The Torah teaches that the world was created through the speaking of G-d. So it says at the beginning of the creation story: »Gd
said: Let there be light. And there was light ”(Genesis 1: 3). In the morning prayer it is said: “Praise be to the one who spoke and the world came into being.” The Hebrew language is therefore also called “Lashon haKodesh” – “the holy language”. Because, according to Jewish tradition, Gd created the entire universe by pronouncing and combining Hebrew words and letters.
GEMATRIA From the words and numerical values of Hebrew there are interesting combinations, which are listed below. Before we begin, I would like to briefly discuss the Gematria system (numerical values). Each Hebrew letter is assigned a number. The first letter (Alef) has the number one, the second (Bet) the number two. From the tenth letter (Jud) onwards, each successive letter increases in steps of ten.
As soon as the number 100 is reached with the letter Kof, it continues in steps of one hundred. The 22nd and thus last letter of the alphabet (Taw) has the numerical value 400. With this system, every word can be represented as a number and every number as a word. This system has been used by Jews for a very long time to represent numbers, but also when dealing with writing.
SPIRITUALITY And now to the amazing things about the Hebrew language: The letter Aleph corresponds to the number one. The letter is silent. It can become any of the vowels depending on the vocalization. The letter Alef is related to the word Aluf, which means something like “master”. The letter Aleph (1) consists of a combination of the letters Yud, Yud and Vav (10 + 10 + 6 = 26). The number 26 in turn is the number of the unique name of G ‐ d (Jud, Jud, Heh and Vav). All of these things make the number aleph a symbol of spirituality.
Removing the letter aleph turns words from positive to negative. So “Adam” means man. If you remove the alef, you get the word “dam” – blood. Because without the soul the human being is only the blood, the physical. The word “Emet” means truth, if you remove the Aleph, you get the word “Met” – dead. For a truth without the Divine is the way to death.
Interestingly, the word “Emet” (truth) spans the entire alphabet. The alef at the beginning of the word is the first letter, Taw the last, and the letter Mem is in the middle of the alphabet. The lesson is that you can only judge the truth when you see the full picture, and should be humble unless you are sure that you have seen the full picture.
Alef and Bet, the first two letters, make up the word “father”.
It is also interesting that the Hebrew word for lie – »Scheker« – consists of letters that are on the one hand directly next to each other (i.e. they have the numerical values 100, 200 and 300) and on the other hand directly before reaching the last letter Taw (400 ) can be found. This is to teach that the lie, as opposed to the truth, is easy to find, and that above all else, the lie stands out just before reaching the truth.
A look at the beginning of the Hebrew alphabet also reveals interesting lessons. The first letters are Aleph and Bet. These are followed by the letters Gimmel and Dalet. The first two letters, Aleph and Bet, make up the word “Aw” – father. As soon as one moves a little further away from the Aleph, the letters Bet, Gimmel and Dalet result in the word “Bagad” (cheated), which is spelled exactly like the word “Beged” (clothing).
AMOUNTED TO These first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet tell us a story. In the beginning there is the father, but the separation from the alef, from the spirituality of the father, leads to deception and clothing. This is the story of the Garden of Eden, which was created by Gd, Heavenly Father. The removal of G-d’s law, eating the fruit, was a fraud. According to the third chapter of Genesis, this deception led to the necessity of clothing because man began to be ashamed of his nakedness.
The list of lessons hidden in the Hebrew alphabet and its words is long. I would like to close with two examples that are fascinating to me. The word for man is “Isch”, the word for woman is “Ischa”. The common letters of man and woman are alef and shin, these result in the word “Esch” – fire. The letters of the words “man” and “woman” that are not in common form one of the names of Gd. The letters of the words man and woman thus result in the words “fire, Gd, fire”.
The Talmud teaches that when a man and woman treat each other with love and dignity in marriage, the presence of G-d dwells among them. As soon as the partners in a relationship act selfishly, the relationship is burned like a fire.
PARTNER The Talmud also teaches that every child is fathered by three partners. Father and Mother give the body and Gd gives us the soul. Father is Aw (numerical value 3) and mother is Em (41). Together, father and mother add up to 44 – Dam’s numerical value: the blood. As already said, it is only the combination of “Dam” and the letter Aleph, which stands for spirituality, that makes the blood human – “Adam”.
These examples show how inextricably linked the Hebrew language and religion are in Judaism. Perhaps that is why the Hebrew language is also called “Iwrit” – which is related to the word “Meever”. The word “Meever” means “beyond something” or “outside of it”.
The Hebrew language finds its origin outside of what we know from the world – according to the Talmudic sages it finds its origin in the Divine
The author studies social work in Berlin.
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