At the end of this week’s parasha, Ki Tisa, we read how Moses descended from Mt. Sinai with his face glowing brilliantly (Exodus 34:29-30). The people could not look at his face directly, so he had to wear a mask. The exact wording in the Torah is karan ‘or panav (קָרַ֖ן ע֣וֹר פָּנָ֑יו). The latter two words are clear: “the skin of his face”. But what does karan mean? The most direct translation would be “horn” which is actually why, comically, throughout history some artists depicted Moses with horns! Another way of translating it is as “radiant” (based on this, the Modern Hebrew term for a ray or radiation is k’rinah, קרינה). Rashi comments that both are accurate; karan does indeed come from the word for “horn” because light rays shoot forth like “horns”. If we take a look at Midrash (with a little help from science), we will find that the Torah is secretly encoding something much more profound. Continue reading
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Chanukah & the Light of Creation
Jewish law forbids using the light of the Chanukah candles for mundane purposes. At first thought, this is strange since all other holiday candles which we light may be used for mundane purposes. One can have a candle-lit dinner with the Shabbat candles on the table, yet the same cannot be done with Chanukah candles. This is actually why we light an additional (“ninth”) candle called the shamash, whose job is to “protect” the light of the Chanukah candles so that we do not inadvertently make use of them. Why is it that the Chanukah lights must not be used? To answer this question, one must go all the way back, long before the Maccabees, to the very beginnings of the universe.
The Light of Creation
When we open the Torah we read that God’s first act of Creation within an empty universe was light. God said “Let there be light”, and so it was. A few paragraphs later, we read that on the fourth day God created various luminaries to “give light”, including the sun, moon, and stars. If the things that naturally give off light were only created on the fourth day, what was the light of the first day? The Sages (Chagigah 12a) grappled with this apparent contradiction:
But was the light created on the first day? …This is [to be explained] according to Rabbi Elazar, for Rabbi Elazar said: “The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, one could see thereby from one end of the universe to the other; but as soon as the Holy One, blessed be He, beheld the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Dispersion, and saw that their actions were corrupt, He arose and hid it from them…”
Now the Tannaim [differ on the point]: “The light which the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day one could see and look thereby from one end of the universe to the other,” this is the view of Rabbi Yaakov. But the Sages say: It is identical with the luminaries; for they were created on the first day, but they were not “hung up” until the fourth day.
On the simple level, the Sages agreed that the light of the First and Fourth Days were really the same thing: while God created the luminaries on the First Day, He only set them in their specific locations and orbits on the Fourth Day. This is in line with another opinion that God really created everything in one instant, on the First Day, and on the subsequent “days” He simply put everything in its place. (For an explanation of this, see Pardes Rimonim 13:5.)
On a deeper level, as expounded by Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yakov, the light of the First Day was an entirely different entity. Unlike the familiar, physical light of the Fourth Day, the light of the First Day was a special, mystical light which contained the power for one to see across the universe, through all of time and space. According to the Zohar, this is the special radiance of Creation, from which all things were fashioned (see ‘The Big Bang and the Age of the Universe’ in Volume One of Garments of Light). This idea is already noted in the Midrash (Beresheet Rabbah 12:6) which adds that “the light with which God created the universe [was given] to Adam, and with it he stood and gazed from one end of the universe to the other.”
Adam and Eve were given this Divine Light as a gift. However, once they consumed the Forbidden Fruit, that light disappeared. In fact, the Kabbalists explain that initially Adam and Eve saw the world entirely through this Divine Light, and themselves glowed with this light. When they looked upon each other, they saw only each other’s light, which is why they were unashamed. After consuming the Fruit, that light disappeared, and when they looked upon each other they saw frail skin, and all of its lustful trappings. This is why they were suddenly ashamed and wanted to hide.
The Kabbalists explain that this is the mystical meaning of the interplay between the words for “light”, or (אור), and “skin”, ‘or (עור), words that sound the same and are written with just one substitution: The singular, holy aleph replaced with the ‘ayin, which literally means “eye” and represents this illusory physical world. Before the Fruit, Adam and Eve saw light; afterwards they saw only skin. (See Beresheet Rabbah 20:12, Zohar I, 22b, and Pardes Rimonim 13:3)
This is the deeper meaning behind God’s first word to Adam and Eve after their fall: “Ayeka?” The term literally means “Where are you?” referring to the fact that Adam and Eve were hiding because they were ashamed. Of course, God knew exactly where they were. So what did He mean by Ayeka?
