letters he knocked them away and by hitting this rock twice you were left with water so in the verse when it says that he hit the rock twice and water was revealed water came out that's what happens when you spell out the word cah and you hit twice you knock off the beginning and the end letters and in the middle comes out May water we know know that in the Bible there's the law of Lex tonus Exodus 21:24 which people assume means literally an eye for an eye if you poke out someone's eye the law says that your eye is poked out if you chop off someone's arm your arm is chopped off that was never the Jewish law Jewish law says that if you hurt someone physically the punishment is you pay five different monetary fines you pay pay for the loss of their limb for their pain for their embarrassment for the loss of wages there are five different things that you are assessed but you don't actually take out the person's eye the vagon found an amazing clue amazing hint for this it says in the Bible you could read it an i in place of an i meaning instead of an eye you give an eye or the word tat you know means underneath that's why the yish word means what it means it's what's underneath us so means that which is underneath so the Von said if someone takes out an eye the penalty is that which is what is underneath underneath the is a p under the Y is a under the N is a it spells outf money so the penalty for taking out someone's eye is not the eye it's payment of money one final example for tonight in Deuteronomy 14 verse 22 the Torah tells us you should give surely one tenth of all the produce of your Fields this is the Commandment to give basically a tenth you should certainly give one tenth on this verse in Deuteronomy there's something called the midash plea plea is the Hebrew word for totally astonishing and strange and incomprehensible so there's a collection of RAB MIM it's not the normal midashim like midash Raba but Mida is a collection of very weird strange midashim on this verse which teaches us to take one10 of our produce the Minash quotes a verse from Genesis 13 where Abraham was parting ways with his nephew L and he says to his nephew if you go to the left then I will go to the right then then I will go to the left what in the world is are the rabbis quoting this passage for what is this passage Abraham parting from his nephew l have to do with the charge that we have to give 10% of our income to charity what is the relationship so the rabbis teach a very famous teaching it doesn't just say give a tenth it expresses it by saying a almost emphasizing the idea of a tenth so the rabbis teach a give a tenth a so that you should become wealthy the rabbis teach that one of the most amazing skoot one of the most amazing things that can bring us wealth is by giving away our money if you give charity we're told we're promised we'll become wealthy listen carefully to the word here a this letter Shin can be pronounced in one of two ways if there's a DOT on this side it's a share if the dot up here is here it's a an s s so the rabbis say a a give a tenth that you will become wealthy the word a a Is wealth is 10 so the rabis say on this verse if you will go to the right I will if you go to the left I'll go to the right and if you go to the right I'll go to the left what do they mean they say this the following that if you put the dot on the left hand side of this word here if you go to the left you give a tenth then a then I'm going to go to the right and it's become a wealth if you go to the right I'm going to go to if you go to the left I'm going to go to the right if you give a tenth I will make you wealthy but if you go to the to the right if you want to remain Wealthy by not giving charity so you putting the dot on the right a share a you want to maintain your wealth that's what you're interested in you go to the right then God says then I'm going to go to the left then you won't become wealthy then you won't even achieve one tenth you won't achieve one tenth of what your fields are capable of producing so the rabbis explained this Mida in an incredible way I'm going to end with one final gatria for tonight there's a verse in Deuteronomy which says k d re who M for this is not a vain thing unto you for this is not a vain thing unto you the rabbis read this and if you do find it to be vain it's m it's because of you meaning the fault is not with this thing it's with you so what is it talking about it's not a vain thing from you the gatria the numerical value of that phrase is equal exactly to the word gatot which is the word for numerical value so it's easy sometimes to not take amatria seriously the tomwood says it's one of the things that's a handmade into wisdom it's considered to be one of the ways in which the Torah can be interpreted even though there's a danger that you can play around with this and invent things that are not necessarily legitimate nman pointed out that people can misuse gatria but he says that if it's done respond ibly like most things in this life it can be extremely valuable tool for unearthing incredible secrets and symmetries in the Bible e

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Id: 4uKbHqZBt3U

Length: 69min 13sec (4153 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2013