Tag Archives: Nachash Bariach

The Strings That Hold the World

This week’s parasha, Shlach, ends with God’s command to the Israelites to put tzitzit on the corners of their clothes. The purpose of these strings is so that we should see them and “remember all of God’s laws” (Numbers 15:39). The Torah instructs that tzitzit must have a string of tekhelet, dyed blue. The Sages state that this blue represents the sea, which reflects the sky, which is likened to God’s Throne, which is described as being sapphire-blue, like tekhelet (Sotah 17a). At times, tekhelet is described as sapphire-blue or sea-blue, while other times it is described as greenish-blue or turquoise. Whatever the case, tekhelet is associated with the sea and its range of hues. The association here is actually quite mystical and profound. In fact, tzitzit is meant to remind us not only of God’s laws, but of Creation itself, and the very structure of the cosmos.

The first time that we see a greenish-blue string is right at the beginning, on Day One of Creation. We are told that at first, the cosmos was tohu v’vohu. These mysterious words have been explained in a wide variety of ways. The Talmud states that tohu and vohu were not just adjectives for “chaotic and void”, as typically translated, but rather distinct entities that were actually created. Rav Yehuda brings a teaching in the name of Rav that “Ten things were created the First Day, and they are: Heaven and Earth, tohu, vohu, light and darkness, wind and water, the measure of day and the measure of night.” (Chagigah 12a)

The Talmud then brings in another teaching to explain what tohu and vohu are: “Tohu is a green line that surrounds the whole world, from which darkness emerges.” Meanwhile, “Vohu are the spongy stones of the abyss from which emerge the waters.” The proof for this is a verse in Isaiah, which says: “and He shall stretch upon it the line of tohu and the stones of bohu.” (Isaiah 34:11) Amazingly, scientists drilling down beneath the Earth’s core up at the Kola Super Borehole discovered that, indeed, there are spongy stones beneath the surface which are full of water. In fact, scientists estimate that there is three times more water in these spongy stones than in all of the Earth’s oceans!

Scientists at the Kola Superdeep Borehole dug further and further into the Earth for decades, reaching a maximum depth of 12.2 kilometres in 1989.

Here we want to focus on the “green line” of tohu. While the word yarok is typically translated as “green”, Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Itzchaki, 1040-1105) says that yarok is tekhelet! (See, for instance, his comments on Exodus 25:4.) Thus, when the Sages teach that tohu is a kav yarok, they are really saying that the world is surrounded by a line of tekhelet. Sefer Yetzirah speaks of this line, too, and in his notes on the ancient text, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan points out that mystical sources understood this line to be the horizon, which seems to subtly glow with a greenish-blue tinge (pg. 382). It is the tekhelet line that sailors see over the ocean horizon. This horizon line is the interface between light and darkness, day and night, hence the Sages’ statement that tohu is the line from which darkness emerges.

An image taken from the International Space Station on August 28, 2021 shows Earth’s atmospheric glow – could this be the tohu line that our Sages spoke of?

A time lapse showing the movement of stars over the course of the night.

While the Zohar describes the Earth as being spherical “like a ball” (Zohar III, 10a), Sefer Yetzirah associates the Earth with a galgal, a disk or wheel of some sort. The former describes the ball as spinning, while the latter suggests that it is the heavenly “dome” above the Earth that is spinning. That something is spinning is obvious from the fact that the stars above our heads clearly shift in circular fashion over the course of the night. Although the Zohar’s description fits neatly with modern science (incredible that it had this knowledge so many centuries ago!), we should not be so quick to discard Sefer Yetzirah, which offers some profound spiritual secrets and metaphors. Generally speaking, we find ancient rabbinic texts sometimes speak of the Earth as spherical and other times as flat. In the Talmud itself there is a mix of opinions, with some places clearly describing Earth as a ball (such as Avodah Zarah 41a) while others suggest a flatter shape (Chagigah 12b or Pesachim 94a-b).

The sixth chapter of Yetzirah begins by telling us that cosmos is made up of various components of threes. There are the three aspects of time, space, and soul (olam, shanah, nefesh); three primordial elements of fire, water, and air; and three major components to the Earth and Heavens: teli, galgal, and lev. One way to understand it is that the galgal is the “disk” of the Earth. The disk is suspended by a “string” connected to teli. Since Yetzirah is speaking here of constellations in the sky, many believe that the teli is the constellation Draco (the “Dragon”), which was seen in ancient times as being the pole around which the Heavens rotate. Millennia ago, a star in Draco (called Thuban) was aligned with the north pole and served as the official “North Star”, lending a further reason for why ancient peoples believed the Earth was suspended from Draco.