Ayeka
The Sages explain that the original Divine Light, called Or HaGanuz, the “hidden light”, only shone for 36 hours. There are two opinions as to how one reaches this number. The first (as in Beresheet Rabbah cited above) is that the Light shone for the entire 24 hours of the first Shabbat, as well as the 12 hours preceding that Shabbat, from the moment that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. The light disappeared at Shabbat’s conclusion, which is one reason why we perform Havdallah at the end of Shabbat, symbolizing our hope for the restoration of that Light. Alternatively, the Light shone for the first three days of Creation, before those physical luminaries were created on the fourth day. Since each day had 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark, that means each of the three days had 12 hours of this Divine Light, totalling up to 36.
In reality, both opinions are correct. The Divine Light initially shone for those first three days—36 hours—and was then concealed by the new physical luminaries. On the sixth day, when God created Adam and Eve, He entrusted them with that Light, and they possessed it for 36 hours until the conclusion of the first Sabbath, neatly mirroring those 36 hours of the first three days. When Adam and Eve consumed the Fruit, the Light disappeared from them, and was taken back up to Heaven, stored beneath God’s Throne (Yalkut Shimoni, Isaiah 499). This brings us back to Ayeka. The gematria of that word (איכה) happens to be 36. When God called out to Adam and Eve and said Ayeka, what He meant was not “where are you?” but “where is the Light?”
Restoring the Light
While the Or HaGanuz has been hidden for now, it reveals itself in this world through several channels. We find that same number 36 in a number of important places. Most notably, when we look at the actual number of texts in our Holy Scriptures, we find that there are 36: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hoshea, Yoel, Amos, Ovadiah, Yonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Tzephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. While we generally group these texts into 24 “books” of the Tanakh for convenience, there are exactly 36 independent works. This reminds us that the Holy Scriptures contain within them the Divine Light, and through the study of these texts we can receive a glimpse of it.
Similarly, the Bnei Issachar (Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Shapiro, c. 1783-1841) points out that there are 36 tractates to the Talmud. Study of Torah—whether Written (Tanakh) or Oral (Talmud)—serves to restore that Divine Light little by little. Naturally, this parallels the idea of the 36 Perfect Tzaddikim. The Sages state that in every generation there are exactly 36 perfectly righteous people alive, and the world only continues to exist in their merit (Sanhedrin 97b). They contain a spark of that Divine Light within them. And on the calendar, too, there is a month in which finding the Or HaGanuz is particularly auspicious. This is the month of Kislev which, the Bnei Issachar points out, is a contraction of kis (כס) and lev (לו), the former meaning “hidden” and the latter having the value of 36.
That brings us right back to Chanukah, which begins on the 25th of Kislev. We light one candle on the first day, two on the second, and so on. The total number of candles lit over the course of eight days just happens to be 36. The Chanukah lights are symbolic of that special holy light of Creation. One should not for a moment think that these are just mundane, physical lights. And this is the mystical reason for why Jewish law forbids using the Chanukah lights for any purpose. One should constantly meditate on the fact that the light of the Menorah represents the Or HaGanuz, the light of Creation, the holy light with which Adam and Eve “saw from one end of the universe to the other.”
Jewish law also requires one to place their Menorah in a widely visible spot. We must “publicize the miracle” as much as possible, hence the many public Menorah-lighting ceremonies that take place around the world, and the many electronic chanukiahs found outside synagogues, in shopping malls, and on the roofs of cars. We are not just commemorating the Chanukah miracle, but the Jewish mission to bring light into the world (as Isaiah 42:6 famously states).
From a mystical perspective, we light 36 candles to remind ourselves that our mission is to rectify the cosmos and reveal the primordial holy light of God. We remind ourselves that we should strive to return to being like the original Adam and Eve, who glowed with this light, and who looked past the deceptive skin to see the pure light within each other. When we learn to recognize each other’s inner glow, then we will merit a return to the luminous Garden of Eden.
The above is an excerpt from Garments of Light, Volume Two. Get the book here!
