Tag Archives: Truth

The Letter of Creation

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

Vayigash elav Yehudah, “And Judah approached him…” The Zohar begins its commentary on this week’s parasha by briefly citing a well-known Midrash about how the letters of the Hebrew alphabet approached God seeking to be the letter through which God creates the universe. The account is presented in full in an ancient text called Otiot d’Rabbi Akiva, and is also referenced to in multiple places, including the first chapters of Beresheet Rabbah and Yalkut Shimoni. The Zohar itself provides a detailed account in its first pages (I, 2b-3b):

…when the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to create the world, the letters of the alphabet appeared before Him (in reverse order). First came Tav and said: “Master of the Universe, may it be Your will that You create the universe with me, for I am Your seal of Truth [emet], and You are called Truth. It would therefore be fitting for the King to start His Creation with the letter of Truth.”

The Holy One, blessed be He, replied: “You are right and worthy, but I shall not create the universe with you, for you will be the mark upon the foreheads of the faithful, who fulfil the Torah from Aleph to Tav. With your mark, they shall die, for you are the seal of death [mavet].”

Being the last letter of the alphabet, Tav is the “seal” of God, and God’s seal is Truth. Tav argued it should be the letter of Creation—and the first letter of the Torah—because it represents Truth. God responded that Tav also represents death. The Talmud (Shabbat 55a) states that when a person is “marked” for death, the mark is a letter Tav on their forehead. And so, the universe cannot be created with a Tav. Next came the letter Shin: Continue reading →

The Meaning of Tiferet

In the parasha of Ki Tavo, we read:

And God has affirmed today that you are His treasured people, as He promised, who shall observe His commandments, and He shall place you above the nations that He has made, for fame, renown, and glory, and you shall be a holy nation unto Hashem, your God, as He promised.

The unique word for “glory” here, tiferet (תפארת), appears just three times in the whole Torah, and another 26 times or so in the rest of the Tanakh (not including the related tiferah). That it appears specifically three times in the Torah is no coincidence, for Tiferet is the third of the lower Sefirot, and is always associated with the number 3. It sits at the centre of the mystical Tree of Life, and is the only Sefirah interlinked with all the others. In Kabbalistic texts, Tiferet holds tremendous significance, and is discussed perhaps more than any other Sefirah. It is the Sefirah of the Torah, and of Israel, and the one associated with the very Name of God, the Tetragrammaton (יהוה). What is so special about Tiferet and why is it so important? Continue reading →

The Meaning and Power of “Amen”

In this week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, the Israelites are presented with a list of curses that they would bring upon themselves if they did not fulfil God’s commands. In the first set of curses, the Israelites answer each statement with “amen”, a term connoting agreement and acceptance. The now-ubiquitous term is actually quite rare in the Tanakh. In the Torah itself it appears in only one other context with the same meaning (Numbers 5:22). What does “amen” really mean, and why is it recited at the end of blessings? Why does it have the power to include its reciter in another person’s mitzvah? Continue reading →