The Esoteric Meaning of Numbers - Numerology 102
Who knows TWO???
I know TWO! Two are the luchos!
As I explained before, the number one doesn't exist in this world, which means we really begin with the number two. This is where the fun really starts.
The sefer Otiyot D'Rabbi Akiva cites that when Hashem was about to create the world, all of the letters came forward wanting to be the letter with which creation began. The Aleph being the first letter came first and asked to be the letter used. Hashem said no, you can't be the letter because the word "arur" meaning cursed, begins with an Aleph. The Bet came next and Hashem agreed to start creation of the world with the letter Bet, saying that the word "bracha" begins with the letter Bet. As we know, creation begins with the letter Bet, Braishis.
The Even Ezra is perplexed, and asks, there are plenty of positive words beginning with Aleph and plenty of negative words that begin with the letter Bet, so how do we understand this?
The Maharal gives a perfect answer. He explains what bracha means. We understand it as a blessing, but in reality it means multiplying. In fact, the very first use of bracha in the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply. There are many situations in the torah that I can think of where bracha means just that. Multiplying.
The Maharal goes on to say that the reason that the Aleph was "cursed" and creation could not start with Aleph is because Aleph is void of bracha, it is void of multiplicity. The first letter that has duplicity, and the only number that is always plural, "shnayim", is the number two corresponding to the letter Bet. The shoresh of the word "bracha" is "Bet", "Resh", "CHaf". The corresponding gematrias of those letters are 2, 200, and 20. Each is the first case of multiplicity in the units, tens and hundreds. So we see that two is at the very source of creation.
If we look closely, almost everything in this world is in twos or pairs.
night and day. up and down. left and right. good and bad. etc. etc. etc.
Chromosomes are in pairs. Even our brain is broken down into two, emotional and rational/logical. The heart has two functions, pumping the blood in and out.
How is the number two defined? By the luchos. Why are there TWO luchos? Couldn't Hashem have just given us one? (yes, I know the joke about the fact that it was free...) The fact that there are two luchos, exemplifies how the two is at our essence. The luchos are broken down into positive commandments and negative commandments, "bein adam lamakom" and "bein adam lachaveiro", spiritual and material. The true essence of the number two.
In fact, we refer to Hashem as our father. Why not as our mother? In actuality he is (kavayachol) both. The answer is that the word for father is av, spelled aleph bet. This term is used because Hashem took the world from oneness to multiplicity. From the one to the two.
posted by A Frum Idealist | 7/05/2006 02:22:00 AM
10 Comments:
Very nice I love the maharal and his ideologies. Also each letter spells out a word. So Bais is bayis the house. I dont remember the rest just thoughts to think about.
beautiful
i enjoyed reading what you wrote - usually one has to read a whole book with lots of info like this - and although i enjoy it - it's best to get it in shorter spurts - ie: on blog posts! lol
thanks!
That is doubly wonderful!!!
Nice...!
Also in Kabbalistic terms Abba always means someone/thing who has the ability to initiate the creation process (chochma)....Imma is the mekabel..who takes this and expands..and perfects it (Bina)...
Deep stuff.
i love how so much depth can be found in the simplest units of the torah. the bracha (2,20,200) idea was amazing!
im with towik on this, who has time to read whole books when there are bloggers that can do the work for us and spoonfeed it to us :)
swfm - true. each of the letters has a name that defines the letter in some way shape or form.
lvnsm - :-)
towik - glad I could be of service.
kasamba - cute
david - I have also heard something deep and kabbalistic about the fact that abba goes from the aleph to the bet and then fulfills its tafkid by then going back from the bet to the aleph.
prag - true, deep, but so beautiful
m00kie - it's interesting to note that the same letters also spell bechor. That comes to teach us that even though the bechor was born first and thinks that makes him special, he still must always remember that he is still subservient to Hashem, and therefore "number two", and not number one.
First of all that is an awesome picture of the letter bet. Wow. And your post is great.
I also learned that the Bet is closed on all three sides and only open towards the left which is foward to teach us that from here began creation and we should not busy ourselves with trying to figure out what was beforhand but to always move forward and not backwards.
The dualistic pointer is a misnomer and egoic despite correctly attributing the phenomena of duality to God. The reason for this is that it is only through the veil of the ego that the world appears to be dualistic. Only the ego would falsely claim that its world is the true one. A world of seperateness. It is happy to attribute creation of that world to God as long as it can get on living in it! However, what the ego does at any cost want is to have the rug pulled under its feet and realise that: The world only has the appearance of being dualistic. i.e. the universe is 'not-two'. Even to say it is 'one' implies an on-off state of duality and occurs within a dualistic context. Perception is within the phenomenological.
(...the existence of the ego which creates this illusion of two is not created by the ego. The ego cannot claim responsibility for anything...)
Hope this is followed. I'll keep an eye on your blog in case you respond. Happy to debate further.
cheers
Craig
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