The Mystical Purpose of the Omer
“Bringing the Omer to the Kohen” by Ahuva Klein
In this week’s parasha, Emor, we read of the commandment to count the Omer. Each of the forty-nine days between the holidays of Pesach and Shavuot must be enumerated. In Temple times, this went along with a special “wave-offering” consisting of sheaves (omer in Hebrew) of barley. The Torah doesn’t clearly spell out why this must be done. However, a big clue is given from the conspicuous interplay between the words Emor (the name of the parasha) and Omer (the mitzvah commanded in this parasha).
The difference between Emor (אמר) and Omer (עמר) is just a single letter: an aleph replaced with an ayin. Our Sages point out that when two words differ in such a way, there is a special connection between them. The letter aleph is the first in the alphabet, with a value of one, representing the One God. (In fact, an aleph is composed of two yuds joined by a vav, the sum of which is 26, equal to God’s Ineffable Name, Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei). Each Hebrew letter is also a word with its own meaning. “Aleph” means “master” or “chief”, once more hinting to God being the Master of the Universe. Ayin, meanwhile, means “eye”. The eyes are the tools with which we see this physical world. Because of this, the eyes mislead us, distracting us from the truth that everything is truly One. Indeed, the Shema that we recite twice daily cautions not to follow “after your eyes”. The aleph therefore represents spirituality, while the ayin represents physicality.
The Ramak (Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, 1522-1570) suggests that Israel represents the unique, spiritual nation among the seventy root nations of the world that are trapped in physicality, the value of ayin being 70. Here (Pardes Rimonim 13:3), he gives the most famous example of the interplay between aleph and ayin: The Sages state that Adam and Eve were initially created as beings of light (אור). Only after consuming the Forbidden Fruit did their light disappear, replaced with fragile skin (עור). Other examples of such parallel terms described in mystical texts include “me” (אני) and “poor” (עני), “nothingness” (אין) and “eye” (עין), and the words in question: “emor” (אמר) and “omer” (עמר).
“Emor” means to speak. It is one of three major roots for “speaking” in Hebrew. The Zohar (I, 234b) explains that ledaber (לדבר) refers to simple, day-to-day speech; le’emor (לאמר) is to speak from the heart; and lehagid (להגיד) is to speak from the soul. For more practical examples, a simple, everyday Torah insight is called a dvar (דבר), while a long and in-depth discourse is a ma’amar (מאמר), and on Pesach we have a particularly special text that comes straight from the soul called the haggadah (הגדה). The form of speech we are interested in here is emor—speech of the heart.
What is the connection between this type of speech and the Omer?
32 Paths of Wisdom
Sefer Yetzirah, perhaps the oldest Jewish mystical text, explains how God brought about the universe. It begins by stating that God created through 32 Paths of Wisdom. These 32 paths are the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 10 Sefirot (as explained here). Sefer Yetzirah tells us that the first letters God forged were aleph, mem, and shin, which brought about the three primordial elements: air (avir or ruach), water (mayim), and fire (esh). These central letters therefore stand at the three horizontal axes of the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life”. The Arizal elaborates (Sha’ar Ruach HaKodesh, drush 2) that God then brought about the substances of the first day of Creation: light, water, and space, ie. or (אור), mayim (מים), and rakia (רקיע). As we read in the Torah, these were the only things in existence at the end of Day One.
The three horizontal lines of the Tree of Life correspond to the paths of the letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin.
You may have already noticed that the initials of these three things make aleph-mem-reish (אמר), “emor”. Amazingly, it is exclusively this verb of speech that the Torah uses in describing God’s creation: v’yomer, God spoke (ויאמר), and everything came to be. It is this form of speech that contains within it the very power of Creation.
Even more amazingly, the Zohar we saw above states that this is speech from the heart. The heart is a special organ for, unlike any other organ, it literally intertwines with every single living cell in the human body, ensuring that the tiniest bodily component receives oxygen and nutrients. So, too, does God permeate the entire universe, and is intertwined with even the tiniest bit of matter, ensuring its continual existence. In Hebrew, “heart” is lev (לב), which has a value of 32, once more alluding to those 32 paths of Creation.
Better yet, the 32 paths correspond to the 32 times that God (Elohim) is mentioned in the account of Creation. It is only after the account of Creation ends, at the 33rd instance, that the Torah introduces us to God’s Ineffable Name. So, too, during the Sefirat haOmer period, we have 32 days before we reach the climax of the whole Omer period, the 33rd day, the holiday of Lag b’Omer. Of course, man is a microcosm of the universe, so it is only fitting that the human body has a spinal cord, with an additional 31 pairs of nerves emerging out of it, sitting beneath the all-important 33rd component, the brain.