Jewish texts, too, seem to mirror this notion. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan points out that the etymology of teli might very well be talah, to “hang”, as if the Earth is hanging by a string attached to it. This is supported by various ancient sources cited by Rabbi Kaplan, including a Midrash that says Earth is suspended from a fin of the Leviathan. The teli was long-associated with the Leviathan (described as a dragon by our Sages), as well as the nachash bariah or “Pole Serpent” mentioned in Tanakh, as in Isaiah 27:1. (See “The Dragon, the Snake, and the Messiah” for lots more on the Leviathan and the Pole Serpent.)

The Ecliptic Line (גלגל המזלות) from a 1720 edition of ‘Tzurat haAretz’ by Rabbi Avraham bar Chiya (c. 1070-1145).

Another way to understand the galgal is that it refers not to the disk of the Earth, but rather to the galgal mazalot, the circle of Zodiacal constellations that appear to go around the Earth. This is called the “Ecliptic Line” and is related to the astronomical notion of a “Procession of the Equinoxes”. That this is the true galgal is supported by the subsequent verse in Sefer Yetzirah (6:2) which connects the galgal to the domain of time, not space. Thus, the galgal may be referring to the rotating “wheel” of constellations that seemingly goes around the Draco constellation teli which is above and centre. It would appear that the constellations “spin” around a stationary Earth over the course of time. (For more on the wheel of constellations and Procession of the Equinoxes, see the video series on ‘Astronomy & Astrology in Judaism‘.)

In olden days, maps were often drawn with Jerusalem at the centre of the world, like this one from 1581.

The third component presented by Sefer Yetzirah is the lev, literally “heart”. This might be the Earth itself, the “heart” and centre of the cosmos. More specifically, it’s the point at the centre of the Earth where the “string” from teli connects (and may refer to the actual “string” itself). Historically, that centrepoint was thought to be Israel, and specifically Jerusalem—and maybe that’s why it often seems like the whole world revolves around Israel and what’s happening over there. Fittingly, Ezekiel describes Israel as tabur ha’aretz, literally the “navel of the world” (Ezekiel 38:12), as if there is a cosmic umbilical cord attached to it.

So, we have a tekhelet string called tohu going all around the circular Earth, the horizon that separates light and dark. And we have the Earth suspended from an invisible “white” string tied to its centre, the lev. (One may interpret these verses to mean either the Heavens rotating around Earth, or the Earth itself spinning, as it “hangs” suspended from the Heavens.) These strings of Creation are reminiscent of the strings of tzitzit, and it is all the more interesting that the value of lev (לב) is 32, the total number of tzitzit strings hanging from the four corners. And although we generally speak of the four corners of tzitzit, the Torah’s language is a kanaf, literally a “wing”, and more accurately referring to the four compass points. The circular Earth has no corners, of course, but it does have the four cardinal directions. In these ways, the four “wings” of the tzitzit and their white and blue strings remind us of the spiritual makeup of the Earth and cosmos, of the tohu and the teli, the galgal and the lev.

Since tzitzit reminds us of Creation and of the unity of God, it is most fitting that our Sages included it within the Shema when we proclaim God’s unity. Better yet, the Mishnah that tells us when to recite the Shema in the morning says to do so from the moment one can “differentiate between tekhelet and white”, between the blue and white strings of the tzitzit (Berakhot 1:2). This is at dawn, when the tohu “string” around the horizon glows with tekhelet hues, as we move through another rotation of the galgal, hanging from the “string” tied to the teli of the Heavens. In reciting Shema, therefore, we connect to the spiritual foundations of Creation, and see the unity in all things, across the four compass directions, which our Sages teach are alluded to by the enlarged letter dalet of the word echad.

For more on the identity and meaning of tekhelet, see here.

Mashiach and the Mysterious 13th Zodiac Sign

When Jacob blesses his children before his passing, he begins by telling his sons that he wishes to reveal to them what will happen b’acharit hayamim, “in the End of Days”. Yet, the text we read does not appear to say anything about the End of Days! The Talmud (Pesachim 56a) states that the Shekhinah withdrew from Jacob at that moment so he was unable to reveal those secrets. If that’s the case, how was he able to properly bless his children?