With this in mind, we can understand the connection between Emor and Omer.
Rectifying Speech
The Sefirat haOmer period is meant to be one of rectification and purification. Upon the Exodus, the Israelites spent these 49 days preparing to receive the Torah at Sinai. We relive this experience each year, and likewise work on ourselves in these seven weeks. When we count the Omer each night, we quote from the verse in this week’s parasha: “And you shall count for yourselves from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the waving [omer hatenufah]; seven weeks shall there be complete; until the morrow after the seventh week shall you count fifty days…” (Leviticus 23:15-16) and then we add, in many versions of the prayer, “in order to purify the souls of Your people Israel from their impurity.” The very purpose of the Omer is personal development and purification. How do we purify ourselves?
The greatest sin that needs to be atoned for is improper speech. The Talmud (Yoma 44a) states that it was for this sin in particular that the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies just once a year, on Yom Kippur. Conversely, as we saw above, proper speech has the power to create worlds. Impure speech can be immensely destructive while pure speech can rectify anything. King Solomon similarly wrote that “death and life are in the hand of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). It is through the mouth that we speak, and the tongue is its primary organ. Beautifully, the mouth, too, contains 32 teeth to parallel the 32 paths of Creation, with the central 33rd component being the tongue.
More than anything else, the purpose of the Omer (עמר) is to allow us to rectify our speech (אמר). The Torah itself hints to this in the verse above, calling the special offering of these 49 days the omer hatenufah, where the latter word can be split (תנו פה) to mean “give mouth”, or “teach the mouth”. Each of the seven weeks that the Torah prescribes correspond to one of the seven mystical middot of the Tree of Life. In the Omer period, we are meant to rectify these seven “lower” Sefirot (hinted in the term Sefirat HaOmer). We do not mention the three “higher” sefirot above. We can understand why this is so, for the Sages say the upper sefirot are the mochin of the mind, while the lower seven are the middot of the heart—and as we saw above, it is the speech of the heart that we are particularly focusing on. The final Sefirah is called Malkhut, “Kingdom”, which Patach Eliyahu (Tikkunei Zohar 17a) says is פה, the mouth. The very culmination of the Sefirat HaOmer period is the purification of speech.
The mochin above (in blue) and the middot below (in red).
Rabbi Akiva’s Students
The Sefirat HaOmer period overlaps with the tragic deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students. As is well-known, the students died because they lacked respect for one another. How exactly did they disrespect each other? Although we have discussed in the past that they were probably killed by the Romans during the Bar Kochva Revolt, the Talmud (Yevamot 62b) cryptically states that they died of a disease called croup. Elsewhere, the Talmud (Sotah 35a) suggests that croup is the standard Heavenly punishment for a person who commits slander. We may learn from this that Rabbi Akiva’s students spoke negatively about each other, and thus deserved their cruel death penalty.
Rabbi Akiva’s students ceased to die on the 33rd of the Omer, as if God was hinting at their misuse of the tremendous powers of speech. One of Rabbi Akiva’s surviving students, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, himself had to hide from the Romans for 13 years because he spoke negatively about the authorities. It was he who ultimately fixed the 33rd of the Omer as a holiday. Although this was the day of his death, it was also the day he revealed the depths of Kabbalah, and the teachings that would eventually be compiled into the Zohar. Lag b’Omer is a celebration of this mystical wisdom, much of which is focused on the powers of divine speech.
To bring it all together, we find that the term “lag” (לג) actually appears in the Torah. It is found only in one passage, Leviticus 14, where it refers to a measure of oil, log hashamen. This was a special oil used in the purification procedure for a metzora, loosely translated as a “leper”. The Sages teach that a person would be afflicted with this illness if they spoke negatively about another, motzi shem ra, hence the term “metzora”. Like the Omer, the log hashamen was also a “wave-offering”, a tenufah. Afterwards, the oil was sprinkled and poured upon the leper in order to purify them. If “log” (לג) hints to the oil used to purify improper speech, and Omer (עומר) is the inverse of emor, itself alluding to impure speech, then Lag b’Omer (לג בעומר) takes on an entirely new meaning.
Chag sameach!