The Talmud states that when the Shekhinah left him, Jacob worried one of his children was unworthy to hear those secrets. His sons then recited the Shema in unison and said, “just as there is only One in your heart, so is there in our heart only One.” Jacob was comforted to know they are all indeed righteous, and it seems the Shekhinah returned to him at this point, allowing him to bless his children in holiness. Nonetheless, Jacob reasoned that to reveal the secret of the End in explicit fashion would be unwise, so he encoded these mysteries within the blessings he recited. In fact, Jacob not only encrypted what will happen in the End, but summarized the breadth of Jewish history (see ‘How Jacob Prophesied All of Jewish History’ in Volume One of Garments of Light).

One place where Jacob appears to make an explicit reference to the End is in blessing Dan, when he says, “I hope for Your salvation, Hashem” (Genesis 49:18). Jacob says Dan will be the one to judge his people—alluding to the great Judgement Day—and wage the final battles like a “snake upon the road… who bites the horse’s heel so that its rider falls backwards”. Jacob is speaking of Mashiach. Although Mashiach is a descendent of David and from the tribe of Judah, the Midrash states that this is only through his father, while through his mother’s lineage Mashiach hails from the tribe of Dan.

Why does Jacob compare Mashiach to a snake?

Snakes of Divination

In cultures around the world, there is a peculiar connection between snakes and prophecy. In ancient Greece, for example, the Oracle went into a prophetic trance when supposedly breathing in the fumes (or spirit) of the dead python upon which the Temple in Delphi was built. According to myth, this great python (a word which has a Hebrew equivalent in the Tanakh, פתן) was slain by Apollo. The Temple was built upon its carcass. For this reason, the Greek prophetess was known as Pythia.

Similarly, the Romans had their sacred hill on the Vatican (later adopted as the centre of Christianity). The second-century Latin author Aulus Gellius explained that the root of the word Vatican is vates, Latin for “prophet”. Others explain that vatican refers more specifically to a “divining serpent”. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world the Aztecs had Quetzalcoatl and the Mayans had Kukulkan, the “feathered serpent” god of wisdom and learning. And such mystical dragons appear just about everywhere else, from Scandinavia to China.

Incredibly, the Torah makes the same connection, where Joseph is described as a diviner who uses a special goblet to nachesh inachesh (Genesis 44:5). This term for divination is identical to nachash, “snake”. In Modern Hebrew, too, the term for guessing or predicting is lenachesh. Why is the snake associated with otherworldly wisdom and prophecy?

Primordial Serpent

Back in the Garden of Eden, it was the Nachash, “Serpent”, who encouraged Eve to consume of the Forbidden Fruit. This was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The Serpent is the one who unlocked the minds of Adam and Eve to higher wisdom so that they could “be like God”. Jewish tradition maintains that Adam and Eve were eventually supposed to eat of the Tree of Knowledge (for otherwise why would God put it there to begin with?) but they simply rushed to do so when they were not yet ready. They transgressed God’s command, and knew not what to do with all of this tremendous information, resulting in the shameful descent of man into sin. The one who instigated it all was the Nachash.

It appears that ever since then, the snake has been a symbol of forbidden wisdom. Such divination and mysticism can be quite dangerous, and most are unable to either grasp or properly use this knowledge. The Talmud cautions as much in its famous story of the four sages who entered “Pardes” (Chagigah 14b). Pardes is an acronym for the depths of Jewish wisdom, from the simple (pshat) and sub-textual (remez) to the metaphorical (drash) and esoteric (sod). The result of entering the mystical dimensions was that Ben Azzai died, Ben Zoma detached from this world, and Elisha ben Avuya became a heretic. Only Rabbi Akiva was able to “enter in peace and depart in peace.” It is important to remember that Rabbi Akiva was the teacher of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the originator of the Zohar. (Still, the Zohar, like most mystical texts, does not speak explicitly of esoteric matters, but cloaks them in layers of garments and complex language which only the most astute can unravel.)

Long before, Joseph was a master of this wisdom, surprising even the Pharaoh and his best mystics, who proclaimed: “Can there be such a man in whom the spirit of God rests?” (Genesis 41:38). Joseph, of course, is a prototype of Mashiach. The sages state that Mashiach is a great prophet and sage in his own right, but can he really surpass the unparalleled prophecy of Moses or the wisdom of Solomon? The Alter Rebbe (Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, 1745-1812) solved the issue thus:

After the resurrection all will rise… the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Moses and Aaron, all the righteous ones and the prophets, tens of thousands beyond number. Is it possible that Mashiach will teach them the same Torah that is revealed to us today? …Will all who knew the whole Torah be required to learn new laws from Mashiach? We must therefore say that Mashiach will instruct them in the “good of discernment and knowledge of the secrets of the esoteric teachings of Torah” that the “eyes will not have seen”—Moses and the Patriarchs not having been privileged to that knowledge, for only to Mashiach will it be revealed as it is written of him [Isaiah 52:13] “and he shall be very high.” (Likkutei Torah, Tzav)

Mashiach is the greatest of mystics, the holder of “forbidden” knowledge which will soon no longer be forbidden. The time will come when, as God originally intended, man will eat from the Tree of Knowledge and be “like God”. That first requires a return of mankind to the Garden of Eden, which is the very task of Mashiach. Beautifully, the gematria of Mashiach (משיח)—the one who brings us back into Eden—is 358, the same as Nachash (נחש)—the one who forced us out to begin with. And so, as Jacob foresaw, the snake symbolizes Mashiach himself.

While Mashiach is likened to a serpent, he must also defeat the Primordial Serpent which embodies all evil. Indeed, the Sages speak of two serpents (based on Isaiah 27:1): the “straight” serpent (nachash bariach) and the “twisted” serpent (nachash ‘akalaton). Mashiach is the straight serpent that devours the twisted one. This was all alluded to in Moses’ staff-turned-serpent consuming the Pharaoh’s staff-turned-serpent. In fact, another serpent staff, the nachash nechoshet, is later used by Moses to heal the nation. This healing staff found its way into Greek myth as well, where it was wielded by the healer god Asclepius, and eventually into the modern internationally-recognized medical symbol.

And that brings us back to the End of Days.

The 13th Zodiac

In recent years, there have been whispers of a necessity to change the current 12-sign horoscope to include a 13th zodiac sign. This was featured in the media on a number of occasions, with flashy headlines suggesting that some people’s astrological sign may now have changed. It is based on the fact that there is a “precession of the equinoxes”: Earth’s axis changes very slowly over time, meaning that the constellations which are visible in the night sky change, too.

The astrological signs are based on the 12 major constellations (out of 88 constellations total) that align with the sun and “rule” for about a month’s time every year (each making up 30º of the total 360º). The argument is that due to the precession of the equinoxes, a 13th sign has crept in which we can no longer ignore. The majority of astrologers have rejected this argument, mainly because astrology isn’t really based on the stars but fixed to the vernal equinox. While some in the East (namely Hindus) use “sidereal astrology”, which is based on shifting star positions, the system used in the West (“tropical astrology”) has 12 signs roughly corresponding to the 12 months.

The same is true in traditional Jewish thought, where each sign corresponds to a month on the Hebrew calendar, as well as to one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Having said that, including a 13th month for the Jewish system is not a problem at all. In fact, it is actually a solution, since the Jewish calendar has a 13th month in a leap year. The extra month has an astrological sign, too! Similarly, although we always speak of twelve tribes of Israel, there are really thirteen since, as we read in this week’s parasha, Jacob made Joseph count as two separate tribes: Ephraim and Menashe.

Whatever the case, whether the horoscope requires modification or not is irrelevant to Judaism, which denies any astrological effect on Israel (see ‘Should Jews Believe in Astrology’ in Volume One of Garments of Light). Besides, unlike astrologers, astronomers both ancient and modern have always been aware of this thirteenth constellation. To the ancient Babylonians it was the snake-like Nirah, while to the ancient Greeks it was known as Ophiuchus, the “serpent-bearer”. This constellation is in the shape of a man firmly grasping a twisted snake (the interlinked constellation Serpens). This is, of course, the very symbol of Mashiach, that serpentine saviour who defeats the primordial snake and all of its evil. After being an astrological footnote for a very long time, Ophiuchus has entered the spotlight, as if the cosmos itself is reminding us of Mashiach’s impending arrival.

The constellation Ophiuchus (or Serpentarius) grasping the constellation Serpens, from Alexander Jamieson’s Celestial Atlas of 1822. It is interesting to note that Mashiach must be a direct descendant of King David, whose own father Yishai (Jesse) was also called Nachash! (See Talmud, Shabbat 55b.)

The above is an excerpt from Garments of Light, Volume Two. Get the book here!